Ina Garten: The 60 Minutes Interview

good evening I'm John worthheim welcome to 60 Minutes presents in this season of Celebration we have three stories that offer opportunities to eat drink and be merry we'll enjoy a pint or two when the storied pubs of England and be entertained by a virtuoso of an African instrument seldom heard on this continent but we begin tonight's menu with a visit with Ina Garten one of the most beloved Cooks in the country known as the Barefoot Contessa her cookbooks have sold millions of copies her weekly television show has run for two decades earned seven Emmys three James Beard Awards and millions of devoted fans who tune in as much for the cooking lesson as the cocktail party that typically follows and when Sharon alfonsi first met her in October we learned that Ina Garten isn't quite as freewheeling as you might think as impressive as our culinary chops may be Ina Garten success hinges on hard work shrewd business sense and leaving nothing to chance the story will continue in a moment this is just a great weeknight meal it's so easy to do do the first stage have yourself a glass of wine do the second stage and dinner's ready whether she's whipping up one of her signature chicken dishes slinging Cosmos for her real-life friends or scooping ice cream in a garden is a calming presence in the kitchen taking the mystery out of cooking now how easy is that she she's built a culinary Empire by making it all look effortless I know people don't believe this but I'm really a nervous cook and I'm sure every recipe is going to turn out wrong so I'm incredibly precise even now even now I'm there with a cookbook going is it a half a teaspoon or a whole season are you ready I found my own recipes exactly because I've spent so much time getting the balance of flavors and textures and everything right I'm really not a confident cook I would think that you were like you know swigging wine and yeah tossing let's keep that image going how's that so this is my commute to work awful for you at 74 the image of Ina Garten with her denim shirt Chic scarves and signature Bob is as reliable as the tried and true recipes she's built her reputation on those recipes are a road map for home Cooks from a home cook people like Bobby Flay have worked in restaurant kitchens all his life and he can just throw things together I've you know I've watched him he's such a brilliant cook I'm not that that person I didn't have that experience when you say you're testing and testing yourself at first and me how many times you have to make something before you get it sometimes 10 times sometimes 25 times and then I'll print out a page and give it to one of my assistants and watch them make it and you it so surprises me what people do I was making lentil salad form French lentils and um she was putting in garlic in it I said what are you doing and she said well it said clothes a cloves of garlic in it and I was like no it's cloves not cloves of garlic and I thought I never would have made that mistake but somebody else at home is going to make that mistake so I just want you to feel like I'm right there beside you just kind of guiding you through the recipe so this is the secret garden don't tell anybody about it Garden has been guiding viewers from her home in East Hampton New York for 20 years I love these tomatoes do you really do the gardening well I point so yes yes it may seem like she grew out of the rich Long Island soil she did not born in Brooklyn New York I know Rosenberg grew up in Stamford Connecticut her dad was a doctor her mom a dietitian as a teenager she was instructed to stay out of the kitchen and Excel in school she did both she met her future husband Jeffrey Garden while she was 16 years old and four years later they were married Jeffrey a lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne later took her backpacking through France she came home with an ambitious Mission so I got Julia Child's mastering the art of French cooking and I just worked my way through those books which were very complicated recipes I'm mean there were ingredients in each recipe that was another recipe in itself right and I love that challenge you never went to cooking school never went to cooking school was Julia Child's book your cooking school Julia Child was my cooking school yeah exactly her actual degree was in economics at 26 she had a job at the White House analyzing nuclear energy policy for the Ford Administration Jeffrey worked around the corner at the state department each weekend Aina says they devote their time to less bureaucratic Pursuits like making a great dinner party looks simple to this day I saw this I never made something for a dinner party I hadn't made several times so I would on Monday I would make the roast leg of lamb with tomatoes with dixelle which are mince finely minced mushrooms for Jeffrey for dinner lucky man and then I make it again on Wednesday and then by Saturday I knew how to make it and the poor guy would go oh this is delicious what is this after a thousand dinner parties and two administrations at 30 years old Aina had burned out of life inside the Beltway in 1978 she saw this ad in the back of the New York Times for a 400 square foot specialty food store in West Hampton New York called the Barefoot Contessa but you had never been to the Hamptons and you didn't know anything about running a store I knew how to make 12 brownies for my friends but I certainly didn't have a hundred brownies I didn't even know how to cash out the register or so I smoked salmon or I mean to me Brie was like a foreign language yeah so was it confidence that allowed you to do that or was it that you were being naive I have a very low threshold of boredom and I was really bored with my job and I just thought this is really exciting this is what I do for fun and now I'm I can do it professionally and so I just thought I'm just going to jump in thinking well how hard could this be oh my God it was really hard the gardens say they double mortgage their house Aina told us she was working 20 hours a day to keep up with the crowds who came to gawk at the goods and load up on lobster salad soon she opened a bigger shop in East Hampton it's very deliberate I was always doing research you know it looked like I was just having a good time of you know wandering around having a party but it was all careful and deliberate a calculating businesswoman Ina Garten elevated the food scene and soon had finicky Hampton's clientele falling over themselves to have the Barefoot Contessa cater their weddings or Thanksgiving and every year we would pack up the orders Wednesday night so people could come in Thursday morning and I would use the van out out next to the store as a refrigerator and one year it was like 33 degrees when I was going home and I thought nobody wants Frozen Thanksgiving dinner so I drove the van home and I set my alarm for every single hour all night to turn the heat on for a few minutes and then go back to sleep to keep the turkeys to keep the Turkish well the turkeys we roasted in the morning but like the vegetables and the sides and all that stuff after 18 years Garden decided to sell the Barefoot Contessa in 1996. so I mean one minute I'm making a thousand I guess and the next minute I have nothing to I mean nothing to do how was that it was horrible and I thought you know I'm 50. maybe that's the end of my career hardly the lull lasted nine months before Garden started writing the Barefoot Contessa cookbook the first of 13 cookbooks 10 of which have become New York Times bestsellers crushing big name chefs by remembering the Lessons Learned at her specialty food shop I realized later what I knew was what people want to eat at home which was roast chicken and roast carrots and chocolate cake and coconut cupcakes and things that I knew from the store people bought and took home you weren't trying to say here's everything I know you were saying here's what you need to know yeah here's what will make you happy at home her latest cookbook go-to dinners was inspired by the pandemic and again Aina is in every detail one of the things about the book that is not by accident is that you can put it on the counter and it doesn't flop shut I'm so glad you noticed that early on Garden sought out a printer in Japan so her cookbooks would lie flat it wouldn't close while cooking she designed them to have white space for notes and pictures as guides Simplicity is a non-negotiable do you ever throw something out because it's too difficult to make absolutely if I get to a point in a recipe and I go I'm never going to make this recipe again everything goes in the trash and if you're exhausted by the time you finish that you're it's not good for the party so you're thinking about the party above all things I'm always thinking about the party the party got real big real fast after Aina was invited to be on Martha Stewart's show an outtake caught the eye of a Food Network executive she said that I was making something and I took a spoonful of it and taste it and go this is really good and I'm a Martha Stewart crew said cot you can't talk with your mouth full and I was like why it's a cooking show Garden told Network Executives she didn't want a show but eventually gave in with a caveat instead of an adoring studio audience she insisted on a more intimate Affair in her kitchen she directed the cameras to come closer so it felt like a dinner party one of the things I'm fascinated by is that there are a lot of people who watch your show who don't cook what do you think the appeal is why are they watching you cook I think there was a time when Mom was in the kitchen cooking for us and I think people feel like they're just hanging out with me and I'm cooking for them when you're cooking you're not it's not about look at me oh it's never about looking yeah I'm like don't look at me I'm just the opposite um it's funny I I have a friend who said everybody else is like look at me look at me I'm you know pay attention to me and I'm like um well this is what I do you can do whatever the you want to do and I'm just having fun here the fun came to a square halt for Aina and everyone else during the pandemic unable to film her show or cook for her friends Garden turned to Instagram offering practical advice to home Cooks it's really important to keep Traditions alive and stirring up some fun you never know who's going to stop by wait a minute nobody's stopping by two cups of vodka and More Than 3 million views later delicious with the lockdown over we wanted to make sure Aina didn't have to drink alone Jeffrey arrives hi sweetie you know Sharon right I know Sharon hi Sharon so we made a red grapefruit Paloma for you how's that Mr Garden had a successful career on Wall Street and served as the dean of Yale's business school but millions of viewers know him simply as Jeffrey Aina has called you her Muse before what is she to you well she's the center of my life she's actually the font of enormous amount of fun and she is the center of a home that's what she is to me thank you that's not bad the couple's been married for more than 50 years is this a typical day at the house oh yeah we have cocktails all the time a couple of times a day secret to a happy marriage exactly right she went looking for carbs but in the Hamptons the corner shop doesn't sell Donuts this is Carissa's so cute isn't it wonderful garden took us to her favorite local bakery for a taste of the good life what is it that you love about this spot well first I love Carissa's because it's two local women and the two of them have built this extraordinary place with great quality food it's they use local ingredients on almost everything and they're here every day and it just feels like what I used to do feels like coming home oh look how fabulous that is wow that is fancy patan this is just what I would typically have for breakfast exactly this is all lovely but the bacon egg and cheese sandwich is like twenty dollars a lobster rolls 38. but you know first of all it's organic it's local and things are expensive here but it's not just a piece of white bread it's on a roll that Carissa made one of the luxuries of being here is that you can make a really good quality product Gordon's life is an all French pastries and rose-colored Cocktails but we thought it's pretty dang close she may still be a nervous cook but Ina Garden has nailed the recipe for a good life I don't want to do what I love doing and I want to do it really well yeah and then I want to have a life Julia French food right Martha stole Perfection you're slinging fun well I just think if you're not having fun what's the point really

Channel: 60 Minutes

Views: 570,726

Keywords: 60 Minutes, CBS News, Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten

Id: REyYFeqEKZg

Length: 13min 37sec (817 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 25 2022