It’s summertime and the living is easy, as if life is ever particularly challenging when you’re a famous Food Network star.

Welcome to the inaugural post of Kate & The Contessa! I’m happy you’re here.

This project is a tribute to an icon of home cooking: Ina Garten, a.k.a. Barefoot Contessa. In my posts, I’ll reflect on Ina’s influence through the lens of the marvelous recipes that cemented her legacy.

On the off-chance you’re reading this and do not know me: My name is Kate, I’m a native Bostonienne currently living in Manhattan. I love to write, cook, and eat, and I have been a die-hard fan of the Barefoot Contessa since I graduated college ten years ago.

I’d be remiss not to mention the late, great Julie Powell whose passion project “The Julie/Julia Project” became a book/film/worldwide phenomenon and inspired this concept. While Julie set out with the lofty aspiration to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, my goals are perhaps less ambitious.

I plan to post every other week or so, each time including an iconic Barefoot Contessa recipe and some personal reflections. Grab your denim button-downs and the good vanilla: it’s going to be a delicious ride!

As the queen Ina might say: How easy is that?

“To begin at the beginning…”
-Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood

The year is 2015. “Trap Queen” is all over the radio. Pitch Perfect 2 has just arrived in theaters. Obama is President; the Supreme Court will soon rule on Obergefell vs. Hodges. And in a lush suburban town, ten miles as the crow flies from the heart of Boston, I am rotting on my mother’s couch, watching way too much Food Network.

I am twenty-two years old. The ink on my diploma from Boston College is still fresh. I’m working as a waitress while I try to figure out what I want to be. I majored in English; I’d like to be a writer. But, unshakably lethargic in recovery from a compounding four-year hangover, that notion feels as attainable as owning property on the moon.

(These days, the “owning property” part sounds more outlandish than “on the moon”, no?)

For fun, and perhaps as an indirect means to the end of becoming a writer, I create posts for BuzzFeed Community. My third post, entitled “51 Thoughts You Have While Watching the Barefoot Contessa”, is a snarky listicle depicting my inner monologue during an episode of Ina Garten’s TV show. Since it went live on June 15, 2015, the post has earned 187,000 views, 37 comments, and a handful of “LOL” reacts.

Here are three thoughts I had while re-reading “51 Thoughts…”

• I was, to toot my own horn, pretty funny.

• I was also palpably lonely. “I need better friends,” I wrote, watching Ina welcome a glamorous guest to make artisanal ice cream together. It was truer than I realized.

• I was harsh on Ina! Whether my snark was genuine or an attempt to pander to a certain too-cool millennial audience, this list DRIPS with disdain.

Oddly, the qualities I mocked so hard are the ones I admire most about Ina. Her zest for life (and sometimes, a zest for literal zest). Sophistication paired with sweet simplicity. A propensity to state the obvious. And of course, her love of skipping ahead to dessert.

It’s a tempting impulse to hide our true feelings behind derision. Admiration is embarrassing, right? That’s why we have secret crushes and maddening enemies-to-lovers plots. From Shakespeare to Austen to BookTok, it’s a tale as old as time.

We have to get past the humiliation risk and express how we feel if we’re ever to find real connection. Sure, Mr. Darcy slighted Elizabeth at first, but eventually he emerged from the mist to confess his feelings and find incandescent happiness.

In those days—when it felt like the world was ending, when in fact it was just beginning—it was easy to mask my uncertainty with snark and disdain for those who had it figured out.

So let me say now, if it was not already clear: I love the Barefoot Contessa most ardently, and back in those uncertain days of early adulthood, she stood as an aspirational beacon of who I might like to be.

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During the episode I snarked upon, Ina prepared a variety of fresh, fun dishes perfect for summer. As a fitting tribute to the roots of my Barefoot Contessa fandom, we’ll begin today with her Summer Garden Pasta.

This recipe can be found on the Barefoot Contessa Website, in the cookbook Barefoot Contessa At Home, and on her television show Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics (S5E1, “Summertime Easy”), which is streaming on HBO Max and available in clips on the Food Network website.

This recipe proved to be an ideal summer dinner: low effort, high reward, and minimal heat. Start by combining halved cherry tomatoes, julienned basil, minced garlic, olive oil and seasonings, then letting that rock at room temp for four hours. (You can definitely wait longer – my tomatoes were a bit large, and they could have benefitted from more time macerating.)

Once your ingredients have gotten to know each other, it’s time to make the pasta. Ina calls for angel hair/capellini, which comes in close to last on my pasta shape power ranking, but the thin, delicate noodles work well with the fresh sauce. All that plus a boatload of Parmesan — simple summer perfection, “bursting with sunshine flavor”, per Ina herself!

Some useful tools for this recipe:

• Premium Microplane
  I use this, without exaggeration, every day. For this recipe, it’s a great (grate?) tool for your Parm and garlic. Just watch your fingers!

• Snapware Plastic Food Storage Containers
  Great for leftovers, yes, but the lids are ideal for my slicing hack! Use the lid to hold pesky cherry tomatoes in place while you carefully halve them with a large serrated knife. (I used the large square lid for this recipe and sliced four pints of tomatoes in three batches.)

• OXO Good Grips Angled Measuring Cup Set

  These cups are angled for easy reading from the top or side. I used the 2-cup size to measure out my grated Parm.

• OXO Good Grips Cutting Board

  A great size for kitchen projects and easy to clean.

• OXO Good Grips Plastic Mixing Bowl Set

  Sturdy enough for the kitchen and pretty enough for the serving table – the largest size was big enough to contain this dish.

For more kitchen tools I can’t live without, visit my website!

Ina feasted on this dish with her beloved Jeffrey in the garden of their Hamptons abode. I shared it with a group of friends on a grassy stretch outside my Manhattan apartment, where there happened to be Contessa-worthy hydrangeas in bloom.

Thank you all for reading — I hope you enjoyed this first foray! There are many more treats in store and I can’t wait to share them with you.

Until next time,

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