I was born the same year the Food Network debuted, which sometimes makes me feel as if I cut my teeth on “The Barefoot Contessa” and its particular arrangement of fantasies: a perfected roast chicken, always somehow at the ready; a devoted husband, probably named Jeffrey; and, before all that, the original fantasy — owning a specialty food store like Ina Garten’s beloved shop at 46 Newtown Lane, the one that gave the show its name.
There is an early photograph of Garten that I return to often. She is standing in front of The Barefoot Contessa with her dark hair coaxed into perky curls, wearing a matching aubergine button-down and skirt. Around her are patio tables displaying the kind of food the shop carried: pies and cakes, what appear to be stuffed tomatoes, baguettes, sophisticated deli salads, gorgeous hunks of cheese. In the window behind her, my food-obsessive eye tries to make sense of the blurs of shape and color, or at least to make its best guesses: bottles of sparkling wine, tubs of jam and mustard, boxes of pasta, buckets of yellow lilies.
