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Rejoice! The Barefoot Contessa recap is back! On today's brand new episode of Ina Garten's rich (in many ways), televised culinary compendium, East Hampton's HBIC sank her teeth into—and got some intense pleasure from—a cornucopia of good eats.

Where do we begin? With chicken! (For Ina, it always, eventually comes down to the chicken.) Or, more precisely, her Lemon Roasted Chicken Breasts—I've made them!—whose (Is "whose" appropriate when we're talking about chicken breasts? Whatever.) ease of preparation is only beaten by the volume-turned-the-f*ck-up flavor. As Ina notes, the dish is "really simple," but also "high impact." Plus, "The whole thing takes, like, five minutes to put together."

Other things we learned in this segment:

  • Soooooo much flavor.
  • There's lemon!
  • There's garlic!
  • There's lemon and garlic!
  • Ina loves her rasp. A lot.
  • Ina makes a mess when she cooks.
  • It's OK to order your butcher around to get what you want/deserve.
  • Ina has an interesting way of applying foil to a roasting dish.
  • Green vegetable! Color!
  • Moist + Delicious = Orgasm

Onward! (If you're not familiar with our gallery format, just go back up to where the video is, hover your cursor over it, and click the arrow pointing to the right to get to part two of the recap. Or, simply click on the second thumbnail in the string of three found just below the video.)

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Up next: Ina makes "Sticky Date Pudding" with her friend—and East Hampton pastry chef/food critic—Laura Donnelly. And by "Pudding," I mean "Cake." Whatever it is, though, it looks absolutely to die for (and I don't even like dates).

If today's episode was a period of sexytimes, this segment would be the climax. Seriously, Ina could barely contain her excitement/arousal throughout the entire process—from room temperature butter, to baking measurements, to (good) vanilla, to OMG SCIENCE, to toffee, to toffee temperature, to toffee consistency, and so on, she was like a cat in heat.

I mean, "Wow... I wanna see the middle of that"? In that voice?

Must've been some damn good cake.

(I'll assume you've gotten the hang of how to maneuver the gallery by now—it's time to go to part three!)

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After Ina recovered from her post-orgasm Sticky Date Pudding/Cake coma, we traveled with her to The Red Cat, a restaurant in Chelsea—or, as Ina calls it, "downtown Manhattan." Then again, that sort of makes sense, as someone like her (*cough* Upper East Side *cough*) would think of Chelsea as, like, way the hell down there.

Anyway, so Ina went to The Red Cat and had herself a cast iron skillet full of baked fontina, which she was expectantly excited about. In this case, though, I can understand—because I would go down on pretty much anyone for a taste of that. How good does it look?! (Side note: Has anyone had it? If so, thoughts?)

After showing us how to make the dish—and continuing to devour the one in front of her—Ina had a semi-awkward chitchat session with Jimmy Bradley, the restaurant's owner/chef. If I was T.R. Prescod, or Michael Grimm (The Florist™), or Frank Newbold, or Stephen Drucker, or any other member of Ina's gaggle of gays, I wouldn't start peeing all over her (immaculately kept) garden just yet, because it seems as though this Jimmy fella is nothing more than a one night stand, Barefoot Contessa-style.

Then again, with Jimmy comes the baked fontina, and who wouldn't want that?

—

Well, that's all she wrote! And ate.

I hope you had as much fun reading/watching the videos as I had making the post, and both Ina and I will see you next week (assuming we aren't shafted with a repeat).

Previously:

[Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics]