Ina Garten Shares a Taste of Her New Memoir — and a Life-Changing Coq au Vin Recipe

You can’t help but feel a bit romanced by the picture of a young couple driving around France, searching for adventure. And the story behind how that trip happened for Ina and Jeffrey Garten, featured in Garten’s new memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens, is fully as idyllic as that image. In the late spring and summer of 1972, after Jeffrey had completed his military service in Colorado Springs and before he planned to start graduate school in Washington, D.C., the couple had four free months to kill. They debated their options, took a hard look at their limited budget, and decided to embrace the trend of traveling through Europe on $5 per day. 

Ina recalls being somewhat shocked by the circumstances as she and Jeffrey settled into their car for the summer, a tiny cherry-red Renault hatchback crammed with a bright orange tent, a camping stove, all their bags, and a couple of tennis rackets. “For the first time in our lives, we were free as birds!” she writes, remembering the prospect of a summer to be spent driving through Europe with her husband.

“It was an experience that changed the course of my life,” she adds, even though at the time she had no idea how much those four months would shape her life and career. But as the Gartens wandered through Europe, making do with campsite showers, the occasional rainy-day dinner of cheese and crackers in their tent, and at least one morning waking up at dawn in a field surrounded by sheep, food became Ina Garten’s tour guide. While the frites they’d had in Belgium were a standout, it was France’s food markets that truly inspired her.

Crusty baguettes and butter croissants and brioche were baked fresh every morning, not pre-sliced, wrapped in plastic, and sealed with a twist tie like the bread back in America. Fragrant, juicy strawberries were Technicolor versions of their pale American cousins, available in four varieties, each with its own season. Walking through the daily markets, she met farmers who raised cows, goats, and sheep, then made cheeses from their milk. When she paused by their stands on sunny afternoons, they offered her tastes of tangy, rich triple cream Brie, so unlike the waxy orange cheese she’d eaten at home. Trays of tomatoes, olives, carrots, and asparagus in a rainbow of purple, yellow, green, orange, and red hues beckoned from the stalls, as did local olive oil and honey and fresh meat and seafood. The sights and aromas of the markets felt like the opposite of an American supermarket, and soon their trip transformed into a moveable feast of daily picnics. 

“Our experiences at the street markets taught me everything I needed to know about the importance of really good ingredients,” she writes of that time, adding that those charcuterie and cheese samples from during their daily market visits often doubled as lunch as they foraged for dinner. Perhaps the most memorable meal of that summer took place at a campsite in Normandy, when the French woman who ran the campsite offered the two of them some of the coq au vin she was making for her own dinner that night. “It was as if the world stopped still,” Garten recounts about her first bite of the dish. 

Years later, while working on one of her cookbooks, Garten wanted to channel the unfussy ease of that woman’s generosity over her camp stove and to demystify coq au vin for herself and her readers. She created a weeknight-friendly version that captures that first bowl of tender meat, slowly imbued with the flavor of wine and fresh herbs. It became one of her signature recipes. It’s a lesson that comes through in all of her recipes — from that rustic chicken stew to her simple yet transcendent Outrageous Brownies — and that’s guided Garten throughout the years that followed and helped inspire her unmatched life and career.

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from Ina Garten's Be Ready When The Luck Happens.

From 'Be Ready When The Luck Happens,' by Ina Garten

One day, I got a letter from my mother that included a newspaper clipping describing a cooking class being offered at a hotel in Le Havre, Normandy.

We actually happened to be in Le Havre at that very moment! I needed a pot for cooking on my camping stove, so first I stopped in a hardware store and bought the pot, and then I went to this grand French hotel, pot in hand, and asked about the cooking class in my less-than-perfect French. The man at the desk didn’t understand fully and was just horrified that this crazy American had read the article, gotten on a plane, and flown to Le Havre — with a pot! — ready to take the class! “Madame,” he said warily, “the classes don’t start for a month.” I walked away, still clutching my pot, disappointed that my first French cooking class wasn’t meant to be.

I missed out on that experience, but there was a better one right at the next campsite. We were staying near Mont-Saint-Michel, the famous island and medieval abbey in Normandy. When we arrived, the French woman who ran the campsite looked at us sympathetically, probably thinking (correctly) that we were hungry. She said that she was making coq au vin for her husband and asked if we would like some. I’m not even sure I knew what coq au vin was, but the aroma coming from her little stove was so seductive that we instantly accepted her invitation.

It was as if the world stopped still. I was completely blown away by how delicious it was because it tasted even better than it smelled. The first bite delivered an explosion of flavor — tender chicken with onions and slivers of mushrooms in a sauce, somehow simple and complex at the same time, with hints of wine, Cognac, and fresh thyme. I always thought classic French food had to be fancy haute cuisine, with complicated, time-consuming recipes and hard-to-get ingredients. But this meal, prepared in a kitchen by a woman who was simply making that night’s dinner, was authentic French cooking at its best. Not at all fussy, just fresh and delicious. I wanted to cook like that, and I made up my mind that I would teach myself how to do it as soon as I got home. Years later, I discovered that Julia Child had a similar moment eating sole meunière — or sole in butter sauce — also in Normandy, and that’s when she decided to learn all about French cooking. I totally understand what happened to her because the same thing happened to me.

We slowly made our way across France, stopping in Saint-Tropez, the playground for the rich and beautiful, with their famous “Saint-Tropez tans.” OK, I’ll admit it, we just wanted to see the nude beach. It was a bit of an eye-opener, but not in the way we expected. The truth is that every beachin France qualifies as “nude” because women of all ages, including grandmothers, are comfortable going topless. There was nothing risqué about it, just another day at the beach, and we moved on.

We drove on the road nearest the shore, and at one point we spotted a restaurant on a stone terrace right on the beach, so close that we could see a big family, or large group of friends, dining by the water. They were all dressed in white, sitting at a long table covered with platters of food and wine bottles. A Sunday lunch in the perfect setting, huge white umbrellas flapping in the breeze shading the table, and the blue sea beyond, just like in a French film. It was incredibly beautiful, and even though it passed by in a flash, the image made a deep impression on me. The simplicity, the harmony with nature, the informality. And the people, so relaxed and comfortable, having a wonderful time. We’ve been to the south of France many times since then, and whenever we’re on that road, we always slow down, searching for that remembered spot.

Excerpted from BE READY WHEN THE LUCK HAPPENS by Ina Garten. Published by Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2024 by Ina Garten.

Make the recipes

Outrageous Brownies

These fudgy, walnut-studded brownies were a longtime favorite at the Barefoot Contessa store; Ina Garten recalls making 1600 of them in a single weekend, then watching them disappear in minutes. She says it taught her to always use the best ingredients, even in something as simple as a brownie.

Coq au Vin

This coq au vin is one of Ina Garten’s signature dishes, and features a cozy bowl of tender chicken, slowly imbued with the flavor of wine and fresh herbs. It captures the essence of the coq au vin she experienced in France that helped inspire her career, but in weeknight-friendly form.