Legendary Actor Christine Baranski and Ina Garten Transport Themselves With Weeknight Bolognese on ‘Be My Guest’

Christine Baranski is a Tony- and Emmy-winning actor who’s electrified audiences around the world — and some of the very first theatergoers to see her work were just a stone’s throw from where Ina Garten welcomed her for a heart-to-heart in East Hampton.

“This is really a sentimental journey for me,” Christine explained. “There’s a theater here in East Hampton [the John Drew Theater, now Guild Hall, a block from Ina’s home], and I worked at the theater in 1975 when I was just out of Juilliard. I did a Noël Coward play called Tonight at 8.30, directed by John Lithgow.”

“I just met him! I literally just met him,” Ina exclaimed. “So that’s how you got started!”

“I was right out of school,” Christine said. “So many happy memories of East Hampton, and look where I am now — making scones with Ina Garten!”

“Is this the pinnacle of your career?” Ina teased.

“It is!” Christine replied.

Bearing in mind that Christine is partial to baked goods for breakfast, Ina prepared for her in the love language of maple-oatmeal scones. Rustic and decadent all at once, the scones’ dough features both all-purpose and whole-wheat flour, quick-cooking oats, baking powder, sugar, salt and “a lot of butter; it makes really good scones,” Ina said. After dicing a whole pound of cold butter into her dry ingredients, Ina mixed up eggs, buttermilk and “good maple syrup” (“this isn’t a time for imitation anything”); she rolled out and used a 3-inch fluted cutter on the resulting dough, brushed her scones with an egg wash and baked them for the 20 minutes just before Christine arrived. Like her guest, Ina has impeccable timing.

Christine’s entrance was an ecstatic one: “Oh my God, [it’s] like being in an enchanted kingdom!” Ina enlisted her as a scene partner to apply the scones’ glaze (confectioners’ sugar, more maple syrup and vanilla extract, “and what that does is bring down the sweetness and adds another flavor”).

“OK to be messy here?” Christine asked.

“It’s required to be messy, that’s the point,” Ina replied. “I hate things that are perfect!”

Born and raised in a Polish-American suburb of Buffalo, New York, Christine attended an all-girls Polish Catholic high school. She shared a bedroom with her paternal grandmother, and both of her grandparents were actors in Buffalo’s vibrant Polish theater community. When her mother, aunt and grandmother headed out to play bingo, little Christine made herself at home with her grandmother’s Broadway records.

“One of them was South Pacific, and I would do every part in South Pacific, every part! Her record player was on [one] side of the room, and on the other side of the room was a statue of the Blessed Mother, and I just remember dancing and singing to the Virgin Mary, basically: ‘There is nothin’ like a dame!’” Christine sang. “That was the beginning of my showbiz career, dancing and imagining myself being fabulous.”

Christine earned a place at Juilliard’s brand-new Drama Division and, after her first year of study, a thousand-dollar scholarship — which she promptly invested in two months of solo travel in Europe. That adventure terrified her mother back in Buffalo, but Christine had a lovely surprise at the end of her globetrotting: “I remember arriving back at the airport [and] calling my mother, and she said, ‘I’m so proud of you,’” she remembered. It was the first bold move in a life and career full of them.

Christine’s first big break on Broadway coincided with a number of other debuts, let’s say. She married fellow actor Matthew Cowles (who entered her life as her castmate in a 1982 production of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts) in October of 1983, then went into rehearsal for Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing later that same month. (That’s her with castmates Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, above.) “By December I was pregnant, I won a Tony in June [of 1984 and] had a baby in September, so within one year all of this magic happened in my life,” she told Ina. (She shared the stage with Cynthia Nixon, who now plays her sister on HBO’s The Gilded Age, on that production — but more about that in a minute.)

Christine was cast in the play that introduced her to Matthew after quite literally going to a grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary (there's that Blessed Mother stage-managing again!) and praying that she would meet someone. And sure enough, “It was like an answered prayer because I did [that] play with Matthew and he was such a captivating personality. One night, he asked me if I wanted to ride home on his BMW motorcycle. I did, and we went over the Williamsburg Bridge [with me] holding on and I said, ‘I’m scared, Matthew!’ and he said, ‘So am I!’” she remembered. “We fell in love rather quickly; within a year, we were married and had these beautiful children and we lived in his childhood home.” (Isabel, born in 1984, is now a lawyer; Lily, born in 1987, is an actor.)

Christine and Matthew, who died in 2014, had a true partnership. “When my kids were small and my career was ascending and I was working but I was leaving them, you know — the commuting to make a relationship work, the sacrifices you have to make to leave your spouse, to leave your family — I felt so tortured,” she told Ina. “But I was blessed to have a husband who had such a big heart and such a respect for my talent that he recognized the opportunities that I couldn’t say no to.”

“Absolutely,” Ina replied. “I mean, I know you always say that you were so lucky, but you also did the hard work.”

“You know, I was unafraid to try different characters and to, you know, play old, play young, play funny, play tragic — but I’ve been lucky, too!” Christine said. In addition to her theater and film roles, “I had 13 years on [CBS and Paramount dramas] The Good Wife and The Good Fight, and then The Gilded Age. I mean, I can’t write this any better! I’ve had a really charmed career.”

“And we’re so glad you have,” Ina noted.

“Well, here I am eating your scones,” Christine replied. “I must have done something right!”

Christine has now spent three seasons on The Gilded Age (and earned an Emmy nomination) playing the deliciously skeptical Agnes van Rhijn, a widowed matriarch who lives with her sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon, above) and is quite certain that 19th-century New York City’s high society should remain just as it is, thank you very much. “I love doing a period drama, particularly this period, because of course it was the Gilded Age — which means you get to wear tons of beautiful fabric,” she told Ina.

“And my character’s so funny; she’s grumpy, and in some ways I’m playing my mother, so it comes easily to me!" Christine continued. "But even though, you know, we’re often in a corset for 14 hours, somehow it’s still an enchanted place to be.”

“So, what’s the hardest thing about acting?” Ina asked.

“I’d say the most challenging part, certainly in film and television, is staying fresh, staying alive — and that is true onstage, too — but I think people don’t realize how hard that is,” Christine replied. “But at the end of the day, when you’ve done it, you feel really good.”

Christine’s house in Tuscany inspired Ina’s menu for the afternoon. “Why’d you choose [to have a second home in] Italy?” she asked her guest.

It all goes back to that fateful solo adventure when Christine was a student. “I fell in love with Italy when I was 19 and I went there for the first time,” she explained. “I’ve gone back many times and I find it really stimulating — and I’m learning cooking! People [there], really, they live in their senses, and they enjoy and appreciate each other’s company around a dining room table. So, that’s the quality of life I would like to have now. And you’re invited!”

“You don’t have to ask me twice!” Ina replied.

“But you have to cook. A little bit,” Christine clarified. “You have to sing for your supper!”

Christine’s relationship to cooking is a new one: “My mother was an impeccable cook. She just was queen in the kitchen, but unfortunately she really didn’t pass it on to me,” she told Ina. “If anything, my mother intimidated me! She made me feel like, ‘You don’t know how to do this, let me do it!’”

That would not be the tone of this tutorial. “I thought maybe I’d show you how to make weeknight Bolognese with a side of roasted broccolini, [and] both of them are so easy,” Ina said.

“Oh, that would be perfect — an all-purpose Bolognese would be so great!” Christine exclaimed. “I mean, I can do the Bolognese on a capellini, on a linguine or a lasagna…"

“Exactly,” Ina said.

Ina’s Weeknight Bolognese began with ground sirloin browned in a bit of olive oil, which she then seasoned with dried oregano and a sprinkle of red pepper flakes. “And then we need wine; I mean, it’s Italian cooking after all,” she said.

“So you can use really good wine in your cooking, and not just some old thing that’s been around for months?” Christine asked.

“I hate the old stuff!” Ina replied. “And if you’re going to open a bottle, you might as well drink the rest of it, right? [And the wine] scrapes up all those brown bits in the bottom of the pan, so it brings all the flavor into the sauce, which is really great.” (That cup of wine might look substantial, but it evaporates and cooks into the meat.)

Ina then stirred in a full 28-ounce can of San Marzano tomatoes, two tablespoons of tomato paste, salt, and pepper and set the sauce to simmer for 10 minutes. (As it happens, those 10 minutes are just about how long it takes to prepare dried pasta in a large pot of boiling water with a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil; aren’t 30-minute meals delightful?)

Ina wasn’t exaggerating about the simplicity of roasted broccolini; it’s straightforward enough to knock out as, say, a Bolognese is simmering on the stove, and it partners with mains of all kinds. “I have to say, it goes with everything; I make it all the time,” she said. (Christine responded with a full-voiced “Broccolini!” to rival Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah Part II.)

To prepare broccolini as Ina does, simply cut off the ends and about a third (2 inches or so) of the broccolini’s stems, then arrange them on a sheet pan. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and, to toss, “Just stick your hand in!” Ina told Christine. “Clean hands are a cook’s best tools; they’re never in the drawer, they’re never in the dishwasher, they’re always with you.” Roast the broccolini at 375 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes, and that’s the whole production.

“No!” Christine marveled. “Unbelievable that it’s that easy.”

Ina also broadened Christine’s horizons by undercooking her orecchiette by about a minute, then putting it in the sauce instead of draining it. “The water is starchy and it’s going to thicken the pasta sauce,” she explained. “I mean, 20 years ago I used to dump the sauce on top of the pasta like all Americans did, and then you find out what a difference this is, right?”

Her presentation, in turn, is intuitive: “I always like to garnish it with something that’s in it, so we have a little Parmesan cheese and fresh basil. Doesn’t that look pretty?”

“Oh my God, look at this,” Christine breathed.