'Be My Guest With Ina Garten': In the Kitchen With Tina Fey

It’s hard to believe Tina Fey could ever feel insecure. The wildly successful comedian, actress, writer and producer has won multiple Emmys, Golden Globes and other awards for her work in films, television shows like NBC’s Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock and more. She wrote the screenplay for the hit film Mean Girls, was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is the youngest recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

So, why is she anxious when Food Network celebrity chef Ina Garten invites her to visit? Ina, known as the Barefoot Contessa, is also a multiple award winner, a former owner of the Barefoot Contessa shop and a best-selling author. On the way to Ina’s East Hampton home, Tina whispers to her camera crew, “I’m a little bit nervous. I'm going to ask her to marry me.”

She’s kidding. She’s already married to composer and producer Jeff Richmond, who does most of their family's cooking, but she's a really big fan of Ina’s.

The two women met when Ina made a cameo appearance on the set of 30 Rock. In Episode 523, titled "Respawn," Tina, who created and played the show's main character, the smart-but-neurotic Liz Lemon, has a dream about eating tomatoes from her garden. Then, her neighbor —the Barefoot Contessa herself — shows up with an invitation to share bruschetta and white wine. They've been friends since then, with Ina telling People that Tina is "absolutely the funniest person" she's ever met and that she "adores" her. Tina returned the love by moderating a 2016 event for her in New York, and giving fictional Liz an obsession with the celebrity chef.

Ina has breakfast ready when Tina joins her in the barn kitchen located next to Ina’s East Hampton home. She knows her friend likes custards, so the night before, she prepared a creamy mixture of whole milk yogurt, heavy cream, sugar and unflavored gelatin for thickening. A vanilla bean also went in, to give the custard a deep, rich vanilla flavor. Ina left the mixture in the refrigerator overnight to firm up.

Panna cotta is an old-fashioned Italian custard that's usually served for dessert, and Ina likes to top hers with a salted caramel or raspberry sauce. For Tina’s visit, she layers strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and granola ("store-bought granola is fine") over the custard base and adds a little maple syrup for a "breakfast vibe." Ina has several recipes for panna cotta that she shares with her Food Network fans.

While they dive into their panna cotta, Ina asks her friend if she's ever had to eat anything strange on one of her shows. "I've eaten entire pizzas," Tina admits. "It was just written [into the script] that I had to 'shotgun' a pizza, and I didn't have a plan. But my instincts kicked in, and I threw open the box, folded the pizza into quarters and went from the middle out." She pantomimes taking a huge bite. "I was very good at it."

“I promise you don’t have to eat four of these,” Ina says, before she takes another bite of panna cotta.

“Well, I promise that I could," Tina replies.

Ina also wants to know how Tina got her start, and what it was like for her as a young comedian. She recalls going on tour with the cast of The Second City, an improv group based in Chicago. They made up comedy routines on the spot, without scripts or plans, she says, and drove in a van, sometimes taking 36 hours to get to one performance and 14 hours to the next one — all for $75 per show. In spite of that, "It was fun and it was a real education," and a real audience let them know whether or not they were funny.

Tina's also grateful for her stint on NBC’s Saturday Night Live, where she was allowed to take risks and learned how to survive when her comedy failed. Hired in 1997 as a writer, two years later, she was the first woman to be promoted to head writer. By 2000, she was performing as a co-anchor of the show’s news parody, "Weekend Update." Although she left the cast in 2006 to create and star in her sitcom 30 Rock, she came back occasionally; many fans remember her spot-on impersonation of former Alaska Governor and 2008 VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Ina says she's sometimes asked how she got a cooking show on TV. Things are different from when she started out four decades ago, she tells Tina. She remembers the advice award-winning Food Network chef Bobby Flay gave her. He said you couldn't get a cooking show on TV, because he had them all. His advice for a wannabe chef and TV personality: get a job as a dishwasher, learn to bake, go to cooking school and figure it all out. Hosting your own cooking show comes at the end, he said, not the beginning.

Tina has similar advice for fans who want to follow in her funny footsteps: start by writing comedy and reading it in front of an audience. If you want to work in film or TV, try to get any job on a set. While 30 Rock was never in the top 10 on TV, she says, "We won a lot of prizes and partied with the cast of Mad Men," an AMC drama that ran from 2007 to 2015. Ina wonders if people call her "Liz," her character on 30 Rock, when they see her. "No, if people ever say anything to me on the street, people say, like, 'Oh, Sarah Palin or Amy Poehler,'" her friend and frequent collaborator. "I'm like, 'We don't look alike at all,'" but they seem to think the two go together, "like salt and pepper shakers."

Tina grew up in a predominantly Greek suburb of Philadelphia with a Greek immigrant mother and an American dad. She remembers her mother making Greek foods like spanakopita, a savory pastry filled with spinach and feta cheese, and other dishes.

The family lived near a Greek church that held a festival every year, she says, and that's where she ate loukoumades, little balls of fried dough served with honey. Indulging in such rich treats just once a year, she jokes, explains why Greeks live so long. She also shares a relative's fondness for boiled dandelion greens served with lemon juice, olive oil and salt, a traditional Greek dish called horta. Tina was about 10 or 11 when that relative, her mom's Greek aunt, came to visit and kept wanting to pull dandelion greens out of sidewalk cracks, "until Mom finally said, 'No, Auntie. Cats pee on those.'"

Growing up with delicious Greek foods probably explains why Tina once said, in a clip posted on Hulu, that her favorite dish to order in Chicago was the Athenian Room’s Roasted Chicken. Served Kalamata style, it’s a half-chicken seasoned with lemon, oregano and other herbs, served atop a bed of steak fries that soak up the juices.

For her visit with Ina, she's making another of her favorite dishes: Greek Lemon Potatoes. She starts with three pounds of Idaho potatoes cut into wedges, a third cup of chicken broth, lemon juice, the zest of two lemons and a teaspoon of pepper. Ina stops her before she adds a tablespoon of oregano and shows her how to crush the leaves between her hands to release more flavor. You could really put in anything, Tina adds, "Even a carton of cigarettes." She tosses the potatoes in the liquids, gives them a sprinkling of parsley and adds lemon slices before the pan goes into the oven.

Now, it's Ina's turn. She shows Tina how to make mouthwatering Chicken Thighs With Creamy Mustard Sauce. Her secret for nicely browned, crispy chicken? Dry the pieces with paper towels before cooking them. She uses bone-in chicken thighs and seasons them with lots of salt and pepper before placing them skin-side down, along with some sliced yellow onions, into a skillet coated with olive oil. She turns the chicken pieces after about 15 minutes.

After Ina removes the skillet from the oven and transfers the chicken to another plate, she makes a sauce with dry white wine, Dijon mustard, whole-grain mustard and eight ounces of crème fraîche (to give the sauce "a little bite," she says). She whisks the ingredients together, puts the chicken pieces back into the skillet and pours the sauce over them. They're reheated to soak up the flavorful sauce. "This is science," Tina says admiringly.

Tina chronicles her life, which has influenced much of her work, in a 2011 memoir, Bossypants (Little, Brown). After topping the New York Times best-seller list for five weeks, her sharp, witty book went on to sell 3.75 million copies, according to her publisher. Born on May 18, under the sign of Taurus, Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey's book describes how she grew from a self-described "nerdy" kid into a successful, in-demand professional.

The book recounts a horrific event: A stranger slashed her face when she was 5, leaving her with a scar that’s still visible. Instead of destroying her self-esteem, she learned to handle it with the self-deprecating humor that's become her trademark. "Everybody was so nice to me after it happened, and treated me like I was so special, that I was like, 'Yes, I’m extremely special.' It ended up being this weird confidence boost that I wish on no one, but I was always sort of an invisible kid … and suddenly everybody was paying attention.”