It's quiet at 11:30 in the morning midweek at the American Restaurant. The plush carpeting hushes your footsteps, and the empty formal dining room makes you want to whisper. But chef Debbie Gold is relaxed in the lounge, her chef whites as clean as the baby grand behind her. She's comfortable after nearly a decade at the American, and when we sit down to talk, the room is a lot more welcoming.
Yesterday, Gold reminisced about her travels in France and how her career can be traced back to a Bon Appetit subscription. Today, Gold talks about an alternative to your average bar snack, and tomorrow, she's got advice on how to keep your kids from becoming picky eaters.
What's your favorite ingredient? When I cook for myself, there's
garlic in everything because everything is good with garlic. I put it in
salad dressings and on chicken. It's a hard choice for me to name my
favorite dish because I've done pastry and savory. I don't want to
choose.
What was your best recent food find? Nettles. I'm having a lot of fun with stinging nettles. I made a pea stew with it, tossed it in pasta and put it in panna cotta. You're trying to figure out what to do with it, and I know it has to be cooked. What else can we do besides saute it? The flavor is great, so let's find different applications. The other day, a gentleman was in and asked me what was in the soup. I told him it was stinging nettles. And he said, 'You mean those things that I avoid when I go hunting? You can eat those?' Yes, it's good and edible. You just have to cook it.
What's your favorite local ingredient? Thane Palmberg has these little marble potatoes in varied colors. There's this one recipe -- it sounds a little crazy. You poach the potato in heavily salted water until it's cooked through. Then you take it out of the water and let a salt crust form around them. They're great bar snacks, but I'm not saying they're lightly salted.
What's one food you hate? Lots. [Laughs.] That's on a need-to-know-only basis. I don't like bananas. I can't even eat that fake banana flavor, like in Bubbalicious gum. And coffee, I don't do coffee.
What's one food you love? Chocolate, in any form. I'll do hot chocolate, but I don't like warm chocolate. My friends think I could be a super-taster because a lot of times I'll find coffee in a chocolate cake, and then I can't eat it.
What's always in your kitchen at home? Uh ... garlic. Radishes. Cheese. I always have some sort of sausage. Prosciutto, pistachios, nuts and chocolate.
What would you like to see more of in Kansas City from a culinary standpoint? I think fish, but more ceviche, raw stuff. And more poultry. Squab and quail is hard for people. They're not familiar with it, so they just decide they're not going to eat a pigeon. There are foods that were eaten when I was I growing up that we don't eat now, like rabbit and offal. But people don't know what they're missing.
Where do you like to go to eat out? I like little ethnic places. Blue Koi for eggplant pockets and Po's Dumpling Bar for the scallion pancakes. Saigon 39. I could do a wonton soup. I'm a real simple eater with a lot of dislikes.
If you could steal one recipe in town, what would it be? I don't eat out often enough.
What's one book that every chef should read? I always liked Mario Batali's first book [Mario Batali Simple Italian Food: Recipes From My Two Villages] and Rick Bayless' first book [Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking From the Heart of Mexico]. They both have simple, good flavors and recipes that work. It's relatively simple food that you can reproduce.
Who's got the best barbecue in town, and what are you ordering? I like LC's -- the burnt ends and the best fries in the city. It's got the best combination of everything: food and atmosphere. Atmosphere is a big part of the dining experience, where you are and who you are with. That's why the little Italian restaurant in a strip mall in the suburbs will never be like dining in Rome. But I've always had a good meal at LC's. I like their sauce, and it's where I take chefs when they're visiting Kansas City.
A chef is only as good as ... their last meal.
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