Three Dishes with Pastry Chef Gale Gand

This new column by Anjali Kumar invites you on a weekly adventure to great restaurants around the world to meet the amazing chefs, mixologists, restaurateurs and sommeliers behind them and the foods that inspired their work today. This week, she sits down with Pastry Chef Gale Gand of Tru in Chicago to find out which dishes shaped her cooking style and outlook today.

What is the dish that:

1. Inspired your love of food?

I would probably have to say my mother's matzah ball soup— no, her tuna fish salad with a little finely chopped onion...or was it the pumpernickel soup at Au Provence I had in college and then proceeded to drop out of college and work there? No, I think it was my mom's chicken paprikash, which she got from her mother Elsie. It's a simple recipe of braised chicken and rice with lots of paprika, from our Hungarian heritage, that she started on the stove and finished it in the oven. There was something about the oh-so-tender and flavorful pieces of chicken (I liked the thighs best, even as a child) with the well cooked rice that had soaked up the fat from the chicken as it slow cooked. We were Jewish so we didn't have a lot of casserole dishes (that's more a gentile Midwest thing) and you need one to complete the final baking in the oven, so my mom used to empty out the cookie jar, a muted orange china jar with a white lid, and bake it in there. It was the closest thing she had to a casserole dish.

2. Is your signature?

Well, it was my Pineapple Carpaccio with Key Lime Sherbet, Cilantro-Coconut Dressing, Macadamia Nut Brittle, Crystallized Cilantro Leaves and Toasted Coconut Shortbread but now it's my Chocolate Pots de Crème with Salt and Pepper which is a really smooth chocolate pot de crème, made stove top, then a garnish of salted caramel sauce and black pepper whipped cream. I like to pair it with port and maybe a little chewy chocolate espresso cookie. I'm loving pepper in desserts lately— white pepper especially since it has such a complex flavor profile. And when I create a dessert, a lot of the time I'm looking for contrast in texture, flavor, temperature— you get it. Put something light next to something dense and it makes them both seem even more extreme. Juxtapose something crunchy with something creamy and the crunchy feels even crunchier and the creamy feels even creamier.

3. You cook on your night off?

I love to make meatballs, and lots of them. First for spaghetti that night and then for meatball sandwiches later in the week, then reheated on top of pasta. I love to eat them hot or cold and can even be caught stabbing a cold meatball out of the fridge late a night for a snack, eating it almost like a popsicle. I find the secret to good meatballs is to use half beef and half pork. The pork keeps things tender and moist. All beef ends up with a slightly grainy texture that's too firm. I also make a lot of apple pies at home, mostly with (and for) my kids. I have one daughter who could eat apple pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and so she does when there is one in the house. We also make a lot of gingerbread cookies. I make a big batch of dough and then we take off a hunk and roll, cut out, bake and then decorate, leaving some of the dough for the next craving, which comes in about four days.

— Written by Anjali Kumar

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Tags : Gale Gand, Three Dishes, Tru, Pastry Chef, Anjali Kumar

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