To promote his new book, The Paley’s Place Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Pacific Northwest, Chef Paley is teaching a series of demonstration classes around Portland. Thankfully I got wind of the class one night while I was teaching at Sur La Table and snatched up two of the last three spots. And by the way, if you haven’t picked up a copy of his book, do so now. It focuses on fresh, seasonal, and local Northwest ingredients that anyone can prepare at home.

We arrived early to get a front row seat and were greeted by Chef Paley’s wife, Kimberly Paley. She is the restaurant’s sommelier and runs the front of the house while her husband runs the back. A nice balance of responsibilities if you ask me.

I’m going to skip over the meal because what I really want to share is their advice. But I will tell you what we ate:

• Potato griddle cakes with smoked salmon and sour cream
• Curried squash and goat cheese fritters with green goddess dipping sauce
• Warm spot prawn, tomato, and feta salad
• Herbed ricotta gnocchi with Dungeness crab
• Huckleberry kuchen with casis-huckleberry sauce and crème fraiche

If these dishes sound fabulous (and I can tell you first hand that they are), then you really need to pick up a copy of his book. All of them are in there.

After we’d sampled his fresh and innovative dishes, it was time to leave. Of course we hung back so we could get our book signed. While we were waiting, I had a chance to talk to Chef Paley’s wife, Kimberly. I asked her if she had any advice about being married and working together. She smiled a very knowing smile.

“Listen,” was the first word out of her mouth. “Really listen to each other and respect what the other person has to say,” Kimberly said. It’s not about your own personal ego. It’s about the food. “If you focus on the food, you take the personal part of the relationship out of it,” she said. “The end result will be worth it.”

What an enlightened thing to say. In France where both Geoffroy and I trained, high-end restaurants are about the man in the kitchen. The focus is on maintaining his reputation not about preparing wonderful food. When you take your eyes off the ingredients and instead focus on someone’s reputation, you miss the point completely. Yes, we did make some incredible dishes at Guy Savoy in Paris, but I felt like something was missing.

Geoffroy and I have several discussions about what he should do when he’s eventually allowed to work. Should he become a partner in Chez Tse? Should he try his hand back in the restaurant business? Or maybe he should pursue something completely different. If he did join Chez Tse, would our new marriage be able to survive both of our egos in the kitchen? When working together before, we did butt heads quite a few times.

But listening to how the Paley’s make it work is inspiring. Instead of getting frustrating with each other in the kitchen (and taking it personally), we need to take ourselves out of the equation. Instead, we need to make the ingredients the star and the focus.

Another thing I admired about Chef Paley is that he’s not out to be famous. Instead, he believes food is a precious gift and ingredients are the star of the show – not the person preparing them. Now that’s wisdom. And I plan to practice that in my business going forward.

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