Meet Amy Kahn | Private Chef & Cookbook Author

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amy Kahn and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amy, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
My thought process in starting my own business was to be able to have autonomy over my schedule, freedom over the creative process and the ability to choose which cooking related events I wanted to dedicate my efforts to. I admire women who own their own businesses that can maximize their skill sets and make a conscious effort to allow time for their families and personal growth. By owning my own business, I felt like this was the best way to have the work/life balance that I needed.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I would consider cooking and entertaining to be my art. I think what might set me apart from others is the story of how I learned to cook and entertain.

When my mother went to the University of Southern California to be a dental hygienist, she was excluded from joining a panhellenic sorority because of her ethnicity. She was only allowed to join an all-Asian sorority called the Sigmas. And, in later years, she was invited to join a group of Japanese-American women called “The Dames” that included some of her college sorority sisters.

I have grown to know them as my “aunties” even though we aren’t blood related. They would get together to shop, cook, celebrate and have parties with their entire families – always sharing food and ideas with each other and teaching us kids how to help in the kitchen, host and of course clean. They decided to write a cookbook together entitled “Les Dames” to combine all of their family favorite recipes shared over the years, ranging from traditional Japanese dishes to more Western ones. It’s currently sold in the Japan-American Museum in Los Angeles. They were also a social and philanthropic group and raised money for different charity organizations and are still life-long friends.

This is what inspired me to write my own cookbooks. And today, I have reached the place I am in professionally through an unorthodox opportunity. I wanted to write a cookbook but didn’t know where to start, so I approached an editor named Laurel Leigh, who’s name I saw in a number of cookbooks when I was working for Williams Sonoma. I cold-called her (back then you couldn’t DM someone on instagram) and I asked her if she would help me. She decided to and four years later, we got an offer for my first cookbook from Racepoint Publishers. It was not easy. The process was one that I wasn’t familiar with and I was given 6 months to complete the book, which I thought was not a lot of time. The publisher also did not want me to write a cookbook on what my original proposal which was a compilation of family recipes. They wanted me to shift and write a book on ramen, assuming that since I was Japanese, I must have knowledge of all Japanese cuisine. I knew very little about ramen. So, I sent myself to a very intense and short ramen cooking school in Osaka, Japan and taught myself and I continued to learn through trial and error. Lots of long days and late nights, inviting friends over to test my recipes and forcing my family to have ramen almost every night until the book was done (believe it or not, they got sick of ramen).

I want the world to know that luck is not what got me to where I am today. My husband always says that “luck” is preparation meeting opportunity and I am a strong believer in this. I think if you want to pursue your passion, you need to be prepared when the moment comes for you to make those passions and dreams a reality. And that pursuing your passions often doesn’t come with a big monetary pay out. You have to love what you do regardless of any pay out.

My story is not unlike others who were taught how to cook by their moms or relatives but my story started with adversity and my mom overcoming post-war racism. It taught me how to keep trying, never give up and know that the only way to get ahead in life is to work hard. Today,I am proud to say that I am the author of two cookbooks – “Simply Ramen – A Complete Course in Preparing Ramen Meals at Home” and “The Asian Hot Pot Cookbook – Family Friendly One-Pot Meals” available on Amazon and at select brick and mortar stores.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Here’s my list of places I would take a best friend visiting to show them the best time ever:

– I live in Boulder, Colorado so I would take them on a couple of great hikes like Mt. Sanitas and Shanahan Ridge

– I’d take them to Lucille’s for breakfast/brunch that has the best New Orleans style breakfast complete with beignets and homemade rhubarb jam.

– I would take them to dinner at Frasca who was just awarded a Michelin star and is absolutely fabulous. I would try to get us at the chef’s table in the kitchen to give them a special experience.

– I would take them to dinner at the Buckhorn, the oldest restaurant in Denver and who has the most interesting choices of meat and history decorating the restaurant. We would definitely order some rocky mountain oysters.

– I’m an avid fisherwoman so I would take them to Estes Lake to soak in the views and visit Stanley Hotel (the inspiration for The Shining) and do some shore fishing. We’d come back to the house and I’d cook up our catch for dinner of course!

– If someone great was playing at Red Rocks, I would take them there. It’s probably one of the best outdoor venues in the country and there’s nothing like looking out at all of the beautiful rock formations under the starts. The acoustics are incredible there as well.

– I’d take them to a Nuggets basketball game since we have season tickets and show them all of the good food stands that not everyone knows about – Smashburger and Mr. Softy for dessert.

– We would go on a brewery crawl since we have more breweries per capita than almost anywhere in the US. Some of the great ones are in Rino, where graffiti art covers the buildings and the vibe is super cool.

– If the rodeo was in town, we would go and definitely not miss mutton busting (where the little kids ride sheep) as well as the best baby back ribs and of course a big ‘ole turkey leg.

– Depending on the season, we would go to Vail or Aspen to get in some skiing/snowboarding or leaf peeping. If we went to Vail, we would go to my favorite fondue restaurant called the Alpenrose.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would say my mom is the main person I would contribute my success to. My mom was the middle child in a family of three kids – an older sister and a younger brother. Her family lived in Boulder, Colorado and they were interned in WWII after being accused of being potential spies for Japan even though her and her siblings were the 3rd generation to be born in America. My mom remembers the years after the war when money was very tight. They grew fresh vegetables in their garden to get by. My mother and her sister learned how to cook and stretch their food out for days. They often made fried rice, which is considered a Japanese peasant dish cooked from leftovers.

She carried on this passion for cooking into her own home and let me help in the kitchen from a very early age. I have been washing rice since I was about 5 years old. Not long after, she taught me how to cut alongside my knuckles with sharp knives so that I didn’t slice off my fingertips. She always sent me outside to pick fern or flowers to garnish platters with. And, whenever we didn’t have an ingredient, she always knew a good substitute. She taught me how to balance a platter with color — not to forget that, if it’s not pleasing to the eye, it’s not worth serving.

I like to think that through her adversity, I was able to benefit and carry on family traditions of cooking across the generations and make her proud.

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