November 9, 2021 • 28 mins
In this episode, Bobby & Sophie examine the wonderful world of chili peppers. Tune in to hear Sophie's favorite pepper, how Bobby makes mole, and of course, Bobby cooks Sophie a delicious snack that could satisfy any chili pepper fan.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host Flag and I'm Always Hungry. Sophie
and I gathered around my stove to cook together. Well,
you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If does any food left, you come to the table
together to share a meal, connect as a family, and
tell the stories that matter to us. Okay, what are
(00:27):
we making? Oh, some potato chips, I mean not potato
chips and Georgia chips making you know what that is? Okay?
So yeah, yeah, she's it's basically she's deep. Yeah, exactly,
But I'm but we're talking about chili peppers, which have been,
you know, basically what I've made my career on for
(00:48):
the last thirty years. And I just think that there's
so incredibly versatile and people are intimidated by them even today.
You know, really are you know? Do you buy him
in the store? Yeah? Bablanos? You do? What do you
do with them? Melissa Clark has a poblano Wait a second,
on a second. I love Melissa Clark, but your dad
(01:09):
is gonna cooking with chili peppers for a million years.
You don't have any recipes of mine. She has a
Publano casada recipe. You got one of those? Yeah, of
course I do send it on over all, right, Okay, So,
first of all, butter and flour. So we're gonna make
a rube a route r o u X. Okay, my god,
I've never seen that. Yeah, butter and flour, and this
(01:31):
is gonna be the base of the of the case
of fenvito. So what we're doing is we're taking butter,
equal parts butter and flour, and we're just gonna cook it.
We don't want to achieve any color. We just wanted
to cook. And then we're gonna add scalded milk to it,
and that's gonna make a cream sauce or in the
(01:52):
French term a bejamil. Okay, okay. And then in France,
actually if you then take the Benjamin and d chet ease,
you get it morena sauce. But we're making caso findeto.
This is sort of the Mexican version of it, okay.
And then we're gonna add Bublano chilies to it. So
so these chilies, this chili has been roasted and I'm
(02:13):
taking the seeds and the stem off, and I'm also
going to peel off the skin. Texture. Well, if you
don't peel the skin is very hard to digest um
and it just doesn't have a good mouth feel. I mean,
you just want the flesh of the of the peppers.
And then and I'm gonna gonna slice these up so
that we can put them on top of our caeso
(02:34):
from dieto. Now, poblanos is, like I always tell people
who are not well versed in chili's start with a poblano.
It's a great starter chili it's not too spicy, has
a great pepper background flavor. I find them the bee
just absolutely delicious, brings tons of flavor, not just heat.
(02:58):
So these are chopped up, coarsely chopped. Okay, Sylphie, let's
suck chili peppers. Are you a fan or not a fan?
I love chili peppers. What's the first chili pepper you
think of? Well, right now I'm looking at it, poblanos.
Do you like them? Love? I love the flavor of
(03:21):
hold please, hold. You have to taste them. I like that,
a true taste, a true taster. She's thinking she's tasting
I don't know. Now it's confusing me. I mean they're
very mild. There's really no heat to them, right, there
is a little heat to them. I would say, yeah, well,
you're eating it on cas fonto. So it's like it's
(03:43):
like a little smoky ish, but not like in the
same way that a Chipotle is. No. Right, So chippotle
is a smoke talapano, So it's going to have you know,
that's that that's sort of fiery smoke that you get
from from smoking a chili. This poblano was roasted, so
you do get a little bit of that smoke kekiness,
but it's got a very I would call it a
green pepper background flavor. All right, So let's go through
(04:06):
the chilies a little bit. So first of all, the
reason why I wanted to talk about chili peppers is
because it's really been an important part of my life.
I mean chili peppers. I've literally written my career on
on the back of a chili pepper. How well it
happened because I was working for Jonathan Waxman at a
restaurant called Buds. Now. People don't remember this because Jonathan
(04:27):
now is the chef and owner of Barbuto. It's really
a very simple Italian restaurant. But he was the first
person to bring California cuisine to the East Coast back
in the early eighties, and I worked for him and
with him. With that, he brought a lot of chili
peppers with him because he had a restaurant called Buds,
which was a Southwestern restaurant, and it was the first
(04:48):
place where I really fell in love with those kinds
of flavors, you know, like the fresh and dry chili,
the black beans, the blue corn. This is before it
was blue corn tortis in a bag. This is like
we had blue corn meal and we were making like
stuff with the blue corn. And anyway, obviously that was
a long time ago. And uh and then you know,
I launched my career first at a Russian called Miracle Grill,
which was the Southwestern restaurant, and then Masa grill Um
(05:11):
in New York, the Bahamas and Las and Las Vegas.
You know, those restaurants are open for you know, thirty years,
and so you know, when I think about chili peppers,
I think of them. You know, they have a lot
of influence from Mexico of course, especially the Southwestern slash Mexican,
you know, but you know, they've they've they've sort of
(05:32):
crushed over the border to you know, the the southwestern
part of the United States, So places like Texas and
New Mexico, obviously California, Arizona, places like that, you know,
have a lot of you know, it's it's part of
their American regional cuisine. And basically, you know, chili peppers
are broken down into two categories, fresh and dried. Right,
(05:56):
so on the fresh side, you know, hallapanos, saran serrano
is like it's it's it's, it's you know, hallapenos are
probably the most famous chili we know. Serranos are a
little bit thinner there, and they're a little spicier than hallopenos.
I always reached for serranos instead of halapenos just because
I just like the flavor them more. But you can
(06:17):
sort of substitute one for the other, especially when you're
making things like salsa and guacamali. They both work. Of course, poblanos,
which is what we use on the Caso Ferdido today.
I always say that's a good starter chili because it's
not that spicy, but it has a really good pepper
background flavor Hatch green chilies, which is Hatch New Mexico.
This place is famous for their own chili pepper. And
(06:37):
when you go to New Mexico at a certain time
of the year, like the whole place smells like roasted
green chilies because basically they're roasting green chilies all over
the state. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. Like outdoors.
They have like these chili roasters where they turn them.
Some of them are probably automatic, but you can turn
them by hand also, and you roasted chilies, and it's
just it's just it just fills the air with roasted
(06:58):
green chilies, honestly. And you got to a place like
New Mexico, it's like it's it's green chilies on everything,
green chili burgers, green chili. Casity is green chili chicken,
green chili flon, green chili everything. I mean, it's everything.
Have you spent a lot of time there in New Mexico? Yeah?
Oh yeah, I like New Mexico a lot. It's a
really good place. Santa Fece fun hous Albuquerque has good restaurants.
(07:19):
It's really terrific. Um. You know. Then you get into
the hotter chilis on the fresh side habit narrows, of course.
And then the Caribbean version of that chili, the Scotch bonnet.
I mean, you know what it looks like, I have
an arrow. But you'll find that like in a lot
of Jamaican cooking, Caribbean cooking, really good stuff, very very
(07:39):
very very spicy. Um. One of the fresh chilies that
is that has become more more, more and more popular.
I call it the red Hallapano, which is not It's
called the Fresno beautiful red red chili. I like pickling
Fresno chili's. First of all, they're beautiful, they're bright red,
they have heat to them. They were about they were
(07:59):
about the same heat level as like a halopano or
a serrano. I want to say I used a fris
Noo Frisno peppers for like a salmon dish. I'm sure
I did that last night. Actually weird, I did a well.
Actually I used a bunch of chilies yesterday. So Christina
came over and she wanted to eat some fish. So
I bought some salmon. I bought a big block of salmon,
(08:21):
and I first they made a spice rub with hatch
green chili powder and guahillo chili powder. So one red,
one green, and some salt and pepper, and I spice
rubbed the salmon. Then I saw tay that on the
spice rub side now and so it becomes a crust
on the outside, okay, and obviously great flavor. Then I
(08:42):
took it out and I saw tay some shalots in
the you know, in the same pan, got those little
caramelized that. I had some sliced frisno chilis, a little
bit of white wine. Reduced the wine out to it
was a most dry. Then I added a little butter,
some fresh to lantro, and I just poured it over
the salmon. That sounds so good. So really, in that
(09:04):
dish alone, I used three chilies and it wasn't spicy.
It had tons of flavor. And that's the thing that
people miss. People that don't have a lot of experience
with chili peppers think immediately everything is spicy, is gonna
blow up my mouth. There's no reason to do that,
I mean, and I want to talk about that in
terms of some of these chili peppers which are just
(09:24):
too hot to use, like I know, like you know,
people want to prove that they can eat them and
stuff like that, Like that's a different that's a different
sport than what than what I'm into. Anyway, Also, so
(09:54):
I love friends noos anaheim chilies. And then on the
dried side, an antio chili. Now do you know what
an antio chili is? Before it's dried, you just ate it.
It's a pepper. Oh interesting, But how does that happen? Well,
instead of just saying it's a dried poblano, they'd rather
confuse you and to call it anti. I was going
to say, listen, there's a there's a handful of chili
(10:16):
peppers that have different names depending on where you are
in the region of either Mexico. Okay, But anyway, when
you dry, when you sun dry an antio chili, when
you sun dry poblano and turn it into an anti chili.
Besides the fact that it looks different because of the color,
it tastes completely different. It becomes almost raisin like. So's
I always say it has like it's like a it's
(10:38):
like a it's like a very mildly spicy raisin flavor anto,
which is which is a dried poblana. Lana Okay, tried
to fool me there, No, I just want to make
sure you're paying attention. And then there's Guahio chilis, which
are like thin tapered chili's. They almost look like green
Anaheim chilies and they have a little heat. Pascia chili's
(11:00):
also kind of a darker red. They they're very kind
of earthy, and you can find a lot of these
red chilies ground into powder so that they're chillen. They're
pure forms of chili powders. So when you go to
the store and you just see chili powder on the shelf,
it could be anything, and a lot of times it's
a mix of things. But if you want pure forms
of each one of these, you can go to good
spice markets and they'll have like Antio chili powder, Guahio
(11:22):
child New Mexico chili powder. Chili the areball the smaller
little red chilies. They're they're spicy. They're almost like in
the Cayen version um casca bell chilies. They look they're
like their nickname is the rattler because when you shake them,
they sound like a baby round and they they have
they're spicy and they're earthy too. And then there's New
Mexico chilies. And then when you dry it and when
(11:44):
you dry out and smoke a talapano, you get what
do you get? So if you know this smoke, what's
a smoke Calipania, It's the one smoke chili that you
eat all day long. That's exactly what it is. I
love chipoles and you can get them in cans, which
and they're in it's like adobo sauces like a tomato
(12:05):
even agree, Yeah, that's my favorite. You just purae the
thing and then you can just like you can put
it into in like soups and sauces and stuff like that.
You puree the whole thing, the chili with the with
the adobo sauce in it. So you basically have this
puree that you can just kind of you know, put
in like a soup or you know, went to a
salsa or whatever. Yeah. I use that with um, like
(12:28):
shrimp when I make like shrimp tacos. What do you do?
Do you make a chipotle mayonnaise? Uh? No, I cook
the I cooked the shrimp in a pan with the
adobo and you do. Yeah it's delicious, right, Yeah, it's
so good for for shrimp tacos. It's delicious. Squeeze little
orange juice in the next time. Chipotles have a really
good for each other, you know. And then there's like
(12:51):
ghost peppers. I'm sorry. Yeah, we've talked about this. Don't
want it? Yeah, you know. I was actually looking at
the Scobel units today. You know what that is? So
scoble unit is it's the measure of how hot a
chili is. I've never heard of that. You can just
look that up online. You can. So, for instance, Halapano
(13:14):
is scobal units. Just keep this in mind. And hab
A Narrow, which is a very hot chili, is up
to three fifty thousand units. Okay, stay with me. A
ghost chili is one point four million now, thank you.
(13:35):
So you started at halap and now it goes to
a one point four million. The ghost chilis you cannot
eat them. What do people use them for? I don't know.
They like you find them in hot sauces a lot. Now,
there's also something else that I've never had before, called
the Carolina Reaper two point to million on the scobal unit.
(13:59):
What happens if you eat this thing? I saw that.
I saw I saw someone use that in a um
what's her name is a hot? No? It was in
a baking show. Why the show is called Big Squad.
It's on It's on Netflix. Christina Tosi is the host
of it. And in one of the in one of
(14:19):
the challenges, he he used those Carolina reaper chilies. But
it was it was kind of messed up. You put
it in different truffles and all the truffles were different colors,
and you didn't know if you were picking up eating
one that basically playing Russian root. Yeah, it was. It
was I don't want to play it. I don't want
to do that. Waiting for the milk, so Michael scalded.
(14:45):
How do you know? It starts bubbling around the edges
and then you can see the rue that we made
the butter and flour in the thicken the milk, and
then you add the cheese in. Yeah, but you want
to cook the flower at first? Why, well, because you'll
have that royal flower flavor, got it, So it has
to It has to cook for a few minutes, and
(15:08):
you see, you can see how it started to thicking.
But also when we add the cheese, what's gonna happen
to it? It's gonna melt, it's gonna thick in it. Yeah,
so even more so so you don't want you don't
want to you don't want you don't want your bejamilt
to be too thick because the cheese is gonna thicken it.
And what chees are you using? I'm just gonna use
Monterey Jack cheese for this, you know. I want this
to be you know, and what's great about this? And
(15:30):
you can always add things like chariso, et cetera, but
we're just this is just gonna be caso fendido with
a blanco chilies on top, on top, or you can
put it in in the middle. Oh both. This feels
a little easier than I thought it would be. Actually
makes never made it, Never made it do I ca
(15:54):
it wasn't like caso. Chilies can be utilizing in lots
of different ways. Spice shrubs, which is one of my
favorite ways to use them, you know, ground ground chilies
with different other spices combinations. It's great on fish and
meat and chicken. It's fantastic. I love pickling fresh chilies
like fresnos or halopanos. You can pickle them and you
can keep them for months. Vinegar, sugar, and use them
(16:16):
for what anything, tacos, you put them on top of fish,
pickling chicken. Pickling chilies is one of my beat Bobby
Flay condiment tricks. I can pickle a chili very quickly.
How do you do that? I just told you it's
sugar and vinegar. Now, if you want to do it longer,
(16:37):
there's pickling spices, etcetera. But if you want to get
a quick pickle, you can do it very quickly. You
just bring vinegar and sugar to a boil and throw
it over the sliced chilies and then put it in
the refrigerator and literally, in like forty minutes you're gonna
have pickle chilies delicious. Was there like a moment that
you realized you kind of fell in love with chili peppers?
It was a long time ago, it was probably you know,
(16:59):
mid eighties, but like, was there a moment when you
were like this is going to be It took me
a while to get used to the heat, you know,
because my palate was wasn't used to them. And it's
just one of those things now, you know they say
and like in the capsicum, which is the you know,
it's which is the which is what's in a chili pepper.
(17:19):
There's you know, it kind of messes with your endorphins.
You know. It's like like the more you have, the
more you want. It's kind of cool. But like I
also like like like poblanos and anaheims, like the bigger
fresh chilies. I love stuffing them with things, you know,
like you can make chili RINOs with like black beans
or hummus or you know, you can fill them with
like goat cheese or whatever it is, and then you
(17:40):
fry them so they're crispy on the outside and then
like whatever is on the inside is kind of nice
and melty, so good, and the chili pepper is like
the thing that it's encased in. Obviously. I like roasting them,
you know, like the poblanos is great to roast, and
then toasting the like the dried spices is really enhances
them as well. Can you make your own spices when
you say make them like your own powder? Of course?
(18:03):
But does that does that take a while? Coffee grinder? Oh? Interesting?
The other thing you can do is like if you
have the chili pods, like the whole red chilies, you
can throw like the dried ones you can throw like
hot water over them and then let them rehydrate, almost
like sun dried tomatoes. Then you take the stems and
the seeds off and you put them into a food
(18:23):
processor and you make a puree. You know what's great
about them is they were like a thickening agent too.
They will thicken a sauce for your One of the
best sauces in the world is a mola sauce, which
people think of it as a chocolate sauce. There is
chocolate and classic molaise, but there's only a little bit
at the end to kind of chill out the chilies.
Got it, Like you can have dozens of chilis in
(18:45):
one mole. I mean every mola is different, but you know,
having all these different red chilies in mola sauce, I mean,
do you know what? You know what goes into a
mali sauce? No, I don't, But but what goes into it?
I have to make you mine. I don't think I've
made you my. So basically the way I started out,
it's like onions, garlic, can tomatoes. Then I add like
(19:05):
three or four different chili so might might be like
Chipotle Chili's Guihillo Chili's New Mexico Chili's, you know, chili deorable,
like a range of different red chilies. Okay, Then I
add like vinegar, and I add some things that are sweet, honey, molasses,
maple syrup. I add like a fresh mango. I take,
(19:27):
I take tortillas and fry them and put them in
there because they also thickening agents. I put nuts in there.
This is mola. Is an amazing sauce. It's the most
amazing sauce in the world. A lot of ingredients. It's
a lot of ingredients, but it's built on chili peppers
for the most part. And at the very end, like
literally like when you after it's been like simmering for
(19:47):
like a couple of hours, you add chocolate to it,
and it's chocolate just kind of gives it that little
sort of layer of glaze that kind of just chills
out all the chilis and balances it out. Interest I'm
gonna make you some mullet. You so you eat mulle
and you don't like it, Yeah, I haven't had one
that I've loved. I'm gonna make you that that's gonna be.
(20:09):
Do you say mango there's mango in it traditionally. Yeah,
usually the fruits like mangoes or pineapples or papias. Oh interesting, Yeah,
I had no idea, and all this gets purred. It's
deep dark red, so now it can be there's different
colored molas. There's a black mole, there's there's a there's
actually a green mole, a yellow moley. My mole is
(20:29):
usually like a I'm gonna say, like brick red going
towards dark brown. You know, it's so good, it's it's
it's my favorite sauce in the world because it's so
it's so crazy when you think about all the things
that are there's so much in it. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
(21:04):
I'm gonna add the cheese. I'm gonna shut this off. Yeah,
and then we're just going to fold us in. The
cheese is gonna melt, it's gonna thicking it up, and
it's going to give us that that cheese flavor, that
caso flavor. Yeah, that looks so good. It's melting so quickly.
You always want to use a good melt and cheese
like cheddar is not a good melt and cheese that
swets right right. Yeah, that's like American melky cheese. American
(21:29):
caso is good. Yeah, Fonta, didn't you do it? Don't
you do a burger at Bobbies that has a caso
on it? Green chili case, we get it right now.
And then it needs a lot of salt and pepper
has a look that looks really good. Smell better, give
up hoping tasted. Oh, it tastes so good because like cheese. Yeah,
(21:55):
definitely tastes like cheese. Okay, So I'm gonna pour it
into this. So usually what I do is ford it
to like a earthenware dish. And what I usually do
is taste some like cote hot cheese, put it on top.
You know, you can use basically any dried salt and cheese.
Even Parmaridono works nicely. If you don't have any cotilla Armazon,
(22:16):
you can return it if you want. Put it under
the boiler. So it has like a little bit of
a crust on top. Yeah, and then would you take
all these boblanos on top and this and this is
the this is the beauty of the chili pepper. This
is going to really bring so much flavor to the game.
And then like Solanto, will would be really nice there
as well. Okay, I'll try it, so if you go
(22:40):
ahead and try it. Oh my gosh, it's so good,
is it? It's crazy? How much play with these boban
tab Yeah? You like it? Very cheesy. Oh, I'm so
good hot ones. You love the show? Yeah, I think
it's so good. Tell me where you like it. I
(23:00):
just think it's a fun, engaging way to get to
know someone. It makes you very vulnerable. I mean you're
basically getting stoned on chili peppers sauces. Yeah, yeah, I think.
I mean, look, I mean obviously chili peppers are the
basis of hot sauces too. It's one of those things
that's grown, you know, exponentially in this country. You know,
(23:22):
it's there's like there's like a hot sauce culture, you know,
you go, so I've been to people's houses where they
have like sauces on their shelf, Like what are you doing?
But like, you know, every one of them is different.
You know, they all have you know, X amount of
different ingredients, you know, elements of heat. There's something about
like you know, certain people just want to be able
(23:43):
to like they can they can handle all those all
those chilies. Also now chili peppers have found their way
into cocktails. Oh, definitely big time. You know, spicy tequila's
and vodkas, etcetera. I'm spicy margarita friend, are you? Yes?
I find them to be delicious. Yeah, we should make
(24:03):
our own lapeno tequila. Just throw the halapenos right in there.
Is that how you do it? Yeah? Can you do
that with mescal too? Of course you can. Okay, you
can steep it. So what pepper do you think you
use the most? Chipotle? Chipotle is one of those things
that I always have around because when something needs something. Now,
(24:26):
I'm not going to put it in Italian food, but
if I'm cooking American, I if I'm cooking something American
or something obviously Mexican or Latin in any way, shape
or form, I love chipotle Is. It really kind of
wakes up lots of different things. The other all the
other chilis I like or like the Prvie and like
the South American Hiam Mario Ricotto chilis. I mean so
(24:49):
good that Ahia Mario is killer. We actually use that
at Bobby's Burgers in the fried chicken sauce. No one
knows it's not that no one knows it, but we
don't only talk about it. It's basically my It's like
it's like my special sauce. Um, what chili peppers can
you use for steak? Like? What's good for like a steak?
(25:11):
Are you craving a steaks over? No? But I just
I don't really know how to make a variety of
different steaks. Well, Bobby Flay steak, the most well, the
most ordered steak is the Southwestern ribbi. So let me
tell you what we do. First, we spice rubb it
and it has about three different chili peppers and the
spice rub and then we put it under the broiler
(25:32):
and it becomes part of the steak gets really crusty.
Then we brush on a glaze very lightly of chipotles,
some honey and mustard that goes over the crusted steak.
Then we have a combination of roasted red peppers and
roasted poblano peppers and roasted yellow peppers. It's like a
(25:54):
it's like a it's like a roasted pepper relish on
top of the steak, and then some garler chips and
then bottom of the plate we have a green chili
sauce and a red chili sauce. Oh my god, how
many so were you using? Five or six point two three, four,
five six? But it's not overly spicy. It's got tons
(26:14):
of flavor. And that's the thing about chilies is that
you're creating these layers of flavor that are basically unbeatable.
And it's one of the things I keep saying that
chili peppers are literally finding its way on the average
Americans pantry. Finally starting to happen. People are accepting the
idea that chili peppers are not there for injury, they're
(26:35):
there for accent. So when you first started serving like
a lot of a lot of dishes with chili peppers,
like say like Masta Girl, were people scared to order
those dishes? Definitely? How spicy is this gonna be? But
I don't cook that way. I never cooked to burn
out your mouth, doesn't It doesn't make any sense, you know.
(26:55):
It's like I just want I mean, I use them
for flavor. I pushed the envelope. And what happens is
the more they eat, the more they want. It becomes
this creatability thing, and then people start thinking about it
three or four days later, like, wait a minute, I
want that flavor again. Yeah, you know you should make
is you should make your own signature. Um, tortilla chip
with like a chili seasoning. I think it's been done. Okay,
(27:20):
you should give it a try. Which chili would you like? Hello? Um? Lazy?
Kind of like who partner with? You want? You want
a Carolina Reaper? No chance? No that sounds scary? No,
like maybe a Chipotle. I could be onto something here.
(27:41):
Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flight.
Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungry is produced, edited,
and mixed by Jonathan Hostresser. Always Hungry is engineered by
Sophie Flay. For more podcast in my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you
listen to your average shows
All right, guys, welcome to Always Hungry from My Heart Radio.
My name is Bobby Flay and I'm here with my
daughter and co host Flag and I'm Always Hungry. Sophie
and I gathered around my stove to cook together. Well,
you cook, I asked the questions, and eat the food.
If does any food left, you come to the table
together to share a meal, connect as a family, and
tell the stories that matter to us. Okay, what are
(00:27):
we making? Oh, some potato chips, I mean not potato
chips and Georgia chips making you know what that is? Okay?
So yeah, yeah, she's it's basically she's deep. Yeah, exactly,
But I'm but we're talking about chili peppers, which have been,
you know, basically what I've made my career on for
(00:48):
the last thirty years. And I just think that there's
so incredibly versatile and people are intimidated by them even today.
You know, really are you know? Do you buy him
in the store? Yeah? Bablanos? You do? What do you
do with them? Melissa Clark has a poblano Wait a second,
on a second. I love Melissa Clark, but your dad
(01:09):
is gonna cooking with chili peppers for a million years.
You don't have any recipes of mine. She has a
Publano casada recipe. You got one of those? Yeah, of
course I do send it on over all, right, Okay, So,
first of all, butter and flour. So we're gonna make
a rube a route r o u X. Okay, my god,
I've never seen that. Yeah, butter and flour, and this
(01:31):
is gonna be the base of the of the case
of fenvito. So what we're doing is we're taking butter,
equal parts butter and flour, and we're just gonna cook it.
We don't want to achieve any color. We just wanted
to cook. And then we're gonna add scalded milk to it,
and that's gonna make a cream sauce or in the
(01:52):
French term a bejamil. Okay, okay. And then in France,
actually if you then take the Benjamin and d chet ease,
you get it morena sauce. But we're making caso findeto.
This is sort of the Mexican version of it, okay.
And then we're gonna add Bublano chilies to it. So
so these chilies, this chili has been roasted and I'm
(02:13):
taking the seeds and the stem off, and I'm also
going to peel off the skin. Texture. Well, if you
don't peel the skin is very hard to digest um
and it just doesn't have a good mouth feel. I mean,
you just want the flesh of the of the peppers.
And then and I'm gonna gonna slice these up so
that we can put them on top of our caeso
(02:34):
from dieto. Now, poblanos is, like I always tell people
who are not well versed in chili's start with a poblano.
It's a great starter chili it's not too spicy, has
a great pepper background flavor. I find them the bee
just absolutely delicious, brings tons of flavor, not just heat.
(02:58):
So these are chopped up, coarsely chopped. Okay, Sylphie, let's
suck chili peppers. Are you a fan or not a fan?
I love chili peppers. What's the first chili pepper you
think of? Well, right now I'm looking at it, poblanos.
Do you like them? Love? I love the flavor of
(03:21):
hold please, hold. You have to taste them. I like that,
a true taste, a true taster. She's thinking she's tasting
I don't know. Now it's confusing me. I mean they're
very mild. There's really no heat to them, right, there
is a little heat to them. I would say, yeah, well,
you're eating it on cas fonto. So it's like it's
(03:43):
like a little smoky ish, but not like in the
same way that a Chipotle is. No. Right, So chippotle
is a smoke talapano, So it's going to have you know,
that's that that's sort of fiery smoke that you get
from from smoking a chili. This poblano was roasted, so
you do get a little bit of that smoke kekiness,
but it's got a very I would call it a
green pepper background flavor. All right, So let's go through
(04:06):
the chilies a little bit. So first of all, the
reason why I wanted to talk about chili peppers is
because it's really been an important part of my life.
I mean chili peppers. I've literally written my career on
on the back of a chili pepper. How well it
happened because I was working for Jonathan Waxman at a
restaurant called Buds. Now. People don't remember this because Jonathan
(04:27):
now is the chef and owner of Barbuto. It's really
a very simple Italian restaurant. But he was the first
person to bring California cuisine to the East Coast back
in the early eighties, and I worked for him and
with him. With that, he brought a lot of chili
peppers with him because he had a restaurant called Buds,
which was a Southwestern restaurant, and it was the first
(04:48):
place where I really fell in love with those kinds
of flavors, you know, like the fresh and dry chili,
the black beans, the blue corn. This is before it
was blue corn tortis in a bag. This is like
we had blue corn meal and we were making like
stuff with the blue corn. And anyway, obviously that was
a long time ago. And uh and then you know,
I launched my career first at a Russian called Miracle Grill,
which was the Southwestern restaurant, and then Masa grill Um
(05:11):
in New York, the Bahamas and Las and Las Vegas.
You know, those restaurants are open for you know, thirty years,
and so you know, when I think about chili peppers,
I think of them. You know, they have a lot
of influence from Mexico of course, especially the Southwestern slash Mexican,
you know, but you know, they've they've they've sort of
(05:32):
crushed over the border to you know, the the southwestern
part of the United States, So places like Texas and
New Mexico, obviously California, Arizona, places like that, you know,
have a lot of you know, it's it's part of
their American regional cuisine. And basically, you know, chili peppers
are broken down into two categories, fresh and dried. Right,
(05:56):
so on the fresh side, you know, hallapanos, saran serrano
is like it's it's it's, it's you know, hallapenos are
probably the most famous chili we know. Serranos are a
little bit thinner there, and they're a little spicier than hallopenos.
I always reached for serranos instead of halapenos just because
I just like the flavor them more. But you can
(06:17):
sort of substitute one for the other, especially when you're
making things like salsa and guacamali. They both work. Of course, poblanos,
which is what we use on the Caso Ferdido today.
I always say that's a good starter chili because it's
not that spicy, but it has a really good pepper
background flavor Hatch green chilies, which is Hatch New Mexico.
This place is famous for their own chili pepper. And
(06:37):
when you go to New Mexico at a certain time
of the year, like the whole place smells like roasted
green chilies because basically they're roasting green chilies all over
the state. Oh my gosh, it smells so good. Like outdoors.
They have like these chili roasters where they turn them.
Some of them are probably automatic, but you can turn
them by hand also, and you roasted chilies, and it's
just it's just it just fills the air with roasted
(06:58):
green chilies, honestly. And you got to a place like
New Mexico, it's like it's it's green chilies on everything,
green chili burgers, green chili. Casity is green chili chicken,
green chili flon, green chili everything. I mean, it's everything.
Have you spent a lot of time there in New Mexico? Yeah?
Oh yeah, I like New Mexico a lot. It's a
really good place. Santa Fece fun hous Albuquerque has good restaurants.
(07:19):
It's really terrific. Um. You know. Then you get into
the hotter chilis on the fresh side habit narrows, of course.
And then the Caribbean version of that chili, the Scotch bonnet.
I mean, you know what it looks like, I have
an arrow. But you'll find that like in a lot
of Jamaican cooking, Caribbean cooking, really good stuff, very very
(07:39):
very very spicy. Um. One of the fresh chilies that
is that has become more more, more and more popular.
I call it the red Hallapano, which is not It's
called the Fresno beautiful red red chili. I like pickling
Fresno chili's. First of all, they're beautiful, they're bright red,
they have heat to them. They were about they were
(07:59):
about the same heat level as like a halopano or
a serrano. I want to say I used a fris
Noo Frisno peppers for like a salmon dish. I'm sure
I did that last night. Actually weird, I did a well.
Actually I used a bunch of chilies yesterday. So Christina
came over and she wanted to eat some fish. So
I bought some salmon. I bought a big block of salmon,
(08:21):
and I first they made a spice rub with hatch
green chili powder and guahillo chili powder. So one red,
one green, and some salt and pepper, and I spice
rubbed the salmon. Then I saw tay that on the
spice rub side now and so it becomes a crust
on the outside, okay, and obviously great flavor. Then I
(08:42):
took it out and I saw tay some shalots in
the you know, in the same pan, got those little
caramelized that. I had some sliced frisno chilis, a little
bit of white wine. Reduced the wine out to it
was a most dry. Then I added a little butter,
some fresh to lantro, and I just poured it over
the salmon. That sounds so good. So really, in that
(09:04):
dish alone, I used three chilies and it wasn't spicy.
It had tons of flavor. And that's the thing that
people miss. People that don't have a lot of experience
with chili peppers think immediately everything is spicy, is gonna
blow up my mouth. There's no reason to do that,
I mean, and I want to talk about that in
terms of some of these chili peppers which are just
(09:24):
too hot to use, like I know, like you know,
people want to prove that they can eat them and
stuff like that, Like that's a different that's a different
sport than what than what I'm into. Anyway, Also, so
(09:54):
I love friends noos anaheim chilies. And then on the
dried side, an antio chili. Now do you know what
an antio chili is? Before it's dried, you just ate it.
It's a pepper. Oh interesting, But how does that happen? Well,
instead of just saying it's a dried poblano, they'd rather
confuse you and to call it anti. I was going
to say, listen, there's a there's a handful of chili
(10:16):
peppers that have different names depending on where you are
in the region of either Mexico. Okay, But anyway, when
you dry, when you sun dry an antio chili, when
you sun dry poblano and turn it into an anti chili.
Besides the fact that it looks different because of the color,
it tastes completely different. It becomes almost raisin like. So's
I always say it has like it's like a it's
(10:38):
like a it's like a very mildly spicy raisin flavor anto,
which is which is a dried poblana. Lana Okay, tried
to fool me there, No, I just want to make
sure you're paying attention. And then there's Guahio chilis, which
are like thin tapered chili's. They almost look like green
Anaheim chilies and they have a little heat. Pascia chili's
(11:00):
also kind of a darker red. They they're very kind
of earthy, and you can find a lot of these
red chilies ground into powder so that they're chillen. They're
pure forms of chili powders. So when you go to
the store and you just see chili powder on the shelf,
it could be anything, and a lot of times it's
a mix of things. But if you want pure forms
of each one of these, you can go to good
spice markets and they'll have like Antio chili powder, Guahio
(11:22):
child New Mexico chili powder. Chili the areball the smaller
little red chilies. They're they're spicy. They're almost like in
the Cayen version um casca bell chilies. They look they're
like their nickname is the rattler because when you shake them,
they sound like a baby round and they they have
they're spicy and they're earthy too. And then there's New
Mexico chilies. And then when you dry it and when
(11:44):
you dry out and smoke a talapano, you get what
do you get? So if you know this smoke, what's
a smoke Calipania, It's the one smoke chili that you
eat all day long. That's exactly what it is. I
love chipoles and you can get them in cans, which
and they're in it's like adobo sauces like a tomato
(12:05):
even agree, Yeah, that's my favorite. You just purae the
thing and then you can just like you can put
it into in like soups and sauces and stuff like that.
You puree the whole thing, the chili with the with
the adobo sauce in it. So you basically have this
puree that you can just kind of you know, put
in like a soup or you know, went to a
salsa or whatever. Yeah. I use that with um, like
(12:28):
shrimp when I make like shrimp tacos. What do you do?
Do you make a chipotle mayonnaise? Uh? No, I cook
the I cooked the shrimp in a pan with the
adobo and you do. Yeah it's delicious, right, Yeah, it's
so good for for shrimp tacos. It's delicious. Squeeze little
orange juice in the next time. Chipotles have a really
good for each other, you know. And then there's like
(12:51):
ghost peppers. I'm sorry. Yeah, we've talked about this. Don't
want it? Yeah, you know. I was actually looking at
the Scobel units today. You know what that is? So
scoble unit is it's the measure of how hot a
chili is. I've never heard of that. You can just
look that up online. You can. So, for instance, Halapano
(13:14):
is scobal units. Just keep this in mind. And hab
A Narrow, which is a very hot chili, is up
to three fifty thousand units. Okay, stay with me. A
ghost chili is one point four million now, thank you.
(13:35):
So you started at halap and now it goes to
a one point four million. The ghost chilis you cannot
eat them. What do people use them for? I don't know.
They like you find them in hot sauces a lot. Now,
there's also something else that I've never had before, called
the Carolina Reaper two point to million on the scobal unit.
(13:59):
What happens if you eat this thing? I saw that.
I saw I saw someone use that in a um
what's her name is a hot? No? It was in
a baking show. Why the show is called Big Squad.
It's on It's on Netflix. Christina Tosi is the host
of it. And in one of the in one of
(14:19):
the challenges, he he used those Carolina reaper chilies. But
it was it was kind of messed up. You put
it in different truffles and all the truffles were different colors,
and you didn't know if you were picking up eating
one that basically playing Russian root. Yeah, it was. It
was I don't want to play it. I don't want
to do that. Waiting for the milk, so Michael scalded.
(14:45):
How do you know? It starts bubbling around the edges
and then you can see the rue that we made
the butter and flour in the thicken the milk, and
then you add the cheese in. Yeah, but you want
to cook the flower at first? Why, well, because you'll
have that royal flower flavor, got it, So it has
to It has to cook for a few minutes, and
(15:08):
you see, you can see how it started to thicking.
But also when we add the cheese, what's gonna happen
to it? It's gonna melt, it's gonna thick in it. Yeah,
so even more so so you don't want you don't
want to you don't want you don't want your bejamilt
to be too thick because the cheese is gonna thicken it.
And what chees are you using? I'm just gonna use
Monterey Jack cheese for this, you know. I want this
to be you know, and what's great about this? And
(15:30):
you can always add things like chariso, et cetera, but
we're just this is just gonna be caso fendido with
a blanco chilies on top, on top, or you can
put it in in the middle. Oh both. This feels
a little easier than I thought it would be. Actually
makes never made it, Never made it do I ca
(15:54):
it wasn't like caso. Chilies can be utilizing in lots
of different ways. Spice shrubs, which is one of my
favorite ways to use them, you know, ground ground chilies
with different other spices combinations. It's great on fish and
meat and chicken. It's fantastic. I love pickling fresh chilies
like fresnos or halopanos. You can pickle them and you
can keep them for months. Vinegar, sugar, and use them
(16:16):
for what anything, tacos, you put them on top of fish,
pickling chicken. Pickling chilies is one of my beat Bobby
Flay condiment tricks. I can pickle a chili very quickly.
How do you do that? I just told you it's
sugar and vinegar. Now, if you want to do it longer,
(16:37):
there's pickling spices, etcetera. But if you want to get
a quick pickle, you can do it very quickly. You
just bring vinegar and sugar to a boil and throw
it over the sliced chilies and then put it in
the refrigerator and literally, in like forty minutes you're gonna
have pickle chilies delicious. Was there like a moment that
you realized you kind of fell in love with chili peppers?
It was a long time ago, it was probably you know,
(16:59):
mid eighties, but like, was there a moment when you
were like this is going to be It took me
a while to get used to the heat, you know,
because my palate was wasn't used to them. And it's
just one of those things now, you know they say
and like in the capsicum, which is the you know,
it's which is the which is what's in a chili pepper.
(17:19):
There's you know, it kind of messes with your endorphins.
You know. It's like like the more you have, the
more you want. It's kind of cool. But like I
also like like like poblanos and anaheims, like the bigger
fresh chilies. I love stuffing them with things, you know,
like you can make chili RINOs with like black beans
or hummus or you know, you can fill them with
like goat cheese or whatever it is, and then you
(17:40):
fry them so they're crispy on the outside and then
like whatever is on the inside is kind of nice
and melty, so good, and the chili pepper is like
the thing that it's encased in. Obviously. I like roasting them,
you know, like the poblanos is great to roast, and
then toasting the like the dried spices is really enhances
them as well. Can you make your own spices when
you say make them like your own powder? Of course?
(18:03):
But does that does that take a while? Coffee grinder? Oh? Interesting?
The other thing you can do is like if you
have the chili pods, like the whole red chilies, you
can throw like the dried ones you can throw like
hot water over them and then let them rehydrate, almost
like sun dried tomatoes. Then you take the stems and
the seeds off and you put them into a food
(18:23):
processor and you make a puree. You know what's great
about them is they were like a thickening agent too.
They will thicken a sauce for your One of the
best sauces in the world is a mola sauce, which
people think of it as a chocolate sauce. There is
chocolate and classic molaise, but there's only a little bit
at the end to kind of chill out the chilies.
Got it, Like you can have dozens of chilis in
(18:45):
one mole. I mean every mola is different, but you know,
having all these different red chilies in mola sauce, I mean,
do you know what? You know what goes into a
mali sauce? No, I don't, But but what goes into it?
I have to make you mine. I don't think I've
made you my. So basically the way I started out,
it's like onions, garlic, can tomatoes. Then I add like
(19:05):
three or four different chili so might might be like
Chipotle Chili's Guihillo Chili's New Mexico Chili's, you know, chili deorable,
like a range of different red chilies. Okay, Then I
add like vinegar, and I add some things that are sweet, honey, molasses,
maple syrup. I add like a fresh mango. I take,
(19:27):
I take tortillas and fry them and put them in
there because they also thickening agents. I put nuts in there.
This is mola. Is an amazing sauce. It's the most
amazing sauce in the world. A lot of ingredients. It's
a lot of ingredients, but it's built on chili peppers
for the most part. And at the very end, like
literally like when you after it's been like simmering for
(19:47):
like a couple of hours, you add chocolate to it,
and it's chocolate just kind of gives it that little
sort of layer of glaze that kind of just chills
out all the chilis and balances it out. Interest I'm
gonna make you some mullet. You so you eat mulle
and you don't like it, Yeah, I haven't had one
that I've loved. I'm gonna make you that that's gonna be.
(20:09):
Do you say mango there's mango in it traditionally. Yeah,
usually the fruits like mangoes or pineapples or papias. Oh interesting, Yeah,
I had no idea, and all this gets purred. It's
deep dark red, so now it can be there's different
colored molas. There's a black mole, there's there's a there's
actually a green mole, a yellow moley. My mole is
(20:29):
usually like a I'm gonna say, like brick red going
towards dark brown. You know, it's so good, it's it's
it's my favorite sauce in the world because it's so
it's so crazy when you think about all the things
that are there's so much in it. Yeah, exactly, Okay,
(21:04):
I'm gonna add the cheese. I'm gonna shut this off. Yeah,
and then we're just going to fold us in. The
cheese is gonna melt, it's gonna thicking it up, and
it's going to give us that that cheese flavor, that
caso flavor. Yeah, that looks so good. It's melting so quickly.
You always want to use a good melt and cheese
like cheddar is not a good melt and cheese that
swets right right. Yeah, that's like American melky cheese. American
(21:29):
caso is good. Yeah, Fonta, didn't you do it? Don't
you do a burger at Bobbies that has a caso
on it? Green chili case, we get it right now.
And then it needs a lot of salt and pepper
has a look that looks really good. Smell better, give
up hoping tasted. Oh, it tastes so good because like cheese. Yeah,
(21:55):
definitely tastes like cheese. Okay, So I'm gonna pour it
into this. So usually what I do is ford it
to like a earthenware dish. And what I usually do
is taste some like cote hot cheese, put it on top.
You know, you can use basically any dried salt and cheese.
Even Parmaridono works nicely. If you don't have any cotilla Armazon,
(22:16):
you can return it if you want. Put it under
the boiler. So it has like a little bit of
a crust on top. Yeah, and then would you take
all these boblanos on top and this and this is
the this is the beauty of the chili pepper. This
is going to really bring so much flavor to the game.
And then like Solanto, will would be really nice there
as well. Okay, I'll try it, so if you go
(22:40):
ahead and try it. Oh my gosh, it's so good,
is it? It's crazy? How much play with these boban
tab Yeah? You like it? Very cheesy. Oh, I'm so
good hot ones. You love the show? Yeah, I think
it's so good. Tell me where you like it. I
(23:00):
just think it's a fun, engaging way to get to
know someone. It makes you very vulnerable. I mean you're
basically getting stoned on chili peppers sauces. Yeah, yeah, I think.
I mean, look, I mean obviously chili peppers are the
basis of hot sauces too. It's one of those things
that's grown, you know, exponentially in this country. You know,
(23:22):
it's there's like there's like a hot sauce culture, you know,
you go, so I've been to people's houses where they
have like sauces on their shelf, Like what are you doing?
But like, you know, every one of them is different.
You know, they all have you know, X amount of
different ingredients, you know, elements of heat. There's something about
like you know, certain people just want to be able
(23:43):
to like they can they can handle all those all
those chilies. Also now chili peppers have found their way
into cocktails. Oh, definitely big time. You know, spicy tequila's
and vodkas, etcetera. I'm spicy margarita friend, are you? Yes?
I find them to be delicious. Yeah, we should make
(24:03):
our own lapeno tequila. Just throw the halapenos right in there.
Is that how you do it? Yeah? Can you do
that with mescal too? Of course you can. Okay, you
can steep it. So what pepper do you think you
use the most? Chipotle? Chipotle is one of those things
that I always have around because when something needs something. Now,
(24:26):
I'm not going to put it in Italian food, but
if I'm cooking American, I if I'm cooking something American
or something obviously Mexican or Latin in any way, shape
or form, I love chipotle Is. It really kind of
wakes up lots of different things. The other all the
other chilis I like or like the Prvie and like
the South American Hiam Mario Ricotto chilis. I mean so
(24:49):
good that Ahia Mario is killer. We actually use that
at Bobby's Burgers in the fried chicken sauce. No one
knows it's not that no one knows it, but we
don't only talk about it. It's basically my It's like
it's like my special sauce. Um, what chili peppers can
you use for steak? Like? What's good for like a steak?
(25:11):
Are you craving a steaks over? No? But I just
I don't really know how to make a variety of
different steaks. Well, Bobby Flay steak, the most well, the
most ordered steak is the Southwestern ribbi. So let me
tell you what we do. First, we spice rubb it
and it has about three different chili peppers and the
spice rub and then we put it under the broiler
(25:32):
and it becomes part of the steak gets really crusty.
Then we brush on a glaze very lightly of chipotles,
some honey and mustard that goes over the crusted steak.
Then we have a combination of roasted red peppers and
roasted poblano peppers and roasted yellow peppers. It's like a
(25:54):
it's like a it's like a roasted pepper relish on
top of the steak, and then some garler chips and
then bottom of the plate we have a green chili
sauce and a red chili sauce. Oh my god, how
many so were you using? Five or six point two three, four,
five six? But it's not overly spicy. It's got tons
(26:14):
of flavor. And that's the thing about chilies is that
you're creating these layers of flavor that are basically unbeatable.
And it's one of the things I keep saying that
chili peppers are literally finding its way on the average
Americans pantry. Finally starting to happen. People are accepting the
idea that chili peppers are not there for injury, they're
(26:35):
there for accent. So when you first started serving like
a lot of a lot of dishes with chili peppers,
like say like Masta Girl, were people scared to order
those dishes? Definitely? How spicy is this gonna be? But
I don't cook that way. I never cooked to burn
out your mouth, doesn't It doesn't make any sense, you know.
(26:55):
It's like I just want I mean, I use them
for flavor. I pushed the envelope. And what happens is
the more they eat, the more they want. It becomes
this creatability thing, and then people start thinking about it
three or four days later, like, wait a minute, I
want that flavor again. Yeah, you know you should make
is you should make your own signature. Um, tortilla chip
with like a chili seasoning. I think it's been done. Okay,
(27:20):
you should give it a try. Which chili would you like? Hello? Um? Lazy?
Kind of like who partner with? You want? You want
a Carolina Reaper? No chance? No that sounds scary? No,
like maybe a Chipotle. I could be onto something here.
(27:41):
Always Hungry is created by Bobby Flay and Sophie Flight.
Our executive producer is Christopher Hasiotis. Always Hungry is produced, edited,
and mixed by Jonathan Hostresser. Always Hungry is engineered by
Sophie Flay. For more podcast in my Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you
listen to your average shows
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