641.5979 Flay: Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook

Bobby Flay is everywhere. He's got multiple restaurants spreading all over the U.S., cookbooks sprouting up all the time, and I swear he's on every show on the Food Network. It can be a bit much. A few of my gastronomically-minded friends can't stand him; they even go so far as to use bad words to describe his personality. I don't mind him so much, but I can see their point at times. That said, should someone disparage any of the man's cookbooks, I would defend it vehemently, violently if necessary. He may be overexposed, he may be cocky, he may even be overrated as a restauranteur. But Mr. Flay can put together some of the most amazing recipes you could ever hope to enjoy. He is a master of the spicy-sweet synthesis -- one of, if not the, best flavor combinations ever, in my opinion.

The Husband and I decided to make his "Grilled Lamb Porterhouse with Cascabel-Fig Sauce and Red Chile-Fig Marmalade" recipe from his Mesa Grill Cookbook the other night. While I was certainly interested in learning what a lamb porterhouse was all about, the cascabel-fig sauce is what hooked me. I adore figs, and "cascabel" sounded both cute and fiery, a combo I am partial too, whether it's describing food or people. Cascabels are small, round, dark red, moderately hot chiles with a flavor often described as "nutty." I'm partial to "nutty," too.


We went to our favorite butcher, Mazzeo's Meat and Seafood, whose counter lives inside Guido's Marketplace in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Yes, we will drive across state lines for good meat. And it is very good. And the butchers there will get you any cut you need, and tell you the absolute best way to prepare it. And they bark at each other and call you "hon." It's totally worth the 30-minute drive. The lamb porterhouse steaks were all lined up in the counter, which I was surprised to see; I thought they'd be harder to find. Of course, I know of beef porterhouse, which are expensive and huge (24 ounces!) and have that iconic T-bone steak shape. The lamb porterhouse chops are the same exact shape, only much, much smaller, a condition that induces cuteness on anything.

While they are smaller (and cuter) than their beef counterparts, they are still puh-lenty for one person, unless, of course, you're the kind of person who can actually eat a whole beef porterhouse. Bobby's recipe calls for 2 steaks per person, but we went with one apiece, and were fully satisfied with the choice.

The steaks are grilled simply; it's the sauce that demands the most attention and time. First, the figs are left in hot water to soften, then get pureed in a food processor. On the stove top, vinegar and port wine are reduced, then mixed with some sugar and the fig puree, and reduced again. Meanwhile, (I panic every time I see this word in a recipe - it takes all my energy, plus practical and psychological support from The Husband for me to manage one element of a complicated recipe, how am I supposed to manage "meanwhile"?!?), crushed cascabel chiles get mixed with chicken stock in a saucepan and that gets reduced as well. Then the vinegar-fig mixture and the chile-chicken stock reduction are mixed together, and -- you guessed it! -- reduced some more. Finally, you strain it, and reduce again to "sauce consistency." It may seem excessive, all this reduction, but what you're doing is creating a sauce with tremendous flavor. The results are just incredible with such a simple technique. Anyway, by this point, it was pretty saucy, so we left out that last reduction.

The fig marmalade was, thankfully, super easy. Onion, figs, orange zest and juice, port, pureed cascabel chiles, and some sugar simmer on the stove for about a half hour. And there's enough left over to serve the next day with a bit of toasted French bread and a hunk of brie! Bonus marmalade!

At one point, there were 3 different pans going with three different reddish-brown sauces in them. Stay organized, or you'll forget what's what.

We made some green beans with strips of Gruyere and "frizzled" prosciutto to go with our little lamb chops, a recipe we found in the Culinary Institute of America's Vegetables cookbook, and they went well with the sweet-spicy fig sauce and tender, juicy lamb. The recipe took some time, but the punch of the intense fig flavor paired with the heat from the chiles and the sweetness that balanced it perfectly made it totally worth it.