The Bobby Flay touch

By Theresa Curry

Correspondent

Bobby Flay cooked for a crowd in Norfolk Saturday, his welcome from the Scope audience was as warm as the poblano peppers in the pot and the chipotle puree in the blender.

“I’m hyperventilating,” said Cheryl Pickel of Chesapeake. “I’ve followed him for 14 years, and everything I know about cooking I’ve learned from him.” Pickel had paid extra for a table a few feet from the temporary kitchen set up on the floor that’s usually covered with ice for the Admirals  hockey team.

Backstage, another improvised kitchen bustled as culinary school students chopped parsley and trimmed cilantro for Flay, the  Food Network celebrity, cookbook author and owner of wildly successful “big flavor” restaurants in New York, Atlantic City, the Bahamas and Las Vegas. “As soon as I heard about this, I volunteered,” said Gilbert Dawes of Portsmouth. Dawes, who will graduate from the Culinary Institute of Virginia in two months, said he likes Flay’s style. “He has his own way of doing things,” Dawes said, “regardless of what everyone else does.”

Flay himself was low-key and focused. He apologized that Tidewater cuisine was not represented in the demonstration. “These are Chesapeake lobsters, right?” he joked, peering into the giant pot cooling on the counter. “It should be crab.” He said crab meat would be a perfect substitute for the lobster in the lobster-avocado cocktail he was scheduled to prepare onstage.

“You have a wonderful food culture here. I’m looking forward to sampling it tonight.” Soft-shell crabs are a favorite at his restaurants, he said: almost a cult. “When they’re in season, I can’t keep enough in the house.” 

Norfolk chef Frank Lang,  chef at Shula’s 347 Grill at the Norfolk Waterside Marriott Hotel, had won a spot in the stage kitchen next to Flay, and he was in for some good-natured ribbing. “You need to get rid of that hat,” Flay said of the traditional toque of pleated linen that added another eight inches to Lang’s towering presence. “We never wear them until the evening.” Later, when Flay forgot the steaks for a few minutes in the on-stage oven, he pretended to blame Lang. “Hey, don’t you run a steakhouse, Frank?” he said. “How come you didn’t take them out?”

Before he went in front of the crowd to grill the rib-eye steaks with green and red chili sauce, he spoke backstage about grilling the finny harvest of the Chesapeake and Atlantic. “The grill should be blazing hot,” he said. “Sprinkle the fish with a little oil, salt and pepper, and grill it quickly.” Flay doesn’t oil the grill when he cooks fish. “As the flames burn the oil, it turns the fish kind of gray. I don’t like that color.” Most important: “Don’t fiddle with the fish. Let it be. Walk away. Have a drink.”  Flay said the fish will release itself from the grill at the exact moment the skin is firm and flavorful, making it easy to turn.

Flay doesn’t marinate fish for more than a short time. “It’s going to break down if you do,” he said. “Whether you use oil, vinegar, wine or spices, keep the time from marinade to grill very short. You can add more flavor later with a sauce or a chopped relish.” 

He talked about the two ongoing challenges that promote him as a nervy competitor: the “Iron Chef” TV series that has veteran chefs battling each other in a tense effort to transport one unknown key ingredient to the highest level, and the surprise “throwdowns” where he challenges people known to be the best at one signature dish.

The first meeting of Flay with Japanese Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto  was well publicized and unexpectedly dramatic. Flay stood on his cutting board, an offensive and disrespectful gesture in Japanese kitchens. Morimoto was enraged and Flay, unnerved, lost the competition.

The drama in the rematch was less visible, Flay said, but he’ll never forget it. Within the first few minutes, he cut his hand on a food processor blade. “I wrapped my hand and worked one-handed,” he said.  Then the sink leaked and he stood ankle deep in water.  “Like a fool I touched the electric stove top with one hand and a spatula with the other and got a huge jolt,” he said. “My sous chef was saying 'let’s walk off,’ and my mother, sitting nearby, was crying.’ ” He went on to win that round and the respect of Morimoto.

Flay had staged a surprise throwdown Friday with Chesapeake’s Lee Ann Whippen of Wood Chicks BBQ restaurant.  The show will be aired and the winner announced sometime in April, said Stephanie Banyas,  Flay’s business assistant and “Throwdown!” sous chef.

“I’m not anxious to win the throwdowns,” Flay said. “They’re really designed to let someone else shine at something they do well.” Flay, who says he doesn’t have the patience to be a baker, sometimes challenges a pie baker or a chocolate chip cookie maker. 

“That’s something you should know about Bobby,” said Banyas, who was trained as a pastry chef. “I’ve spent years baking and he may have spent a few minutes. Still, we’ll show up somewhere and he’ll make a coconut pie, and he’ll do great.  It’s amazing – something he was born with.”

Theresa Curry, flavor@pilotonline.com