The Making of a Cookbook

certain parts of my job. People always ask about the shows, like, you know, how does the judging work, you know, where do the chefs come from? Like I'm Beat Bobby Flay that kind of stuff, and um, like people always want to know like the you know, bts behind the scenes of like I think of anything really yeah. And one of the things that I get asked about is how how do I do my cookbooks? How many cookbooks do you have? Six? That is crazy? I think it's I

think the next one. I think the Beat Bobby Flay is six. The next one is which is going to be uh, it's gonna be with you Sundays with Sophie. We're allowed to reveal it. I don't know point we should find out. It doesn't really matter, okay. Um. The bottom line is like I, um, you know, during the quarantine, you know, like everybody, I was cooking three or four meals a day and like every day felt like Sunday

to me. You know. In fact, I did a piece for CBS Sunday Morning and it was one of that was one of the lines in my in my stand up, which was like every day feels like Sunday and that right now and that's okay because we were all kind of going through the you know, basically locked into our homes for not a short period of time, and we were cooking, and you know, I got I got asked a lot of questions by a lot of people that I know and a lot of people that I don't know,

um as to like, you know, how to cook, how to get dinner to the table on a night on a nightly and Delhi basis, and so people really we kind of went to the that sort of comfort thing. But the thing I loved about it was that it got everybody back to the table in their family's house, and which is not which is something that I think

that we've sort of lost. That's sort of the lost art of of family eating, which is getting everybody around the table, because everybody eats on the go or they they go to a drive through, or they they're ordering in or you know, they're eating they're eating in their car and the way to work or away from work. You know, it's like this country as a as a as a country is so everybody's so busy, you know. But you go to Europe, like people are still like

sitting around the table every night with their family. It's kind of great. So like that was a silver lining of it all. He's you know, got to get back to the table, you know, and discuss the matters of the day, whatever they were. It was really nice. But anyway, getting back to the cookbook situation. So basically, you know, especially for somebody like me who is a professional chef, has restaurants, etcetera. You know, we're not like authors in

the traditional sense of the word, you know. And I shouldn't speak for everybody, because there's plenty of people who are professional chefs that just sit down and write the books by themselves. I don't do it that way. What I do is I get a lot of help from a lot of people. My books always start with something that I'm passionate about at that moment. Obviously, it all revolves around the food that I'm cooking then and what

I'm interested in. And so, you know, my very first cookbook was something called Bold American Food, which was the food of the of the American Southwest, but I was cooking it into New York City. It was, you know, Masa Grill was my you know, the first restaurant that I owned, so was all these Southwestern ingredients and the food was very you know, boldly flavoreds. You know, it was you know, lots of chili peppers, lots of roasted garlic,

toasted garlic, et cetera. Things like that, you know, toma teos and you know, things that had that had big flavors. And it was like the first time that this country was really interested in eating food that wasn't sort of one note. You know, it was time. It was time to kind of wake up our taste buds. And that

was my first book, both American Food. And everybody, least all my friends, including you, left and me about that big book because on the cover of the book, in this little little round picture of me in my um in a vest with a white T shirt and it looks like I'm in a boy band. I have to look it up. It's not pretty. What do you what do you mean? It's so good. It's so good because

you can laugh at it. Yeah. When I remember when I posted, because I was posting these dishes as I was making them during the quarantine, and when I posted the chicken pocata, people just like flipped out. I'm like, wow, it's chicken poccata. But that's what you realize is that, as a professional chef, you realize that most people want things that are simple and things that they recognize. It's really good. I mean basically, it's you know, it's kind

of protein and you pant, so let's see it. And then you take it out and you hit the pan with some white wine. You deglaze it and let's say it's chicken. You're gonna scrap from the chicken that was in the bottom of the pan. You scrape it up, it becomes part of the sauce. You had some capers, some lemons, some butter, some parsley. Boom, just put it

right on top of the chicken. Alright, sok, So I'm gonna show you how to make a classic pocada, and you know, chicken pricata is probably the most well known. I'm gonna make a sword for spocata, and there's different renditions of it. You can put some cherry tomatoes and if you want to, it's like classically pricata, but like that works too, So I just I'm starting with some canoe oil and a pan, and uh, I have salt and pepper on you. I'm using a sword for steak.

If you want to use a fish like tuna or sword, fish is good because it's like a steak like fish kind of emulates like kind of like a chicken breastles peak and that this is wonder flour, which is flower that's already been steamed, so it's already cooked so it doesn't get clumpy. It actually makes it lighter. I like using one or flower in certain things. You have to cook the world us out, okay, and then I'm gonna

go right to the hot oil. You hear that sizzle, and then you just want to let that you want the you want the flower to cook on on that side, the salt and pepper becomes part of the fish itself. And obviously you want to you want to be you know, a little crusty on one side. You want to good contract the texture for sure, so that the key to that is to like, don't flip and turn it until you can you can start to see the edges, start a little bit um, get a little bit round around

the edges. But anyway, getting back to how it gets done. First of all, there's something that people don't know about me, which is that I do like to write. I write all the things that are really important to me. And when I have to speak about something, whether it's like giving a speech or or a talk or when I do my video essays on CBS Sunday Morning, for instance, I write every single word of those. And then in

my books, I write a good amount of it. But I also get help in terms of shaping the book itself, because there's the one thing that the one thing that you learned as somebody who writes a cookbook for the for the first time. But like a lot of times, like you know, a chef will open a restaurant, the chef will get hot. Then all of a sudden, like a publisher will come along and say, would you like to write a cookbook. And if they're not, you know, if they don't come from the literary world prior to

their cooking world, they probably need help doing it. So the first thing you do is you find a co author, and you know, it could be a ghostwriter, or it could be an actual co author. I don't I don't like the idea of a ghostwriter because then you're not really crediting that person for writing it. Um. And so I've always had co authors. Um. My first co author was a woman named jon Schwartz who were had a

few of my books with me. And then Julia Moskin, who now writes for The New York Times, wrote a few of my books with me. She can't do that anymore because she writes with her time, so it would be a conflict of interest. But and then Stephanie Banias, who was my long time assistant, took over that role as co author. And did you know, I don't know how many books Stephanie did with me, probably six or

eight or nine or ten, I can't even remember. Um. And then you know, just recently I started working with a woman named Emily Timberlake no relation to Justin, I don't think. But who knows I haven't seen her dance moves um and uh, you know, and so so Emily and Emily has been you know, you know, terrific writing this this next book with us. And you know, what's the role of a co author? So so basically, I the way it works is I come up with the recipes, and I come up with and basically I come up

with the recipe titles and the ingredients. And I'm really not good at writing down recipes, Like I'm not good at like you know, I don't measure no, you eye everything, eyeball everything. So so you know, like I have to have somebody test them. You know, Stephanie Bannis would test a lot of them prior to that, and you know, when she was writing the books with me. But this this time, I hired a woman named Susie Voo who worked I originally met Susie at the Food Network kitchens.

She's worked on tons of my show, she worked in the Food Network kitchen for a long time, etcetera. She still works with them from time to time. But Sue Suvu is like, you know, she's a machine when it comes to you know, cooking and testing recipes and stuff

like that. So basically what I did for this book was I gave her all of the recipe titles and as much of the ingredients as like as as I remembered, and then she started testing them and then we kind of went back and forth, you know, and she's got a great palette, so I really trusted her in terms of like whether she thought that the flavors are right and the textures are right, etcetera in this net. And you know, we kind of adjust as we go, so then you have to then you know, I'm rolling past

this pretty fast, but that's a long process. Yeah, you know. So then now then we have the recipes and they and then we give the recipes. First of all, I looked them over to make sure that they're right, but then we give the recipes to Emily, who's the co author, and then she puts them in like the recipe style that my particular publisher wants and that you know, I've been working with Clarkson Potter for a really long time and my you know, and then she works with my

editor Jen sit who. So I mean, there's so many and I'm just and I'm just getting going. Yeah, I think this is the thing that you have to understand this is not this is not like I don't like, you know, sit down on my computer one night and write the book, you know, by myself. It doesn't happen. And then, um, and there's all kinds of different parts

to the book. So the head notes. So each a head note would be like the paragraph or two above the recipe that tells a story or a story or an inspirational moment of the of the of the recipe, or it might even just talk about the recipe itself and why what you what you should look look at when you're making it, or why why I like the recipe whatever. It's just a short sort of you know, not a snobsance, but it's a short you know, thought process of that particular recipe. And I have been writing

those myself. Sally Jackson sometimes, who's also like my chief of staff but also is a great writer, Like she works with me sometimes in those as well, where like she'll just sort of take dictation from me and like and write them. But the last few books, I'm just

I've been actually literally just writing them myself. Um. And then there's like chapter openings, you know, you know, like to set you up for each chapter, and so the co author, like Emily would write write that, or whever the co author was for that particular book, would would sort of would take a shot at writing that. I would take a look at it. I might say a couple of things that I wanted included in it. But for the most part, at that point, they're writing in

my voice. You know, that's what happens, is they is they're not writing in their voice. They're writing in my voice. And like that, that relationship doesn't happen overnight. You know, it takes It takes some time, and you do have to as the as the primary author, you do have to spend time with your co author, you know, talking a lot about you know, why you're doing this book and why these recipes are important, and you know, telling stories about why, you know, why why this book is

even existing, so that they understand your your voice. And so Emily has been really good at that. Um. Stephanie obviously knew me like the back of her hand, so that was never that was never really an issue. UM. And then there's things like the introduction, which I write, you know, the introduction to every book to me is like it's like me writing you know, basically the essay of the book, and so I write every single word of it. Um, I have other people that I trust

read it, you know. Obviously one would be my co author, one would be Sally, you know, and they'll they'll read it and give me their opinion. And you know, with the exception of grammar, I don't usually let them change it because I want my voice to be my voice, even if it's not incredibly polished, you know, with my pen I mean, it's my voice and who it is. You have to remember I dropped out of high school

and I was in tenth grade. So it's like I don't have I'm not a literary major, you know, I'm not. I'm not I don't have my master's in writing. Right, So when I was when I was talking to you before about like passion of this, it started out with both American food because I was cooking that kind of food.

And then I opened Bolo, which was in a Mediterranean restaurant and that was and that was a book called From My Kitchen to Your Table, and it was a lot of like o into table things like family stuffs. One that that book, yeah, yeah, that was like that was a sophomore book, so it kind of got overlooked a little bit. Um. And then I and then I cooked. I made a book called Um, I made a book. UM. I wrote a book called Bobby Flake Cooks American and it literally came out on nine eleven. So we obviously

did not promote it. Nobody who cares about a cookbook at that, you know, at that moment of time, you don't even remember that, I mean kind of yeah. And and so that book literally never launched. It just kind of it was, it was produced and just kind of sat in boxes, never really had it had a chance. And then I wrote the Bar American Cookbook. I wrote the Masic Grill Cookbook as Mason Grill but sure it was sort of the second version of the Bold American

Food Book. And then a slew of grilling books, you know, from Boy Meets Grill, tow Boy Gets Grill, Okay, then we did Grilling for Life, and then um, Barbecue Addiction also, so you know, the grilling books you know, really had had a big run. I was, I was, I was. I was cooking a lot outdoors and that's when I you know, started doing a lot of grilling outside on on Food Network. So people knew me for that as well.

Grilling for Life. I did it because I was I decided to sort of get you know, healthier in my life. I did. I did a book called Burgers, Fries and Shakes when we opened Bobby's Burger Palace, so you can see, like you know, of course we did throw down cookbook to beat Bobby Flake. Cookbooks of some of the books are you know, people want those recipes from some of those successful shows, so that gets done. Yeah, So that's

basically you know. And then Bobby at Home, which is I would say Bobby at Home was one of my favorite ones. It's just because it's a good it's such a good one. Bobby at Home because I'm at home. You know, it's like cooking. I think like this next book that I'm doing with you is definitely a version of that, except I got you, so it's better. We have some um lemon juice or lemons. I'm gonna squeeze the juice in some white wine and capers my favorite

in yours. And yes you can tell them some butter, some un salt and whole butter, and and I'm going to take some parsley chop this up. You can use other herbs if you wanted to, like a Reagan will org nicely in the summer, basil night works nice. I'm just gonna chop up some flat leak Italian parsley parsely child and those are those who want at the very end, we're gonna take a look at our swordfish one more second.

It show it's nice and brown. You're like a pracada love. Yeah, so this is this is like one of the like to me, this is one of the key dishes too. You know my new cookbook about you know, basically it's a great Sunday night meal, great great Families style mail flow. I just want to cook the sword for your soul. It's just cooked. And then basically this is all about just like making making a pan sauce right in the pan.

So it's a nice it's you know, it's a lot less lean up, which is also nice when you're cooking at home. Kind of like a golden brown color right now, yeah, really, yeah, golden brown. You want that contrast defectures if you don't, If you put it in while the oil is too cold, it's gonna boil in the oil and you're not gonna get any color. Basically you're basically gonna be poaching into the oil and like that's that's not good. But anyway, so the photos, you know, the photos obviously for a

cookbook are incredibly important. And so I've been working with Ed Anderson for the last I don't know, five or six books. And you know, he's such a good photographer because he just shoots in his very organic way. Also he's quick, which I like to um and he doesn't overthink the shots. He's just trying to like take it for what it is. And when he's shooting me cooking, he's just shooting me cooking, and like he like he'll

he'll like shoot me making a pasta dish. And who knows how many frames he's shots a hundred and fifty and in a very short period of time, there's got to be one good one in there somewhere, right, And and that's the way he that's the way he thinks about it. And so you know, um, I hired the photographer. The publishing house, you know, obviously has a say so in terms of what they want the book to be designed.

Like you know, there's there's a full design for the book itself, you know, and it's things like the colors of the of the cookbook inside and out, and what the font books like, how big is the font you know, where the photo is gonna go, how many full picture

photos are there. It's like, you know, there's a lot, there's a lot to do, and then you know, the photo shoots go on for days and days and days, and like, you know, you and I are sitting right now in my house and in the kitchen there's one, two, three, four people who have who have been prepping all the food for the you know, we're in the middle of doing the photo shoot right now. And part of the photo shoot is just the just the pictures of the

food themselves, what they call duty shots. And then some of them are you and I cooking some stuff and so that there's that there's you know, personality in the book itself, so it's not just food. Um, And that's you know, depending on what the cookbook is, that's really important. When you started thinking about this book, what we're like some of the first dishes that came to mind for this book, Um, Like, I'm so excited that the shrimp pasta dishes in this cook I know you're actually eating

that today. So the shrimp pasta is a is a dish that I would say most of my friends think is one of my favorite, one of their best dishes. Right, So just so you know what it is, it's shrimp with um a pasta called malfadine, which is like it looks like almost like lasagna sheets, you know. So it's got some crinkly edges to it. And what I do is when I go to the store, I asked the fishmonger for the shrimps with the shells on, and I take the shells off, clean the shrimp, and I saved

the shells, and I make a shrimp stock. And the shrimp stock becomes a big part of the flavor in this dish. And I and I so that I cooked the pasta and I have the shrimp stock. So I have the shrimp stock, and then I put some saffron threads in the shrimp stocks, so I have a saffron shrimp stock. And then so I saw I tell the shrimp. I add some garlic and some lemon juice, a little bit of white wine, and then I have the shrimp

stock some butter, and then I cooked the pasta. I throw the potter, I throw the pasta in there, a little bit of the pasta water, and the shrimp goes back in after I started tell it, and I put some fresh arabs like basil and parsley, and a little bit of butter, and I put a little Parmegiano regional cheese. Now, some people will say, like, oh, shrimp and cheese, that's not cool. You know what, It's fine. It tastes good. It's and especially like good quality Parmigiano regiano. It's like

nutty and it's salty, Like what's wrong with that? Okay? So for that dish, could I say I didn't want to buy the shrimp with the shells on? Could I just buy D shell D vened shrimp and then just shrimp stock? Absolutely? But can you find shrimp stock that easily? I don't know. I'll take a look. I hate I hate doing all that to the shrimp, doing what cleaning them? Yeah, nobody likes cleaning shrimp, but a right, So I'm trying to find an easier way to make my favorite postive.

I know, I know, but I mean that's but I have to say, like that is the key of the flavor. And I put it like a little tomato paste in the in the shrimpstoo. So you know it gets that that fruity adic flavor. I don want to take the story fish out, just put it on the plate. You're gonna get rid of some of this excess oil. And then we deglaze the pan with some white wine. Squeeze some lemon juice in there, fresh lemon juice, yum. So you get some acidity from the from the wine, and

you know you're you're you're cooking out the alcohol. You're saving the flavor of the great and you're also getting some acidity from the wine cell. And then we're gonna I'm gonna let that cooked down a little bit at a few capers, Yes, what do you do for a second. And then we're gonna add some butter. And the butter is going to give it, you know, obviously some richness. There's a lot of butter. Really, it's also going to thicken the sauce. It's going to falsify you just kind

of swirl it around. You're just eating the capage right out of the jar. So good, all right, So you know you want the sauce to be kind of white flavorful. Are you liking the capers I just love capers so much. And at the very very end, just before you played it, you put the fresh herbs in. Always add fresh urbans. The very last second you can see how nice and break creep to get, and then you just pour the sauce over the swordfish. M hmm, that's it, gorge. Have

recipes ever come to you in a dream? Really? Yeah, I'm surprised that you asked me that question, because I always thinking about how Paul McCartney said that Yesterday came to him in a dream. It's like one of the most covered songs of all time, and I was just curious if that ever happened to you. I dream about food all of the time, and a lot of times it's finished dishes or I'm cooking something in a pan and I'm looking over it, and you know, sometimes I

jot them down right away. It's usually when I'm like in the middle of doing a menu for one of my current restaurants or a new restaurant, and just like when you're subconscious, I mean, it's like my juices are flowing and where I'm writing a cookbook or something like that. When I really, like obviously, when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I think about his food, and and it's probably the last thing I think about

when I go to bed. But I constantly have ingredients and dishes and restaurants, et cetera always rolling through my head. But when I'm really focused on trying to be creative, like for instance, you know, at a maufie, my vaguest place, like I just had to change a handful of dishes for the you know, for the for the winter. Um. You know, I was dreaming about food then about like side dishes and stuff like. That's interesting. I came up with a dish as a side dish the other night,

you know, basically from dreaming about it. And now a lot of times they're not exactly the way you think they're going to be, because then dreams, so there's a something weird happening, but so it's never like and then there's onions and garlic, and then but I see it somehow, Like I said, a lot of times I see it finished and then I decipher it, and when I wake up, I decipher it in my head as to what I

thought it was. So I've been thinking about white beans a lot, and I've always wanted to have some sort of white bean dish on the menu at a maufie as a side dish or something, and also Christina lies white beans or whatever. I get influenced by my girlfriends sometimes. But so I'm doing like a white bean risotto. So instead of rice. It's sort of a play on what's not true risotto, but the white beans would be it

would take the place of the rice. So it's like, it's interesting, Um, it's white beans that you know, cannellini beans that are cooked fully, but you know, then there it has like uh like some broth and then it has parmesano regiano cheese melted into it, some butter, some crushed red peppers, and then tiny little floretts of like broccoli rob running through it, and then some little cherry

tomatoes but com feed on top. So it's like it's a very kind of like almost like soupy like but kind of like held together with the cheese and the butter, white beans, garlicky, a little spicy broccoli rob running through it, cherry tomatoes on top. I just think it's gonna I haven't started. I'm gonna do it in about a week. But it's a is that I think is going to go really good with all the grilled fish on the menu.

Oh cool, you know it's a side dish. So anyway, that that's that's an example of, you know, something that I dreamt about and then when I write the Amounfie Cookbook one day, that's going to happen. But that could that could happen, you know, when I write the like the Amoufie Restaurant cookbook one day, you know, maybe that dish will be in it. Yeah. Interesting, okay, and what's um, what's your favorite uh to wrap it up, what's your favorite dessert in this cookbook? Oh? In this cookbook a

couple of things. I like the strawberry crostata. I'm a crostater guy because you know, I'm a crostater guy two reasons. Number one, it's Italian and it's and it's like it's and it's casual, it's free form, and also I can do it. And that's the thing I like about. It's very rustic tart. It's not you don't have to like perfectly put it into like a pie dish or anything like a tarp pan. And um, you know, it doesn't

have to look perfect because it's a crostatas. So it's a free form, you know, patriate deal with fruit cooked inside of it. Um. Yeah. So. And also I like the butter scotch pudding. It's got real scotch in it, so good. My feeling is if it doesn't have butter and it doesn't have scotch in, it's not butter scotch. I mean, I like, literally, I like, I like the literal translation. That's fair. All right, Well let's go eat some of that you got it. 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 hoss Dresser. Always Hungry is engineered by Sophie Flay. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.