Bobby Flay: Shrimp Tamales | Food & Wine

This first dish is basically the signature dish of Mesa Grill. This first one we're going to make is a fresh corn tamale. And obviously you want to start with fresh corn. So this is corn that we just took off the husk. And we're going to put this all in a food processor. Chopped onions. I have red onions. You could use white onions if you like. And then some water. Now if you want to use chicken stock, obviously you could do that. And this is just to kind of get it going. And at this point, you know, we haven't cooked anything. The onions are still raw. The corn is still raw. Now, we're going to take this mixture. You see how loose it is. You know, there's all kinds of cornmeal. It's not corn flour. It's not the really coarse cornmeal. I want the cornmeal to be fine so that when it cooks, it really blossoms and becomes nice and light. So we're going to add a little bit of cornmeal here. As you notice, I measure very carefully. You want sort of a loose mixture. Okay. Now we're going to add some butter. Here's the deal. Nobody's going to know. Only you. A little salt and pepper. We're just going to take this butter and make it disappear into our corn dough. And basically, you just kind of fold the butter in. And it's obviously going to make it nice and rich. Delicious. Okay. And that's your corn dough mixture. Now these are dried corn husks. You have to soak them for at least a couple of hours or even overnight. And it's totally fine so that they become really nice and pliable. Okay. Alright. So you're going to take a little bit of the corn dough. The masa, they call it. Alright. And then you're going to take another one of your wrappers. And you're just going to make strips. And these are going to actually help tie them together. You want to fold it all the way. And you just take one of your strips and you tie it. What you do at this point is you take it and you just steam them for about 30 to 45 minutes. They're really hard to overcook. So we're going to make our sauce. We're going to take some onions, some white onions. And we're going to sweat them. Roasted garlic. When you take a head of garlic, cut off the top of it. Rub it with a little oil. Put it in the oven at 300 degrees for about 45 minutes. It changes everything about the flavor of the garlic. We're going to take a little white wine. So we let that cook out for a little while. We take a little heavy cream. Bring it to a boil and you let it simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes. You don't really want it to reduce because we're going to reduce it a little bit later. We just want the garlic and the onions and the cream to become one. And you want that nice garlic flavor to kind of mellow out a little bit. Some canola oil. Okay. And we're going to take some shrimp. And always season everything on both sides with salt and pepper. Good shrimp should almost have like a crunch to it almost when you cook it correctly. You know, you cook it on one side, you turn it over. I take it off the heat. And I'm going to add my garlic cream sauce. And then we're going to add some fresh corn and then some cilantro. And always fresh herbs at the very last second. Okay. Right before you finish it. All right. We cut off one end of the tamale. Make a slit in the middle. Kind of sprinkle it around a little bit. This is my favorite part of the demo here in Aspen because we don't get to feed you guys. And I taste it and you have to believe me. Mmm. Wow, that's good. Okay. So we're going to take our shrimp. Our gigantic shrimp. I don't think we need five of these because it's going to take over the dish. And you take the sauce. And you make sure the sauce gets into the masa so it really kind of moistens all that good corn masa. A little bit of fresh cilantro. And here's my secret sauce. This is smoked red pepper sauce that we always have. You don't have to do this, but since I have it, I'm going to just put it on. Just brings the flavors together, the colors together. And there you go.