Food Blogs

This post is a contribution of cooking and great food ideas from the World’s Greatest Chef David Scott of Charleston, South Carolina. Dave shows us how to cook up dishes that men love to eat in a way that is so easy no man can mess it up. Stop back often to get the latest recipes every week.
You can view all Dave’s recipe contributions here.

I hit Dave up for a request on the coming March madness NCAA tourney. I had hopes for “finger foods with flair” unique and heavy enough to fill up a room full of semi-cultured men. Dipping is compulsive behavior around the tourney time of year and seems this year will be an epidemic.

Teriyaki hot wings are a sure fire way to impress your fanciest Duke-fan friend, while filling up the 340lb guy for UNC, see the recipe then go eat this recipe.

Good morning on this monday!

Here’s another episode of Carolina Cooking With Dave. He’s done it again with a crazy array of four flavors for spicing up our chicken. He even stirs up some dippin’ sauce tasty enough to make your mouth water and eyes tear. This takes an innocent snack and makes it decadent. A great way to kick off March Madness!!

Dave says “We aren’t dipping chips. We are dipping Meat!”

This post is a contribution of cooking and great food ideas from the World’s Greatest Chef David Scott of Charleston, South Carolina. Dave shows us how to cook up dishes that men love to eat in a way that is so easy no man can mess it up. Stop back often to get the latest recipes every week.
You can view all Dave’s recipe contributions here.

It has officially come to be and the world’s greatest chef from Davecancook.com has decided to bring the best of South Carolina to us in Charlotte.

Dave puts out a video series and is a youtube contributor with his cooking for men. Dave cooks southern style meals and dishes, with southern accent for southern tables to share and pass.

You can visit and subscribe to Dave online at Youtube on his page here, or just stop back and see his regular contribution to his neighbors in North Carolina and more specifically the readers at Charlottecritic.com in Charlotte, NC.

In the latest adddition to the series added special for the readers here is a Charlotte favorite “southern style ribs”. Dave serves it up in a mustard base BBQ sauce produced and bottled from our neighbors in South Carolina.

We welcome Dave’s contributions from this day forth as he is in tune with our cooking food that men like to eat and cooking it with finger sticking local style and ingredients.

Southern Style Ribs By Dave.

So man was it hard to read through and watch the sizzling of the pork steaks, BBQ and “southern fried everything’s” that Dave was making in our last post about the Chef Dave series from South Carolina. The photos from this little (big) meal are here in the gallery as well. Next time you see a caterer cutting little radishes in to the shapes of flowers I want you to take a huge pot of this pork hash and brain him with it.

Cooking With Dave post

I have since contacted Chef Dave directly and he sounded pretty excited about showing more people what he loves to do. Dave promises us some special and new recipe videos in the coming weeks to give everyone some march madness cooking ideas.

In hopes that Dave reads this I am asking him to give me something for my grill for the upcoming NCAA tournament. I need a juicy southern style chicken or pork meal that I can grill and lather up with sauce while I watch the basketball games this march. I am sure Chef Dave will hit us with some simple to make tasty dipping meals from the south.

After watching through this video from dave where he makes Pork Butt Roast into the tastiest BBQ hash you ever seen with garlic and onions I was inspired to learn from him and contribute a bit myself.

I didnt have Boston Butt Roast to work with but I did have Butt roast that had been cut to ribs or steak size slabs and that would work just as well. I had a few more bones to contend with but they all fall right out anyhow.

I started last night by dropping my Boston Butt slices into the pot I would use the next day.

The pot had water, black pepper, salt, garlic powder and fresh onion and minced garlic in it. I also added about 1/2 a cup of this great spicy hot terriyaki sauce to the water to add a hot spicy and salty taste to the meat.

Now when the next day rolls around I will pour this water out and start with this presoaked and spiced up pork. Not much of a change from Dave yet, maybe a bit spicier for my tastes.

NEXT DAY:
Next day rolls around and I now pick up with Dave’s tutorial and filled my pan with onions, minced garlic, italian seasoning, pepper and salt. I also added to mine some of my Montreal steakseasoning which is basically a salt and cracked black pepper taste and makes the meal a bit hotter for my personal tastes.

Into this pot I seared the pork like Dave suggests and get it that grilled look all around the outside before lowering the heat for about 2 hours. I chopped and added some hickory smoked bacon (Carolina Pride!) to the pork before this 2 hour simmer stretch. This always adds such a nice hickory smell and flavor to my kitchen.

After the 2 hours, drained it all, got the nasty grease out of the meat.

At this stage where the BBQ sauce goes in I used a bottle of the best sauce I have discovered thus far in my sauce search.

This sauce is Grill mates Hickory BBQ. This is one we raved about in the ultimate sauce post.

This Hickory BBQ goes great with the bacon in the pork and is by far the best BBQ sauce I have used to date. If you go through the time of following Dave’s Lesson on pork, then do yourself a favor and use this sauce.

Dump the whole bottle into your pork as Dave shows and mix it so it breaks into hash. Cook on low to medium heat for about 30-40 minutes more and you get a nice thick BBQ hash with the tangiest swetest sauce you ever had on your plate.

This is where we gave a it a twist and I challenge my new associate Dave to try this one for himself. We dont have enough Carolina experience in my kitchen to make the lima beans and greens like Dave to go with our pork hash, so we gave it our family twist. We ate our Pork hash with Bollitos AKA Bollitos de harina (boiled flour balls).

You can see the recipe for the dominican style ones here:
* 2 cups of medium grain corn meal
* 1 teaspoon of sugar
* 2 tablespoons of butter.
* 2 tablespoons of oil
* Salt

1. Mix corn meal, 3/4 cup of boiling water, sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt and butter. Put 1 1/2 tablespoon of the mixture in the palm of your hand. Mix well with a spatula until you obtain a somewhat-sticky dough. Make into cigar-shaped rolls.
2. Boil in abundant water to which you will add the oil and 2 tablespoons of salt for approximately 35 minutes or until well cooked inside. If you are going to use them for sancocho, skip this step and just add them to boil in the preparation at the point indicated by the sancocho recipe.

You can see from the photos that we serve the Venezuelan style ones in my house which are soft and basically I call them Latino baked potatos because in the end they look and eat like one.

When slapped with butter or guacamole and some pepper these really soak up the flavor of whatever BBQ sauce and meat you mix wth them on your plate.

Thanks to Dave for his inspiration and the meal that is waiting for my downstairs as I type this.

Southern White Gravy With Dave

One of many cooking lessons on the web.

Cooking gravy with Dave brings us the trick to good southern gravy and how to make it think and white as you like it.

A nice authentic recipe and clear instructions to Southern Style Gravy.

Next up Cooking With Dave brings us Southern Fried Steaks, another 7 minute lesson to authentic Charlotte Southern style steaks.

Southern Fried Pork Steaks With Dave

And last up is the homerun from “Cooking With Dave” the world’s greatest chef (according to him). Daves thick southern style and accent caught my eye, and his ability to doo 100 things with pork makes him all about what Charlottecritic.com loves the most.

Thanks to Dave for 3 nice video lessons in the klitchen.

We have shot Dave an email and asked him to contribute more of these great southern authentic style recipes for our readers and get you men in the kitchen making some pork.

Dave is on his way to becoming a handy and smart part of the kitchen here at Charlottecritic.com.

If you havnt been there yet todays the day to pop in at www.taquitos.net.

This is a website dedicated to every and any snackfood from the present and past. I have shown one of my all time favorites, the Andy Capp Hot Fries!.

They feature every chip, popcorn, chocolate, cracker and cookie you can dream up and a review by the author for each and every one. The author eats, reviews, describes and catalogs all the most popular and some very rare snackfood and breaks down the years best in many categories.

Beyond reviews of over 1000 types of chips and 300 types of cookies you can get images from bags and logos/mascots of the various chips and snacks.

The site is more than a review site as this one is, it is also a blog and includes many food articles about the science and myth of the snack food.

Excerpt from “how to eat pringles“

You must be alone.
Pringles do not share well. That’s because …

You should not by any means dump a tube of Pringles into a large bowl.Reason: If you slip up and do so, you will be presented with incontrovertible evidence that a Pringles can holds a boatload of junk food that can probably kill you right there on your Barcalounger and will, at the very least, cause you to hate yourself the minute you finish the can. For similar reasons …

Do not read the nutrition label on the back of the can.

With food, reviews, news ideas and nostolgia on the snack menu you can search out and find that 25 cent bag you used to eat as a kid.

Check out the site www.taquitos.net, and check out the list of the top 10 reviewed snack foods for 2006!

Featuring:
Pirate’s Booty
Sabritas Papas Fritas Adobadas
Lay’s Ketchup Chips
Cheetos Puffs
Andy Capp’s Hot Fries
Sepasang Naga Squid Cracker
Cheetos Crunchy Flamin’ Hot
Hershey’s Kissables
Rap Snacks Lil’ Romeo Bar-B-Quing with my Honey Flavored Chips
Munchos
Kellogg’s Yogos Strawberry Slam Yogurt-Covered
Bugles Original Flavor
Sun Chips Original Flavor Multigrain Snacks
Smartfood White Cheddar Cheese Popcorn
Doritos Nacho Cheese

Found this video of Anthony Bourdain speaking in Charlotte about the “story of food” and what makes true culinary skill. He describes what is easy food and hard food and how the challenges of “hard food” like pigs feet is what makes chinese food such a work of skill.

The concept of working with what is provided makes the true master chef.

Mr Bourdainb’s show which I am a big fan of for both its wit, his personality and the interactions he has in places such as Lebenon and Vietnam.

Visit Anthony at:
http://www.anthonybourdain.com/ 

“Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, is currently being aired on the Travel Channel on Mondays at 10PM ET/PT. Check local listings for times and details. Anthony Bourdain travels the world seeking the authentic experiences and food that flavor the world’s cultures.”

[ youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=_dIya1aJJKA]

As any return visitor types would see we have dropped the feedback portions of many of the reviews and gone to a blog and news site full blown. We have added a specific reading sections about Charlotte Sports, Charlotte Bobcats and the Carolina Panthers to go with our already plenty of “love of food” type content and articles.

We are currently looking for contributors who are self proclaimed experts and’or BS artists when it comes to Charlotte Sports, food or nightlife.

This is an open post to anyone interested that has enough opinion to spread it around.

We will include you in the newsletters and make the forum open for your to add your posts at will, comments below for anyone that feels that can contribute to our site and the local readers looking for something local and entertaining to read.

bad writers with strong opinions welcome.

I Posted recently about my view on food critic qualifications, a need for them and how they can vary with equal results.

I had put forth that a critic often seems to write with their own views in mind and writie with the idea that there audience is the chef, and the restaurant manager. Often I find the writing is a show of culinary knowledge and seldom a view that a reader and patron can relate to. I had somewhat asked that a critic enter and leave as a paying patron, and the first skill should be a eaters skill-set and not a chef’s. I stress the point that I see one similar but different from the other.

I happened across this little ditty that also states my thoughts in a eloquent manner. 

“I am a restaurant critic. I eat for a living. Chefs complain about people like me. They argue that we are not qualified to do our jobs because we do not know how to cook. I tell them I’m not entirely pleased with the way they do their jobs, either, because they do not know how to eat. I have visited most of the best restaurants of the world, and they have not. I believe I know how to eat as well as any man alive … A critic has to understand when food is correct, which is to be admired, and when it is inspired, which we would call a miracle. The job is part analysis (Is this good?), part self-analysis (It’s good, but am I the only person who likes it?), and part gluttony (Have I tried everything on the menu?) … I’ve never been a victim of culinary fatigue, because I can reverse direction and concentrate on the humble whenever I weary of the haute. A natural-casing hot dog off the grill can be as thrilling as Charlie Trotter’s terrine of asparagus with goat cheese, beet juice, and hundred-year-old balsamic vinegar. I often make that point when it’s my turn to pay.”

Excerpt from Creative loafing who got it from Fork it Over.

Timothy C. Davis is an associate editor with Gravy.

Just got done moderating a review, and then had to pull it from our database since it was in Atlanta. While us Queen City folks know Atlanta to be our next door neighbor and always allowed to borrow some sugar, we dont want to make the searchable reviews lead people out of state.

When looking into it a bit further found that this member of our site is also an Culinary and nutrition expert ‘Chef Tim’ located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Tim has a blog of his own you can read here:

http://healthycooking.spaces.live.com/

Chef Tim provided us with this review of a local establishment in the Atlnata area for you al traveling south, and in the review you get a bit of insight on food done right.

We intend to inviter Chef Tim to blog a bit for us as well if he so chooses.

American Restaurant: The decor of the restaurant is elegant and the ambiance was warm, and personal. The service from beginning to end was excellent, and because I’m a Chef also I timed every dishes that came to our table, the steak took 12 mins for a medium ribeye and was out to perfection and all the entrees hot and a sight to see.
The flavors and colors were matched up perfectly.
When i’m out with a guest or alone, I love to enjoy my food and conversation with the company that i’m with and I don’t wish to be interrupted constantly by the wait staff, this restaurant gets a thumbs up,it seemed as though they new the right time to come to the table to see if anything esle was needed, I commend the wait staff at Chops and my hat goes off to the Executive Chef each one of his creations was mouth watering and soothing to the palate.
Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to try any of the homade desserts, because wasn’t any room.

Chef Tim is a Nouveau Cuisine Specialist, Nutrition Expert,Food Consultant, and Health Motivational Speaker. You can contact Chef Tim @ http://healthycooking.spaces.live.com

So im browsing one of the best online food blogs at http://www.amateurgourmet.com, and the latest post is about a bacon, cheese tart.

I got hungry reading it, and yes I think this is wimpy fod that looks so well put together that I can see past the foo-foo.

This Cheese bacon tart is just phenomenal looking.

I mean anything with bacon is already on the right path, but add cheese and camelized onions….this is a must try recipe.

I will be baking this up myself soon - photos to follow.