Food I Had

More from the mind of Dave to your plates and pots. Dave Scott from Davecancook.com is one our exclusive contributors and again hits a home run with how he, and now you, can make great Lasagna.

Dave went overtime on this recipe and it has come out as a two part’er’.

This first viedo keys on making the sauce which is “the most important part” to making your lasagna a hit.

We have fallin a bit behind and Dave never stops cooking so stay tuned as we catch up with more great ideas for men in the kitchen looking for something beyond pot pies.

When you get done learning how to whip up lasagna here see more of Dave and his creations in the kitchen at Dave’s Youtube.com page and be sure to leave a comment and tell him where you saw him, on Charlottecritic.com.

Just double click any video to pop in on his homepage.

Dave does requests so feel free to drop him a line as a Youtube comment or right here on our site and let hiom know what you want to challenge the “world’s greatest chef” to make next week in his ongoing series.

Here in the second video Dave takes the great sauce you just learned how to make and tells you where to stick it! I mean stick to the ribs of course!

Found this sweet little insight into the needs and important points in finding a true southern BBQ place to eat at.
We added the 15 points from hillfamily.net and our gereral aggrement or comments to accompany eachimportant line if this culinary bible passage.

1. Pork. ‘Nuff said. (best meat, cooks the softest, tastes the best easy to agree)

2.Cheap. Who can really enjoy a good meal if you know you’ll be working overtime to pay it off? A good pork plate, including slaw, fries, and a pickle, should run about $5-$6. Ribs — baby-back, of course — might be closer to $10 with all the fixins’. (sorry that not too many have a full rack fries and salw for under 10, but I agree this should price out like home cooking and taste like it too.)

3. Ma-Pa owned. Sure, there are good barbecue chain restaurants, a few of which we rated. But the appeal of barbecue is tasting a person’s homemade sauce, which usually tastes so good that friends and neighbors ask for the recipe. Then the person has a good start at establishing his or her own restaurant. (good is good, I love Fred Flemming’s Chain in Florida, great pulled pork and sauces, but ma and pa atmosphere is best.)

4. A place where everyone knows everyone else — except for us, usually. When Jim the Sheriff and Bob the barber come in for lunch, Louise hollers at them, “Hey boys. C’mon in — your table is open. I’ll bring y’all your usual.” (this is nice in all restaurants, only m,ore important in a BBQ etting)

5. Most of the staff should be plump–a sure sign that the product is worth tastin’.
(fat and happy, and Fat guys rule are two of our facts of this website.)

6. No coupons. Any barbecue restaurant that has to lure you in with a coupon isn’t worth tastin’. It should be all word-of-mouth marketing.
( I would never say no to a coupon, so I can live with paying less if they want me too, though it isnt needed for the right BBQ)

7. The aroma of roasting pork should permeate your senses as soon as you pull in the parking lot–even before you open your car door.
(Wood, pork and fries in the air.)

8. It’s got to be casual enough for entire families–great uncle Norm, Great Grandma Ruth, and little toddler Nick, who can’t sit still or keep his voice down low, no many how many reminders from his step-daddy.

9. Southern accents. Southern town. Southern folks. Southern Southern Southern.
(Now this makes total sense since I have moved to Charlotte, no other will do to me)

10. Vinegar based barbecue is our favorite, but tomato-based, which is sweeter, is a close second, followed by mustard-based. True Southerners would quickly step-up to define which geographical region caters to which type of barbecue–vinegar, sweet, or mustard-based. However, each restaurant caters to what they like best, so we’ve concluded it’s a Southern myth. Each restaurant serves pork just how they like it.
(pulled pork just needs to be soft and flavorful with the right sauces in bottles.)

11. Tributes to the pig in all forms around the restaurant: Pig pictures on the outside signs and menu, pig statues in the waiting area, and bathrooms, pig toothpick holder at the cashier’s station . . . you get the picture. You just gotta be reminded of what animal you’re eating.

12. Greasy fries. You know the kind — fried in the left-over dirty greasy from yesterday.

13.Tart, crisp coleslaw.

14. Free refills on soda, and keep ‘em comin’. If you have to ask your waitress for a refill, she isn’t quick enough. We need something to wash down the grease.

15. If it’s a chain restaurant, it has to specialize in barbecue and preferably mention that in the name. Regular all-American grills with a wide range of food choices don’t produce good barbecue.

Now thats an interesting name? and since its a headline of sorts, anyone still reading at this point is apparently a victim of its hook and edge.

White trash Chowder is yet another mutant stew recipe we made while daydreaming at the supermarket. Our goal here was a “white colored” hearty stew, based on the main ingredients of “pork & beans”.

The fact is Pork and beans are both easy to work with ingredients so this name leaves us with alot of room to wiggle and get it right.
Ingredients for this great stew are

Pork Chops (4-5) trimmed into stew sized pieces
8oz white mushrooms (you pick the type)
1 can White kernal corn
1 White onion
1 can pinto beans.
1 cup white rice.
Pinch of White pepper (any pepper is fine, this is for effect)
3-4 slices of bacon cut into small pieces
Salt
Adobo
Garlic Salt
Flour or bisquick
Olive Oil

We start out by prepping it all as usual and get a few money shots with the camera for this site. Chop the pork chops into small cubes or chunks for stew, quarter the mushrooms, and chunk the onion. Chop the onion into good size chunks as well, these should be bigger than diced. The size should be to your preference.

Grab a can or bag (we used a coffee can) throw in this 1 cup of bisquick or flour, a tablespoon of salt, Adobo, Garlic Powder and a few pinches of curry powder. Also add the white pepper (or black) to your taste preference. Remember that in stew a little pepper goes a long way, so just a 4-5 shakes should do it right unless you like it spicy. If you like it spicy use red pepper here for a nice kick.

Into this can throw the 4-5 chunked pork chops.

These stew chunks end up being about to large handfuls. Add this to the can and add the entire small to medium onion cut into chunks as well. Shake the can up and coat it all. Now pour the mixture into the strainer and get all the loose powder off it. If this feels like panning for gold, keep in mind that it kinda is once your hungry.

In a skillet heat up olive oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pan). Put the small handful of fine chopped bacon into this pan and let it crackle for 3-5 minutes. Now throw in the pork and onion with the flur and spice coating. Cook this for 5-10 minutes moving it around and browing and crisping the outside of the pork. Drain off any extra oil, though there shouldnt really be much if any with the flour soaking it up.

Pour this into your stewpot, turn it up to medium. When the pan starts sizzling pour in enough water to cover the meat completely, likely 3 cups or so. At this time add any more salt or red pepper to suit your tastes and let this cook covered on med heat for 45 minutes, and let some of the water cook off.

The meat should still be under water at this point. Pour in the cup of rice and the can of white kernel corn. Let this cook for 10-15 more minutes till the rice look ready. Remember we are making soup so it shoul all be floating and underwater, add a cup or two more if needed since the rice absorbs some. You can see the image of this stage here to see the consistency we were going for.

If you want to taste the progress it should be slightly salty and you should taste the curry just a bit too, though you dont reeally taste the pepper much. Adjust it to be right.

Pour in the mushroom and the canned pinto beans. These ingredients get soft fast so we are close to done. After about 10 minutes you should be hot and thick stew as shown in the pics here. Serve it up with a shake or garlic powder and white pepper if you like flavor, though this was one of the better stews we have made.

This is a great next day stew, you will find out since this make about 4-6 big bowls.
See all the pics of this nice man meal recipe here.

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.

We are slowly catching up on the posts by Dave. We are using his archived recipes. In the future we wont be posting “by Dave” recipes daily like we are now.

Dave has promised us one per week every Monday. With this promise every Tuesday night you can have a new meal from the Southern kitchen master and our very appreciated contributor from this day forward.

Here is Dave making up Spaghetti Carbonara.

How can you possible not like eating pasta with cheese and bacon?

Just the ingredients of this dish served on side dish plates would be great, so when its cooked to perfection this is a great dish that will please.

Picture yourself stirring this cheese and bacon packed bowl of pasta before you hit it with salt and red pepper and serve it up to company, or perhaps you have visons of the great leftover this would make at midnight when you are craving a snack.

Enjoy this sweet “man favorite” dish!

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.

More sauces, or more to be exact “Moore Sauces”.

Picked up an army of sauces,all of which claim to be the bomb on their labels and when my hunger eyes fell upon them. Sauces and marinades may be one of the worst aisles to walk in when you are hungry since sacues are just advertising flavor and go directly to the heart of a hunger problem with their labels and promises of “finger licking, smackin dipping spices!”.

So I picked up on special a bunch of Moore’s Original and had it on chicken today, and followed it up with more from the Grill Mates line tonight on yet another helping of Barbque chicken sandwiches on hoagie rolls. I think this gave me a nice platform for tasting sauces that now fill my entire pantry.

First up was Moores Original Marinade. Moores makets with the very classic label so I am to believe that people have been trying to “not forget the Moore’s!” for half a century. I think the family favorite look and a family standard angle got me to try it, so hats off to their marketing department.

When I did my research, turns out they are around for 30 years now and from Alabama, so that sounds like goo burger people to me.

From their site:
“Moore’s Original Marinade was introduced thirty years ago at a steakhouse in a small town called Jasper, Alabama (just north of Birmingham). Due to popular demand for our Original Hickory flavor we decided a complement was needed, thus Moore’s Teriyaki Marinade was created. In 2004, we added a sauce to our portfolio with Moore’s Buffalo Wing Sauce (Medium Flavor).”

I also got this medium wing sauce and have to let them in on a secret as I am from the Buffalo region. We dont have Buffalo sauce in Buffalo, we dont call them Buffalo wings. (END SECRET)

They are just “wings”, cause the fact that they belong to Buffalo is a given(Go Bills), and the slightly thick light rust colored sauce you call “Buffalo sauce”, is Frank’s Red Hot.

Ill just use Franks if I want that genre of sauce, as everything is is a ripoff of Franks.

Check out Moore’s cool website if you like sauces, I don’t give them my full love, but it’s a great website if nothing else.

All Hail Frank.

Next on the menu for today was more of the Grill Mates line of sauces. These Grill Mates labels are pretty mainstream. If you read my sauce recommendations, then you know I like to pick obscure sauces from local bottlers and with a guy with a cowboy hat on the label. I generally pick my sauces on the assumptions that my manhood is being judged by the label. This is why I chose Stubbs Sauce originally, since it has a nice macho southern black cowboy on the cover assuring me that it will be good. Stubb’s sauce was good, so why change the formula.

Grill mates is corporate standard looking and nothing creative about it, but it is really moving up my ladder. I got alot of the Grill Mates rubs and spices I used in past ribs recipes and all have been a success. I tried the Grill Mates Rub which was a sweet almost cinnamon flavored rub that lasted past the grill and to the plate. I tried the excellent Montreal Steak spice by Grill Mates, which I can only describe as “cracked pepper and rocksalt”. The Montreal spices are spices and pepper and salt and I really liked on any meat you want to add some pepper and heat to.

Tis time around I got the Montreal seasoning sauce from Grill mates which is the same spices black pepper flavor in a thick black/brown sauce. The sauce provides what the rub did, but I would say get the rub. The rub was saltier and will last through grilling better than sauce would.

The montreal line from Grill Mates is good and worth having in your arsenal, go with the rub version.

Now the other I got was the Grill Mates Hickory Bar-b-que sauce. Just look at the photo and see how dark red and thick the sauce is through the glass bottle. This sauce is unpourable and thick. You will need to do the butter-knife in the bottle trick to get this on your food. This sauce is very sweet and tasty and has a stronger and better hickory flavor than any others we have tried.

Grill Mates continues to be a solid choice and better than the higher priced and fancier marketed options by the other labels. Get the Hickory for your next outdoor grillin’ and I promise you will be pleased with this thick sticky mess in a bottle.

So the recap for those who need to catch up on the sauces I spend all my families mortgage money on? You should grab Uncles Yammys, Chocktow Hot Bar-B-Que, and this new Grill Mates Hickory BBQ.

Check out past posts on sauces we taste tested. It has been a long and tough road having to eat ribs, chicken and pork roasts covered in these sauces, but we did it all for the readers who love sticky spicy, hot and kickin meat “dipped in stuff”.

Red Pepper Sauce
Great Sauces Part 1 - End of 2006 Post
Stubb’s Moppin Sauce - The Orange Stuff!
Stubb’s Orange Stuff in Action On Spareribs
Uncle Yammy’s Sacue Post
Sauces Part 2 Continued Adventures

So I will fess up and say I was up late and Emeril came on TV. And since Futurama wasnt on, and I have seen Sportcenter 4 times already today I left him on to see what was in the kitchen.

Well Emeril was making a Chicken “Smear” he called it which was basically a garlic paste chicken served with potatos and veggies. He roasted the chicken with a thick garlic pastes rubbed all over it.

Well after seing the fact the garlic could become the consistancy of toothpaste I became inspired to see how many things I could add roast garlic to.

If you take garlic, cut off the top few millimeters to open up the meat of the cloves. Then place it in a glass bowl and pour a few ounces of olive oil on them so it fills up the cloves cracks and gets the garlic wet on the top.

Add a sprinkle or red and black pepper, cover the bowl in foil and bake it at 350 for 45 Min +.

Expect your house to smell like a pizzeria dumpster, because it will.

The whole house was singing with garlic after 45 minutes, and its best if left to cook for 1 hour. Yu may have to leave the room at some point, its that strong.

I made 2 cloves, which is a bit of a waste of energy, so make yourself 4-5 and save some for the next day.

Once it is cooked and done you take them out of the oven and try to find a way to squeeze the garlic like a round toothpaste tube and you will see the cloves squeeze out like toothpaste.

Squeeze the roasted garlic paste into the bowl, add a tablespoon of olive oil, and then we poured in a jar of our favorite alfredo sauce. To this, black and red pepper again for some kick and some finely chopped green onions for some color and fresh flavor.

We made up some angelhair pasta, and had a whole bunch of small shrimp. Yep, I went out and saw some shrimp on sale and grabbed em!

Pour this sauce in a pan, warm it up, throw in the shrimp and serve it over the angelhair pasta.

Sprinkle the last bits of green onion and some fine chopped parsley on top for the eye and fresh flavor and this was good last night, but great the next day warmed up.

If you are a vampire, dont even think about it, this has som much garlic and onion kick I think my neighbors moved.

Came out like this, which was even better cold the next day.

More great sauces made it to our fingers, then grill then mouth then dippin plate!

The previous sauce post covered about 5 choices and today we add 3 more.

We hit up two that were from Choctow Willy, including Chotow Willy’s Southern gold which is a mild mustard accented dipping and BBQ sauce. I though this sauce cooked off a bit too much and left almost no flavor behind. A nice sauce for dipping into, perhaps shrimp, wings, fingers or anything else that normal mustard would also work on. Cool whiskey styled bottle though!

The second by our new friends at Choctow Willy’s was his Original Hot!
Chotow Willy’s Original hot is an exceptional sauce we picked up at Blooms and likely would be carried at Food Lion as well. This sauce has the number one ingredient is apple cider vinegar and it is very distinct and powerful flavor that is not like any other sauce we had tried so far.

We are highly reccommending the Choctow original hot for your ribs and it is our sauce of choice for our Superbowl Party spare ribs we are whipping up and will eat all by ourselves.

As I type this we have a mountain of spare ribs in the oven at 290 degress for 9 hours, they will then hit the grill for another 30 minutes before they make it to our plate at 6pm for the big game.

They are in foil slathered in Chowtow Willy’s original hot, garlic salt and some red pepper for a spicy spare rib to grease our hands up and taste great!

if you want to make up ribs, wings or need a spicy and original dipping sauce we say go get this one, its a lucky find by us and to you.

last but not least is a nice change of pace and a great sauce for your chicken and home creation asian style meals. We found yet another odd creation from our friends at World Harbors. World Harbors gave us great sauces like Argentine Chimichurri which we discussed here.

This time World Harbor brings us a hot spicy Maui Mountain Teriyaki that goes with our recent string of hot sauces with a variety of approaches. A thin pourable tangy sauce that has a very hot 2nd wind would make a great pour into any skillet friend chicken dish you may be throwing together. Not a dipping sauce in any way but a great sauce to acccent your cooking like you would use soy sauce, but so much more powerful