Thu Oct 10, 2019
My love of Thai food was a driving force in choosing Thailand as a vacation destination a couple years back. I was way more in tune to what I hoped to eat there over sites I wanted to see, and with only a short timeframe in the country, time in the North was a requirement for getting those important eats in. Chiang Mai became our home base city for most of the trip and it quickly became my second favorite city I've ever been do (Barcelona will likely always be my number one) and I wasted no time eating as soon as I got there. After tossing my bags in the hotel room, I ventured out and went straight to the market, where I picked up a plastic bag of nam prik noom—a Thai roasted chili dip—along with a bundle of pork rinds for dipping, which became my primary snack during my stay. That savory and spicy dip was just one of the many things that left a lasting impression on me, and also something I don't see stateside very often, so it made sense for it to become something I needed to learn to cook at home.
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Tue Oct 8, 2019
It's going to be an unusually busy fall for me, but I really wanted to get one more Meatwave in this year even though there were very few dates where I could make it work. I also wanted to host at least one event on a brisk fall day where we could transition from daytime eats to a night time fire. After conferring with friends, I picked this past Saturday to host our seasonal closeout, but as the day approached, I got nervous because not only was it not cool, but the hottest days of the year were the few prior to the cookout. Then the stars aligned and Saturday ended up be a great crisp fall day for our first cocktail-party themed Meatwave where I served up a menu of finger foods, everyone dressed up, we downed delicious drinks, and finished the night with a campfire and s'mores to put the perfect cap on another great season.
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Thu Oct 3, 2019
When crafting a menu of Filipino-inspired dishes to introduce my NC friends to this cuisine, there was little doubt that adobo needed to be included. I would bet that for many, like it was for myself, adobo is the gateway into Filipino food—it's ubiquitous and easy to come by, familiar enough to make it a comfortable first choice in what can be an otherwise unfamiliar menu, incredibly delicious, and the perfect introduction to the tangy and savory qualities that form the backbone of so much of the cuisine. The only problem was adobo—most commonly a meat braised in a vinegar and soy sauce mixture—is not an easy thing to adapt to grilling or smoking. After racking my brain with a few ideas of how to do it, I finally settled on trying out an unorthodox adobo technique on ribs, and the results were incredible!
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Tue Oct 1, 2019
Sauce Stats
Name
Vivian Howard Blueberry BBQ Sauce
Ingredients
Apple Cider Vinegar, Sugar, Blackberries, Salt, Spices, Fruit Pectin
Most fruit barbecue sauces are really "tomato and," but this sauce is comprised of a solely blueberry base, which makes it incredibly unique, while still delivering a comforting sweet, tangy, and spicy barbecue flavor.
Thu Sep 26, 2019
Meatwave devotees probably already know this, but spicy foods are my jam. It like a lot of flavor, and it's always a plus when there's some heat behind that. So I was pretty giddy when I decided to do my first Meatwave ever solely dedicated to recipes that focused on hot chilies. I knew every recipe I made would be designed to win my heart, but as I was crafting the menu, I began worrying about my guests who were not hot heads like myself. That brought me around to a finding a pepper that could still deliver some heat, but was more focused on flavor, and I found the perfect answer in these Aleppo pepper and mint chicken skewers.
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