Saturday, November 12, 2011

Pimento Cheese!!!

I have been eating pimento cheese all my life...but I have lived in North Carolina & Virginia all my life.  Pimento cheese is a Southern thing...at least until recently.



 A few weeks ago I read an article in our local weekly...aptly named Style Weekly...about a documentary on pimento cheese that would be shown at the newly renovated Hippodrome Theater in Richmond.  Not only was this a chance to see a movie about one of my favorite things to eat in a newly renovated historic theater...but 8 local restaurants would be serving samples of their take on pimento cheese.

So on Wednesday night four of us enjoyed the event.  The theater is lovely, the film was at least amusing (you can watch it online now at the Southern Foodways Alliance blog), but the highlight of the evening was the pimento cheese....served in oh so many ways.  The real winners were the recipes that started off with cheddar, mayo, and pimentos (or roasted red peppers.)  I am not a fan of cream cheese in my pimento cheese...and I swear that one of the samples had sour cream in it....yuk!!  My favorites?  From The Roosevelt...pimento cheese on homemade pork rinds.  And from the Black Sheep...pimento cheese and Doritos on white bread.  Seriously, don't knock it until you've tried it.

But I am still happiest with the pimento cheese that I make in my own kitchen.  It has strong cheddar, roasted red peppers, homemade mayo, and a little cayenne and black pepper.  That's it.  I use the mayo recipe from The Gift of Southern Cooking by Edna Lewis & Scott Peacock....and the pimento cheese recipe (as a guide) from the same book.


I made a batch yesterday.  And last night we made pimento cheese, bacon, and tomato paninis!!!



1 comment:

  1. Now my mouth is watering for some pimento cheese, which I had not heard of until we moved to Richmond. It was definatley not in the Midwestern food groups!
    Sounds like a fun and yummy event!

    ReplyDelete