shipperx | 100 Things Challenge

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

Boy, have I been falling down on this one. I will need to redouble my efforts.

So my weird and 'down home' selection this time is... pimento cheese. Weird because I think it's pretty much a 'Southern thing,' and also because, Southern though I may be, I never liked it when growing up. My memory of it was basically some processed food-stuff in a little plastic cup in places like Piggley Wiggley (Yes, for those outside the deep South, those are a real thing).

Anyway, Southern comfort food and all, it never appealed... until I had 'the real stuff' at Highlands Bar and Grill, and it was delicious. (Besides, I posted 'healthy' last time with apple and celery slaw. Mmmm.)

First up, a partial of a really condescending article about the dip from The Wall Street Journal:

The Tackiest of Southern Indulgences, Now a Favorite of Top Chefs

For years, there was fine food on one side and pimento cheese on the other. But lately even haute-cuisine chefs have been reaching across the Mason-Dixon line and reinterpreting this Southern raid-the-fridge-and-spread-it-on-celery home staple. It's part of a national rethink of Southern food, once decried as trashy, and now understood to be an American regional cuisine worthy of celebration.

While mom's pimento cheese typically consists of processed cheese, supermarket mayo and a jar of chopped pimentos, chefs are upgrading the down-home dish by roasting their own bell peppers, enriching it with everything from artisanal mayonnaise to crème fraîche and adding international accents like chipotle and smoked paprika. We canvassed chefs from north to south to ask how they pay homage to this iconic spread...

Up North
The owners of Van Horn Sandwich Shop, which opened in Brooklyn in January, hail from Chapel Hill, N.C., and have brought pulled pork and hush puppies with them. To make their BLP—a bacon, lettuce and pimento sandwich, of course—they both honor and update tradition with sharp yellow and white cheddar, mayo, roasted red peppers and the added kick of chipotle peppers and parmesan.

Haute Country
Thomas Keller, the dean of American haute cuisine, doesn't serve pimento cheese at any of his restaurants. But at home he makes a mean grilled cheese sandwich with it. The secret to his version is combining uptown and downhome tastes: He uses crème fraîche and smoked paprika, blends it all with chopped-up jarred pimentos and spreads it on brioche.

Celebrity Chef
Bobby Flay, whose mini-chain Bobby's Burger Place offers a Napa Valley burger (goat cheese and Meyer lemon mustard) and a Santa Fe (pickled jalapeños and blue corn chips), goes Southern with a pimento cheeseburger. He blends roasted red peppers, white and yellow cheddar, mayonnaise and cayenne pepper, spreads it on a brioche-like roll and adds the burger.

NPR also has an article that's a bit less insulting. Excerpt from it:

Pimento cheese is so ingrained in the lives of many Southerners that we don't realize the stuff doesn't exist outside the region. Call me provincial, but I was shocked (shocked!) when I learned that everyday people from Boston to San Diego don't slap pimento cheese on bread for a quick lunch, or slather it across burgers for a decadent treat.
While its origins are somewhat murky, it became widely accepted and available sometime in the early 1900s, after a period of development and incubation on Southern farms...

I've been depending on Highland Bar and Grill's Frank Stitt (the Susan Lucci of the James Beard awards, in that he's been nominated 11 times but hasn't yet won) version, since he has it in his book Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions

(This is really, really easy. BTW. Although I cheat by using store bought roasted red peppers. It's quite good on celery, wheat thins, toast points, or the traditional saltines)

Shred 1 pound sharp yellow cheddar
blend it with ¼ pound cream cheese
1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper
3 large red bell peppers (roasted, peeled, seeded and chopped) {Or...y'know... bought}
½ cup mayonnaise
a splash of hot sauce (such as Tabasco or Cholula)
several splashes of Worcestershire
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

BTW - one can also use pimentos in pimento cheese. (Imagine that!) Pimentos are actually a type of cherry chilli pepper. Just remember that a little goes a looooong way and also then skip the cayenne.