CLASSIC PIMENTO CHEESE SANDWICH + #GIVEAWAY by Korina Moss

 

This is a recipe that comes with opinions. 

The upcoming fifth book in my Cheese Shop Mystery series, FONDUE OR DIE, takes place at the Dairy Days Festival. My protagonist, Willa Bauer, needs a quick lunch in between selling cheese from her Curds & Whey booth and sleuthing to catch a killer. I decided to give her a pimento cheese sandwich. I'd never had one before and it sounded straightforward, so I tinkered with the recipe to add a few extra cheeses and included it in the book. Months after doing that, I decided I really wanted to try one of the classic southern recipes I'd first come across like The Masters Famous Pimento Cheese Sandwich. However, most were adamant that the mayonnaise had to be Duke's. I'm a New England girl who grew up in New York on Hellmann's--was there a really a difference? I took to my social media to ask my readers and boy, did they have opinions! After a fun and lively discussion on Hellmann's vs. Dukes, I felt compelled to go in search of Duke's. Once I had the promised Duke's (which was recently crowned best overall mayo by Food & Wine), I did a blind taste test on Facebook Live using egg salad, and surprised myself with the results! (Click the link to discover which I crowned the winner!)

Regardless of the outcome, I was still determined to make the classic pimento cheese sandwich that my southern grandma would make... if I had a southern grandma. Since I don't, I consulted my dear friend, Cheryl Pelicano, from South Carolina, who uses Trisha Yearwood's recipe and adds Lawry's Seasoning Salt liberally. Her children swear it's the best pimento cheese they've ever had. Because this type of spread is already taxing my sodium limit, I didn't buy the seasoning salt myself, but for the rest of you, I suggest you trust her judgment. I also didn't use a mixer because 1. I'm a lazy cook and 2. I wasn't making enough for a crowd. So the measurements below are for one sandwich or an individual bowl of dip. If you'd like to make enough spread for more, follow one the recipes above or just multiply the ratios. 

CLASSIC PIMENTO CHEESE SANDWICH 

Ingredients:

1/4 cup of Duke's mayonnaise

1/4 -1/3 cup of pimentos, drained and chopped

1 cup good quality sharp cheddar cheese, freshly grated

white bread (or crackers if you want it as a dip)

Lawry's Seasoning Salt to taste (optional)

Instructions:

1. Shred cheese. Since I didn't use a mixer, I used my fine grater to shred the cheese. 

2. Drain and chop pimentos. 

3. Put Duke's mayonnaise, shredded cheese, and chopped pimentos in bowl and mix. 

4. Spread a thin layer on white bread and enjoy as a sandwich. 

5. Or eat with crackers and enjoy as a dip. 

(I prefer it as a dip with crackers. I feel it needs the crunchy element and is overly rich as a sandwich.)

I thoroughly enjoyed my unintentional deep dive into pimento cheese spread and Dukes vs Hellmann's. I'm a fan of the spread and could imagine the addition of crab meat for my next venture into making it. Who knew an overlooked food like pimentos--the perpetual wind beneath green olives' wings--could be the star of a dish? As a cheese girl, I'd be remiss not to remind you to spring for a good quality cheddar. 

READERS: Where do you stand on Duke's vs. Hellmann's? Or do you go rogue with a third choice? 

PREORDER NOW

COMING OCTOBER 22ND

Look for FONDUE OR DIE in October and another pimento cheese sandwich recipe, this one using Hellmann's and some additional cheeses. 

*GIVEAWAY: One person who comments will be randomly chosen to receive my new bookmarks featuring FONDUE OR DIE! 

KORINA MOSS is the author of the Cheese Shop cozy mystery series set in Sonoma Valley, including the Agatha Award winner of the Best First Novel, Cheddar Off Dead and the finalist for Best Contemporary Novel, Case of the Bleus. Her books have been featured in USA Today, PARADE Magazine, Woman’s World Magazine, AARP Magazine, and Fresh Fiction. 

For the past several years, Korina has been on her own Eat, Pray, Love journey, which seems to have stalled at the Eat phase. When not writing or sampling new cheeses (a perk of the job), she can be found with a new favorite cozy, doing jigsaw puzzles, or discovering new travel destinations. She has an affinity (some might say addiction) to coffee mugs, loves cats, and can't pass up a new notebook or journal with all those fresh, empty pages. 

The Cheese Shop Mystery series is available wherever books are sold. To find out more and subscribe to my FREE monthly newsletter, visit my website and follow me on Facebook and Instagram. 

Easiest Antipasto Ever #recipe @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: You may have heard me say that my husband and I belong to a supper club with five other couples. Every 6 to 8 weeks, we make a date to get together for dinner. The hosts provide the main dish (meat, fish, chicken, etc) and the others provide some designated part of the dinner. It's a good way to ensure we all see each other, without burdening anyone with too much entertaining. We had a dinner recently in the middle of a very busy stretch for me. My hub and I were designated the appetizer crew and I had big plans to marinate a lot of vegetables and make some wonderful dips, too.

As can happen, I simply didn't have time to cook. I considered a platter of cheese and crackers--boring! Instead I went to one of my favorite farm shops and the farmer's market, and here's what I came up with. 

Isn't it pretty? I'm going to list the ingredients for you, but the point is, there are a million ways to make this and none of them are wrong!

Ingredients

1 pint fresh figs
4 to 5 carrots
Kalamata or other olives
Parmesan cheese
Stick of good salami 
Purchased dip (Mine was a pesto/feta dip from the farmer's market)
crackers

Wash the figs and cut them in half lengthwise. Peel the carrots and cut them into sticks. Slice the cheese and meat into bite-sized pieces. That's it! Arrange everything on a pretty plate and serve with a basket of your favorite crackers.

Just for fun, here are a few of the other recipes I've made for supper club:

Grilled skewers of shrimp and sausage with grits
David Lebovitz's French Onion and Olive flatbread
Pomegranate, Olive, and Walnut salad
Pimento cheese, two ways

FATAL RESERVATIONS is on bookshelves now!

And you can follow Lucy on Facebook,

Twitter,

Pinterest,

and Instagram!

Lucy Burdette's Pimento Cheese Two Ways

The happy graduate with her proud father, Harry, and her proud Aunt Sue

LUCY BURDETTE:  I confess that I've become obsessed with pimento cheese. It began in Elizabeth City, NC at my niece Rachel's graduation party. Her father, Harry Williams, is a chef. Lucky for her (and for us!), he offered to cater her congratulations graduate party. She picked the menu and there were tons of southern delicacies, but the one I hovered over was an enormous vat of pimento cheese.

Pimento cheese isn't new to me--I like to try it wherever I see it (mostly in the south.) If you don't follow golf, you might not know that the Masters golf tournament serves only a few kinds of sandwiches, including pimento cheese on white bread. The recipe is closely guarded, as you can imagine. 

As I hunted for the right recipe, I found there are more variations than you can shake a stick at. The toasted pecans (not at all traditional,) the onions, the scallions, the pimento only, the mayonnaise contingent vs the cream cheese adders. The white cheese, the yellow cheese, the sharp, the mild...even some Parmesan.

Here's what I decided on, and my testers declared it:

Lucy's Perfect Pimento Cheese

6 cups shredded sharp white cheddar (don't buy a pre-shredded package, if you can help it)
4 oz Greek cream cheese (half is Greek yogurt--more protein, less fat)
7-8 oz red peppers in oil, chopped
1 bunch scallions, cleaned and chopped--mostly white parts, sauteed in tiny amount of butter
1/2 cup mayonnaise, more if needed (I used Hellmann's)
dash of Tabasco sauce, to taste

Shred the cheese, combine in a large bowl with cream cheese, beat until well mixed. (I used an electric mixer.) Add the red peppers and scallions, mix well. Add the mayo. If the mixture isn't the right texture for

spreading, you may add more, plus hot sauce to taste.

Chill in a pretty bowl and serve with crackers and celery. Or use in sandwiches.

That is my version. Now I will give you my niece's father's version, which was to die for!

Harry's Dumbwaiter Pimento Cheese

2 lbs of high quality yellow sharp cheddar cheese
2 lbs of white Vermont cheddar cheese
6 medium red peppers, roasted then peeled and seeded, processed until all same texture, by pulsing, but not pureed
Take edible parts of 2 leeks and dice, sauté in butter until translucent
Tip: Leeks are always gritty so after you dice let them wash in fresh cold water for a few minutes. Then take your hand and scoop them from the top leaving the grit in the bottom of the bowl.
1 cup or 1 ½ cup of mayonnaise, depending on desired creaminess
Light Dash or 2 of hot sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix ingredients all together.

Allow mixture to sit for 4 hours so that cheese can absorb flavors of other ingredients

NOTE FROM HARRY: I was the Sous Chef at The Dumbwaiter in downtown Norfolk, working under Chef Sydney Meers. This was his recipe and one of the most popular items on the menu. We used pimento cheese in many ways, such as,  Pimento cheese crème fraise , pimento cheese cream sauce, polenta,  spinach and pimento cheese dish that Sydney called lasagna, pimento cheese topped tart apples on oven baked turkey sandwiches to name a few. Southern Living magazine came to The Dumbwaiter on a tour of Norfolk and when the article was written (which wasn’t even a food article) the writer stated that the Pimento cheese at The Dumbwaiter was worth the trip to Norfolk.


Now back to me, Lucy. The only pimento cheese mistake I made while in the South was ordering a grilled pimento cheese sandwich in a deli. The bread was a fake whole wheat and the cheese very heavy on warm mayo. Honestly, we couldn't even make it through half a sandwich. And we were hunnnnnnggggrey!

But I can vouch for both of the recipes here--they make the perfect snack for reading. Serve with crackers and celery.

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And don't forget to order TOPPED CHEF so you have something to eat while reading--guaranteed to make you hungry! 

In case you think I'm making more of a fuss about pimento cheese than it warrants, look what upcoming book I found in Publishers Marketplace:

From Publishers Marketplace 6/6/13

Perre Magness's PIMENTO CHEESE, celebrating this classic Southern favorite (Pimento is a religion in the South) -- with recipes history, anecdotes and tips, to BJ Berti at St. Martin's, for publication in Fall 2014, by Lisa Ekus of The Lisa Ekus Group (NA).

An Easy, Finger Lickin’ Southern Side—Pimento Cheese

Wow! We had Release-a-palooza yesterday! Congratulations to my fellow Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen cooks, Wendy Watson and Julie Hyzy for their brand new releases! My Kindle is loaded and I am ready to do some summer reading!

I was thrilled to see Finger Lickin’ Dead on the shelves yesterday. I do have a little giveaway after my recipe, so be sure to scroll down to the end of the post if you’d like to enter.

Now, on to pimento cheese! The easy version.

Pimento cheese is a favorite Southern side. It’s served as a veggie dip, spread on sandwiches, and used as a condiment. In fact, I went to a huge birthday party last Saturday at the beach, with some absolutely fabulous food…and pimento cheese was one of the things that the caterers put out.


Since yesterday marked my release of Finger Lickin’ Dead, I thought a little pimento cheese was in order. That’s one of my sleuth, Lulu’s, favorite foods. She even offers pimento cheese dogs and pimento cheese topped burgers on special occasions at Aunt Pat’s BBQ restaurant.

It’s light and tasty, but I think that some people aren’t wild about pimento cheese because of the texture. And that’s a shame, because you can make a smooth version (which is really the kind I prefer, myself.) Here’s how:

Simply Southern Pimento Cheese

1 block extra-sharp cheddar cheese, cubed
1 4 oz. jar pimentos, with liquid
1 cup mayonnaise
1 squirt regular mustard
1 dash garlic powder
Put all the ingredients in your blender. Blend until smooth. Refrigerate for about 45 minutes for the pimento cheese to thicken into a spread.

(That’s right, y’all….I said the blender!) No wrestling with your food processor needed!

To make those little luncheon sandwiches, all the ladies cut the edges off white bread, spread the pimento cheese on them, and set them out on china plates. Sometimes they put a moistened paper towel over the sandwiches to keep the bread soft while they wait for their luncheon to start.
Yes, I could happily eat pimento cheese all day long. :)
And now, some more about my….

"Finger Lickin' Dead" Giveaway

It's time for a Finger Lickin' Dead giveaway! To celebrate the June 7 release of the 2nd book in the Memphis Barbecue series, I'm throwing an easy contest.
To enter the random drawing for a free, signed, paperback copy of "Finger Lickin' Dead," just send me an email--I'm at elizabethspanncraig (at) gmail (dot) com-- with "Giveaway" in the subject line. The contest is open to everyone—my international friends, included. The deadline for entering is Tuesday, June 14th at midnight, ET. The winner will be announced during my post, Wednesday, June 15th here on the Mystery Lovers' Kitchen blog. Good luck!