pimento cheese

I am easily prone to suggestion. A few weeks back, I saw an episode of Diners Drive-Ins and Dives that talked about pimento cheese. And then, last week, Sunny Anderson made pimento cheese on her show. It didn't really even look that interesting to me at the time, but it stuck in my mind. With summertime coming, I was already thinking about artificially yellow things like french's mustard or american cheese. And this sounded like it would hit the spot.

Pimento Cheese Recipe:

1. Shred the cheese: The original pimento cheese recipe is from NPR, but it called for a total of a pound and a half of cheese. And your supposed to run it through the food processor. But I bought my food processor sometime during the Clinton administration. And I bought the most expensive food processor I could afford at the time. It was less than 20 dollars and it holds less than half a cup, I think. There's just no way it would have fit all that cheese. So, the first thing I did was cut the recipe in half. I used half a pound of cheddar and a quarter pound of Monterey jack. The next thing I did was to shred the cheese first with my box grater to give my food processor a helping hand. I hate using the box grater. It's a major pain to clean.

2. Slice up the pickle: The original pimento cheese recipe from NPR calls for a dill pickle or two and tells you to slice it up. I bought pickles that were already sliced because I wanted to eat them in a sandwich later. Nevertheless, even though they were sliced, I didn't think my food processor would be able to handle them and the cheese at the same time, so I wanted to slice them up even smaller. But I didn't know how many pickle slices would be the equivalent of a pickle. So I stacked them up until they got to the length of about a pickle. Then I chopped them up.

3. Add the pimentos: I used half of the jar, but not the juice. 

4. Blitz in the food processor: I mixed all the ingredients together and then blitzed everything in the food processor in batches. It took three batches to get it done. It was an annoying process. 

5. Add mayonnaise: The original recipe called for 2-3 tablespoons of mayo. I had made some homemade mayo a couple days ago. It was a little on the mild side, and I like mayo, so I kept the mayo at 3 tablespoons, even though I cut everything else in the recipe in half. Once you add the mayo, mix everything like crazy. Using a comically large wooden spoon is perfect for this.

I put this in the fridge for a while to let it set up. It was getting really squishy, and I wanted to make sure it had a little bit of thickness to it. 

Apparently, if you're Southern, this is supposed to be really good just smashed between two slices of white bread. Being from New Jersey, I have no idea whether this is true. I also have no idea if there's anything else I should be eating it on. But that night, Sarah and I had it on top of some burgers. And now, I am enamored with it. Cheesy and tangy: there's something very Americana about it, but in a refreshing non-hipster-y way.