Why hello there! And welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man makes literary and culinary hair shirts for himself rather than just accept he fucked up. I’m your Penitent Pensman, Jon O’Guin, and today, we’re making too much Pimento cheese, almost no one’s going to be happy, and I have no idea if it works out because I’m writing this before I even start cooking, so I will extracting themes and fun a la minute. Because today, we’re making three recipes, which are actually five recipes, which is one of those signs that I’m starting to emotionally spiral out of control. For anyone who wants to get while the getting’s good, click this link, and I hope Charybdis spares you. For everyone else, let’s dig in.

 

Pile Up Of Pimento

The escalation of this week’s offerings actually makes perfect sense, once you understand that I started from a wonky place, and am now doubling down. The start was pretty easy, if somewhat frustrating: I’ve mentioned I intended this month to be “Seoul” Food, a kind of mash-up of Korean and non-Korean dishes. One of today’s dishes was actually one of the inciting incidents for that thought: while flipping through a new cookbook my mother purchased, I discovered a recipe for “Seoulthern” Pimento Cheese. And that excited me, because fun fact about our family: Pimento Cheese is one of the dishes Nate affirmatively likes. Supposedly. It’s like his love of Braunschweiger (a kind of liver-heavy bologna) sandwiches: he likes it in theory, but he tends to just buy the ingredients, then not be in the mood, and have to throw it out.

But not you, buddy. I’m sure you’ll be fine.

Anywho, because of that mild preference, it’s long been a recipe on my “I should make this sometime” list. The problem being that Pimento cheese, while not FUN to make, isn’t particularly complicated, nor is most of its history or etymology: It’s named pimento cheese because roasted red peppers from Spain, pimiento, started being shipped over in cans, and in America, we abandoned one of the I’s, and started putting it in a bunch of dishes, and mixing it with stuff, including cheese. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but that’s it: Pimento Cheese is just a slightly more exotic way of saying “Pepper Cheese”, because it’s made with peppers and Cheese. A standard pimento cheese recipe is “Take these 7 ingredients, and stir them together. The recipe is done, why are you still reading?”

So I’ve felt, deep down, that if I wanted to write about Pimento Cheese, I needed an extra hook. Maybe I’d make it, and then immediately make a grilled cheese out of it, or something. But this new recipe gave me a perfect in: comparing Southern Pimento Cheese to “South Korean” Pimento Cheese. Boom, easy. The only downside is that, to make the Seoulthern Pimento Cheese, you’ve got to make ANOTHER recipe first. So 3 recipes for 2 real ones. That’s fine.

Things Go Awry

And then last week happened: as noted in the FB post, I just had a bout where I just couldn’t properly structure my time, mentally. Like, a 3+ hour doctor’s visit I thought would be “no big deal” for getting the post out on time, and then by the time I was home and ready to work, I was burnt out and needed to handle other stuff. Then Friday, I agreed to help someone in need with a ~50 minute errand (technically 30 minutes for him, but 50 minutes for me, since it’d take me 20 minutes to get home afterwards), but then I stacked on a bunch of OTHER errands (we had stuff that needed to be hauled to the dump, I’d been walking around in shoes that my toes stuck out of for like, 2+ months, etc), and there was a communication issue with the guy I was helping out, so all told, from the time I started the project to the time I got home, it was like, 4 hours.  

But hey, at least it doesn’t hurt to walk.

SO I spent Friday working on the post, and then I worked on it some more Saturday…but it wasn’t done. And I didn’t want to upload a post Sunday, just to start over with a new recipe Monday. But…there was a solution. See, I was writing about Vivian Howard’s cookbooks, and in her second one, she has a recipe for Pimento Cheese! …For which you have to make some spiced/glazed nuts.

Thus, to my frenzied late-night Saturday mind, which did NOT want to have spent the last two nights wasting 3ish hours writing up this cookbook breakdown, a perfect solution: Make Sunday/Monday Jon make another batch of Pimento cheese, and we can finish and post the cookbook review NEXT Thursday: it now fits into the week thematically, it ensures our work doesn’t go to waste, and it gives us more time to get that post done, at the mere cost of increasing my workload this week from about 40 minutes of effort to…Past Jon, why does this say “+2 hours”?  YOU SON OF A-

 

Pimento Mori

Why hello there, and welcome to the “Not-at-all Interrupting History” section, where we discuss the history of Pimento Cheese, while one of the aspects of our personality rampages in the background. Now, the history of Pimento cheese is a complicated and nuanced one, with many twists and turns along the way, and that’s…only kind of a lie?

Like, here’s the most “surprising” thing about Pimento Cheese: it was once considered cutting-edge cuisine, the molecular gastronomy of its day, which is why it was created in…New York. Kind of.

You mean like, Newark?

See, in 1870’s New York, American farmers were trying to make a domestic version of Neufchatel, a soft, slightly grainy/crumbly cheese from France. And one decided to add extra cream to the recipe. The result was the creation of a brand new kind of cheese, which we call “Cream Cheese”. The guy would go on to call his specific brand of the product “Philadelphia Cream Cheese”, because, at the time, Philadelphia was PRIME US dairy territory. It’d be like me making a new wine here in Port Orchard, and calling it “Napa (brand) Wine”. Since people didn’t care about lying that much at the time, everyone just went with it.

Just as Philadelphia Cream cheese is taking off, the pimentos start coming in: Sweet Spanish red peppers, roasted and canned. And the two are very popular with a growing set of ideas known as “domestic science”, or “family and consumer science”, or, in its most popular name today, “home economics”. The idea at the time was a broadening of the technology, and uses of scientific/orderly thinking and organization in the home. Remember, this is the first generation that is growing up with an understanding of germ theory, and growing scientific acceptance of its merits. So they’re looking at how to make homes clean by this new understanding of disease, mold, etc. They’re also into industrial canning (since sanitization is cheaper at scale), mild flavors, and bright colors. Meaning both Cream Cheese (brilliantly white, soft, mild), and Pimentos (bright red, sweet, clean strips) were big successes with the movement.

Behold the pale whites and vibrant reds of the dudes making cream cheese!

Eventually, around 1907, the idea comes to merge the two. The first recipe for pimento cheese shows up in a 1908 magazine article. By 1909, it’s in books. By 1910, it’s being produced industrially: cream cheese manufacturers are getting the pimento shipped directly to them, and are pre-mixing the two. By 1912, you can buy canned pimento cheese across the nation. Because if a thing gets popular enough, American factories WILL produce it. (Or, nowadays, American COMPANIES in Chinese factories, you get the idea.)

Then, in the 1920’s, Georgia figures out it can grow and roast its OWN pimentos. No more importing the stuff, now you’re getting American-grown pimento! And then things get…complicated. The source I have for this history (a seriouseats article originally printed around 2014, and updated in 2018 or so), finds that we hit a kind of disconnect with published materials and personal recollections: there are no documents from before World War 2 about people making their own Pimento Cheese. But there are numerous ones from AFTER World War 2 that assert they were doing it during the Great Depression.

But at some juncture, the South began making Pimento Cheese at home, by mixing pimentos with “hoop cheese” (a cheap cheese made by pressing cottage-cheese) and other binders/flavorings. This approach, of a kind of curd-loaded cheese, led in turn to mixing in grated harder cheeses, with more wet binding agents like the similarly newly popular mayonnaise, and seasoning to your liking. THIS is the birth of the modern Pimento cheese, and its reign in the south. But it was a silent reign: from the 1950s to the 1990’s, you don’t see many recipes for pimento cheese in cookbooks. It’s something people eat, but they’re not showboating about their recipes.

I’ve never seen the musical Show Boat, so I have no idea if this is people coming up to a brightly lit ship, the ship catching fire, or what. It’s just all pale whites and bright reds to me. Hey…

Of all people, VIVIAN HOWARD is quoted in the article, discussing how she grew up eating both store-bought pimento cheese at home, and home-made at her aunt’s. From this humble background, as Southern chefs rose to prominence in the 2000’s and 2010’s, they brought Pimento cheese with them, talking fondly of the dish of their childhood, seeking to elevate it and use it and new and interesting ways, hence how it’s become a modern symbol of the South. But, speaking of new and interesting ways, it’s time to talk tactics: What are we making, and how did we do it?

 

3, 2, 1, Let’s go!

So, obviously we’re doing Vivian’s recipe, we’re doing the Seoulthern one, and then, for comparison/continuity/appeasing Nate, one normal one. The first two of which need you to make OTHER things in order to make them. Viv’s takes the longest, so let’s tackle it first.

Before we begin, though, a quick clarification: I did not follow most of the recipes I am about to give you. Specifically, while Nate likes Pimento Cheese, our mother does not, so in order to keep Nate and I from having to eat POUNDS of cheddar this week, we halved all the actually Pimento Cheese recipes. That might have slightly thrown off the flavors, and if you make these, you’re going to end up with more than you see in our pictures. HOWEVER, we did make full batches of both of the “foundation recipes”, the nuts and the Nuoc Cham. The nuts because, hey, spicy glazed nuts, always a winner. And the Nuoc Cham because I didn’t want to mince HALF a garlic clove (and also because there are other recipes in the cookbook that use the nuoc cham, so it might be useful soon/it’s a Vietnamese dipping sauce. I can order some spring rolls tomorrow and use it no problem.)

Thus we begin with “V’s Nuts”, which I can’t prove are a reference to Deez Nuts, but I also can’t disprove it. This cookbook was written in 2020, Vivian has the internet. Anywho, very simple premise here: they’re pecans (or one of a couple other nuts: if you prefer like, walnuts, go ahead. If you’re thinking about another kind of nut, she says some others will work, but you’ll need to buy the book or personally ask me to find out which ones.) in a seasoned whipped egg-white coating, toasted in the oven. So busted out two large egg whites, and started whipping by hand, like the recipe calls for. Which…MAN do I forget how much I hate whisking things. Which is wild: that’s literally what STARTED kitchen Catastrophes: me suffering trying to whisk egg whites for soufflés.  Anywho, after 6 minutes of suffering, I gave up. You’re supposed to be able to get to stiff peaks in 5, and I wasn’t even to soft peaks.

This is just a lump, really.

Anywho, to that, you’re going to make a spice mixture of salt, sugar, paprika, and cayenne. The recipe doesn’t specify what KIND of paprika, and the only kind I could find was hot smoked, so I tweaked the cayenne down a little to compensate. Was that right? Probably not, but it’s my mix. Add that to the egg whites, with some Worcestershire, and boom, red goo.

You can tell whenever I got irritated at the lack of good picture gaps in the first half of a post, because suddenly during the cooking, the pictures show up seemingly every paragraph.

Toss in the nuts, stir to coat, and lay out on a single layer on a baking sheet that HAS BEEN LINED. This coating will harden and adhere, so do NOT put this on a tray without parchment paper or a silpat or something. Bake for 20 minutes, stirring once, and then…I don’t know, man. The recipe says around 20-23 minutes, you should check for the glaze to be dry, and the nuts to have a “flat, hollow sound” when tapped with a spoon, instead of a “muffed, full sound”. And I’m all for giving people sensory cues, but the sound changes depending on what part of the spoon I tap it with! Also, to not just hear the sound of the spoon slapping the nut into the pan, I’ve got to take off this quite hot nut, and tap it on…what, my hand? The counter? The point is, I’m 98% sure I burned the nuts.

It’s so hard to tell with dark red/brown things. Some of this is definitely black, though.

They look kind of burnt, they taste kind of burnt, I’m pretty sure they’re burnt. But not enough to be inedible: they do still have some spice and sweetness. It’s just a little muted by the char.

Anywho, once baked/burnt, the nuts are supposed to cool for 1 hour before use, hence the +2 hours that catapulted me into a rage earlier. But honestly, it’s not actually that much time, since you can use the hour wait to make the other recipes!

The next one we worked on was America’s Test Kitchen, so we’d have a solid “baseline” recipe. It was a little frustrating to make, not because the recipe was hard, oh no, but because I’d gotten Nate to help me by doing most of the blade work: Nate shredded all the cheese, and minced most of the veggies. The problem was that our kitchen doesn’t have two people’s worth of workstation space. Especially not with a tray of nuts taking up the front half of the stove. So I had to do a lot of balance work, pressing bowls against my chest as I whisked their contents over the sink, worried I was going to drop it straight into the water. Luckily, I didn’t have to do a LOT of it, because ATK’s recipe is very simple: grate some cheddar, half on the normal grater size, and half on the small one, and mince some patted-dry pimentos. Then, stir all that into a whisked mixture of spices and dairy, until the texture you like.

“paste” is the generally preferred one.

The next recipe was the nuoc cham, which is just “mince garlic and thai chiles, stir with lime juice, fish sauce, brown sugar and water”. (Nuoc cham, and we’ll see if I have the energy for diacritical marks on that one, is a group name for a variety of fish-sauce based condiments in Vietnam. Think kind of like how the salsa aisle works in America: most of the recipes are tomatoes, herbs, peppers, and STUFF. Same thing.)

Yes. Very much the same as salsa.

Once that one’s…nuoc’ed out, its’ time for the rest of the Seoulthern recipe, which is, and I do not say this lightly: a pretty weird recipe. Like, for context, both of the other recipes want a pound of cheese. The Seoulthern wants 1 cup, about a QUARTER of the others. And it doubles and TRIPLES down on spice and funk in this mix. Like, you’ve got the pimentos, sure. Then you’ve got Sambal oelek, the Vietnamese pepper paste. And the Nuoc Cham, with the minced chiles. Then you’ve got Korean Chili Flakes, onion and garlic powder…and look at this:

More pale whiteness. Haven’t we gotten enough of that?

That’s not cream cheese, technically. That’s Tofu Cream cheese. Which the author uses because he’s allergic to dairy…but…what about the cheddar? Are you not also allergic to that? (I think, given some other ingredients he uses, it’s a particular issue with like, fresh/raw dairy: like, he uses cheese and yogurt, but not cream cheese or milk, kind of deal.) But hey, this means that if you can get vegan cheddar cheese and mayo, and you make the nuoc cham with liquid aminos or some other vegan fish sauce replacement, it would not be hard to make this mess vegan. And Mess I will dub it, because this recipe is just “dump into stand mixer and mix together, and the results are…slightly weird.

Peppery and weird.

It’s much closer in texture to one of those sour-cream and mayo dips you get, almost certainly because of the reduced amount of cheese in it. But NO TIME FOR THAT, it’s time to finally finish Vivian’s version!

Vivian’s version comes from a place of trying to ‘pep up’ the pimento cheese, which is, to her, typically rather muted, and not particularly complicated or peppery. Hence the inclusion of the spicy glazed nuts: ground up, they add texture and heat to the mix, making it a more interesting dish.

If you know my family, you know there have been DOZENS of jokes about the name of this device.

Once the cheeses are grated, and the nuts chopped, it’s an easy recipe as well: first you mix Cheddar, Monterey Jack, and cream cheese, then you incorporate mayo, sour cream, apple cider vinegar, and a bit of salt. Then, you incorporate the nuts. Boom. Three Pimento Cheeses.

Three pale, beige-y cheese pastes.

What do we think of them? Man, that’s kind of hard to pin down. For me, that is. Everyone else went pretty much 100% how you’d expect, once you know them and their opinions. For instance, it turns out the reason our mom doesn’t like pimento cheese is the texture, so it was unsurprising that she preferred the Seoulthern, since that one’s texture was the least like normal pimento cheese. Which isn’t to say it’s bad: it has a very interesting, almost achingly familiar taste. Nate likened it to the first half of French Onion dip: that vaguely umami, salty-and-sweet mixture. There’s not a lot of spice to it. Nate rated it as almost equal to the America’s Test Kitchen batch, if not fully equal, placing ATK as his number 1 pic. Which, he, as a creature of routine and comfort, makes sense to pick. Also because nothing went wrong with that recipe, as did with Vivian’s. Specifically, in addition to the semi-burnt nuts, I slightly overdosed the dish with cider vinegar: I was trying to eyeball 1.5 tablespoons ,and ended up about a teaspoon over, putting me somewhere in the 1.75-1.8 range. And that (probably combined with the fact that our Cider Vinegar is one of those unpasteurized health food versions my other brother bought when he was here), led to it having a distinct vinegar tang (probably not helped by the reduced sweetness of the nuts to balance). I still think it’s serviceable: the complexity of the mixture makes me feel that it would stand on its own for longer, whereas you might get bored of the ATK version. But it definitely was Nate’s least favorite of the bunch, and my mom was neutral on both it and the normal one. 

ADDENDUM: Just to see if the vinegar flavor was tamed overnight, I tried all three again today. Unfortunately, I didn’t think it through, and didn’t let them come to room temp, so the flavors of all of them were muted enough to be indecipherable…OTHER THAN ti warn you all that fish sauce is remarkably unaffected by cold: it turns the Seoulthern into a weird delayed-release system, where it tastes like a normal, muted version of itself, and then, a second or two later, it just tastes like pure fish sauce.  So always remember to give your pimento cheese time to come to temp when serving.

THURSDAY: WE TALK VIVIAN’S COOKBOOKS

MONDAY: MAYBE SOME SOUP, IF THIS WEEK KEEPS BEING GREY.

 

Recipes

America’s Test Kitchen Pimento Cheese

Makes 3 cups

Ingredients

⅔ cup mayonnaise

2 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 pound yellow sharp cheddar cheese

⅓ cup pimentos, patted dry and minced

 

Preparation

1. Whisk mayonnaise, cream cheese, lemon juice, Worcestershire, and cayenne together in large bowl.

2. Shred 8 ounces cheddar on large holes of box grater. Shred remaining 8 ounces cheddar on small holes of grater. Stir pimentos and all cheddar into mayonnaise mixture until thoroughly combined. Serve.

 

Nuoc Cham

Makes 1 cup

Ingredients

¼ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

¼ cup lime juice

¼ cup fish sauce

½ cup water

1 clove garlic, minced

2 Thai chiles, minced with seeds

 

Preparation

1. Whisk all ingredients together until sugar is fully dissolved.

 

Seoulthern Pimento Cheese

Makes about 2 cups

Ingredients

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

½ cup tofu cream cheese

¼ cup mayonnaise

¼ cup diced pimentos

3 tbsps Nuoc Cham

2 green onions, green and white parts, thinly sliced

2 tsp ground black pepper

2 tsp Korean chili flakes

2 tsps sambal oelek

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

 

Preparation

1. Combine all ingredients in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, beating on medium speed until thoroughly mixed.

 

V’s Nuts

Makes around 4 cups

Ingredients

4 cups pecans halves or walnuts

2 large egg whites

½ cup granulated sugar

2 tbsp paprika

2 tsp cayenne

1 ½ tsp kosher salt

2 tsps Worcestershire

 

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whip the egg whites in a bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients, to soft peaks. In a smaller bowl, combine sugar, salt, and spices, stirring to fully mix. Add spice mixture and Worcestershire to egg whites, stirring to evenly distribute. Add nuts, turning and folding until fully coated.

2. ON a large rimmed baking sheet, lay out parchment paper or a silicone mat, and spread the glazed pecans on the surface in a single layer. Bake for 10 minutes, stir, and then bake another 10-13 minutes, checking for the glaze to be fully dried.

3. Let cool on tray for 1 hour.

 

V’s Pimento Cheese

Makes 4 cups

Ingredients

8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese

8 ounces Monterey Jack

3 ounces cream cheese

1/3 – ½ cup pimentos or finely chopped roasted red peppers

3 tbsp mayo

3 tbsp sour cream

3 tbsp apple cider vinegar

½ tsp kosher salt

2/3 cup V’s Nuts, finely chopped

 

Preparation

1. In a stand mixer, combine the cream cheese, cheddar, and Monterey Jack with a paddle attachment, stirring for around 30 seconds. Add the mayo, sour cream, vinegar, and salt, and stir to combine, another 60 seconds or so. Finally, add the nuts, and stir for 5-10 seconds, just until incorporated. Serve