Pâté of the South: Pimento Cheese

The Colonel and I have just returned from a vacation to Charleston, South Carolina. I will tell you about it in upcoming posts once I go through my over 1,600 photos and get my thoughts together.

Remember this?

When I was a child I could not abide the stuff. I thought it tasted terrible. I remember my mother (and grandmother) having it in the house. There always seemed to be a jar of it in the refrigerator. In my estimation, the only redeeming quality it had was the jar it came in. My mother would keep and use the jars as juice glasses. The jar was the perfect size for that (and it was a bit stylish with its diamond-like pattern in the glass...see base of jar above).

So, when The Colonel and I were in Charleston, one of the places we stayed had cheese and wine each afternoon in its courtyard. There would be red and white wines available, a handful of different cheeses, crackers, olives, lemonade, ice cold water and chocolate chip cookies.

One of the cheeses was homemade pimento cheese. I was a bit wary about trying it when I learned it was pimento cheese. It looked delicious as it was nestled in a chilled glass bowl. What the heck...when in the South do as Southerns do. I took a small sampling of the pimento cheese and spread it over a fancy cracker. To say a shaft of Heavenly light shone down upon me once I tasted the cheese would be a slight exaggeration...Now this was what pimento cheese was supposed to taste like!  

Charleston is a great place to enjoy delicious foods. The Colonel and I ate lunch one day at Hominy Grill. I had the Shrimp and Grits and The Colonel had the Fried Green Tomato BLT. The Colonel bought the restaurant's cookbook (signed by the chef).

Inside the cookbook is a recipe for Pimento Cheese. The Colonel and I made some today to take to a meeting we have this week.

The recipe calls for grated cheddar cheese, Parmesan cheese, jarred pimentos, mayonnaise, bourbon, ancho chili powder, cumin and black pepper.

The Colonel rinsed the pimento pepper and readied it for dicing.

As he was doing that I mixed together the mayonnaise, bourbon and spices.

Now for the diced pimento.

Time to add in the cheeses. First the Parmesan then the cheddar.

I stirred and stirred until everything was thoroughly combined.

Now for the taste test...crackers please...

Delicious! Only one thing wrong with this pimento cheese...no new juice glasses.