One of the things I was really looking forward to about coming South for the winter was the chance to eat real, authentic Lowcountry cooking - not what they feed the tourists at tourist traps, but the real deal. We made some inroads into that at the SeeWee Restaurant, but, really, that's just a fried seafood emporium (with belly-busting desserts); and on a previous trip I sank into the authentic glorious depths of Jestine's Kitchen in downtown Charleston. But it was in our local grocery store that I really struck paydirt with the discovery of the mannah from heaven that is pimiento cheese.
I had never even heard of pimiento cheese before coming here, and in truth I don't much care for pimientos. So when the husband brought home a plastic vat of day-glo orange paste and called it "pimiento cheese" I was not instantly won over.
Until I tasted it.
And now...I want to put it on everything. I mean, everything.
So what is pimiento cheese, anyway? It's a very healthful concoction that primary consists of shredded cheddar, mayonnaise, and chopped pimientos. Variants include bacon pimiento cheese and jalapeno pimiento cheese, the latter of which I am enjoying mightily in the morning slathered on a toasted bagel. And as luck would have it, this month's Southern Living magazine had a featured article on pimiento cheese, including recipes using this nectar of the gods!
So for this week's Super Bowl party, which is being held here on Seabrook for about 70 or so people, I'm baking and taking pimiento cheese cookies, and boy do they sound exciting! I've made a dough out of pimiento cheese, flour, and ground pecans, and the dough is chilling in the fridge. Later I'll roll it out and cut it into rounds for baking. A scant little spoonful of strawberry preserves goes in the middle of each bottom round, then the bottom rounds are covered with tops, and the edges crimped to seal before baking. Sounds like the perfect combination of savory and sweet to me. I'll bet they'll get gobbled up at the party. Here's the recipe.
Baking in someone else's kitchen has proven a bit challenging, because as a professional amateur avid home baker I am really super-picky about my gear. This house has a very nice professional-grade Kitchen Aid stand mixer, which is great; but the cookie sheets are flimsy and the oven is electric, not gas. So my cooking times have been a bit off as I've tried to bake things down here. There was no rolling pin, and although I have roughly 8 or 9 rolling pins at home, I didn't bring any here; so I had to break down and buy one at the local Ace Hardware store, now bringing my rolling pin tally to 9 or 10. But the hardest thing to find has been a biscuit cutter - there don't seem to be any for sale anywhere close to where we are staying, and this kitchen, oddly, didn't have one. So I improvised and bought some sort of small plumbing fixture at Ace Hardware, which amounts to something like a small, round white piece of plastic piping, and I'm going to use it to cut out my cookies. It cost all of 79 cents and I felt like a genius when I bought it!
The dog is in favor....
