DEL.ICIO.USSOUTHERN RECIPE RESTORATION PROJECT
Scott Peacock Executive chef at Watershed in DecaturPublished on: 06/07/07
Culinary roots: Born and raised in rural Alabama. Chef to two Georgia governors. Was the founding chef at Horseradish Grill in Buckhead.
Career highlights: Co-wrote "The Gift of Southern Cooking" (Knopf, 2003, $29.95) with his mentor, the late, legendary Edna Lewis, named by amazon.com as its best cookbook of the year. In May, the James Beard Foundation named Peacock best chef in the Southeast.
 Louie Favorite/Staff |
 Louie Favorite/Staff |
| Scott Peacock with his pimento cheese using his mother's recipe in Watershed. |
 Family |
Favorite childhood dish: Pimento cheese. "This is the one dish that I eat every day at the restaurant, and whenever I travel to do special events, a container of pimento cheese for my personal consumption is always on the pack list."
The story: "I've been eating pimento cheese (pronounced as one word — puhmenahcheez) for as long as I can remember. It is, or at least once was, a staple of any Southern childhood. Mostly it showed up in the form of pimento cheese sandwiches, which were always made with store-bought, untoasted white bread. (Sunbeam was the local brand, and it featured a picture of a golden-locked little girl wearing a blue dress with puffy sleeves on the bag. I liked her.)
"Sometimes, for fancy occasions like church receptions or baby showers, the crusts would be trimmed from the bread and the sandwiches cut into little triangles. But under ordinary circumstances, the crusts were generally left intact and the sandwiches simply cut in half. This 'ordinary' preparation was considered part of a simple but delicious and satisfying lunch or light supper when paired with a bowl of tomato soup — usually Campbell's at our house.
"If you were lucky, a pimento cheese sandwich might show up in your lunchbox. My favorite childhood pimento cheese memory is eating it on sandwiches with fried chicken at family picnics on our farm. So, although pimento cheese was not uncommon, it was never something I took for granted and it always felt a little special, like a treat.
"Aside from Kraft singles, Velveeta, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and that green foil can of stuff we sprinkled on our spaghetti, there was only one real cheese in Hartford, Ala., in the '60s, and that was cheddar (we also called it mouse cheese). It was sharp, orange, and you bought it from the butcher.
"I loved going with my mother to buy the cheese. A day that called for 'mouse cheese' meant a trip to the cold storage, a long, narrow building with a sloping floor that was covered in white tiles and sprinkled each morning with fresh sawdust.
"The butcher, dressed all in white, would go into the meat cooler and bring out a large round wooden box. He would reach inside and lift out what seemed like an enormous wheel of cheese, covered with a black or red wax rind. Then, with a curved knife that looked like Sinbad's sword, he would cut a wedge to my mother's specification and wrap it in a sheet of waxed butcher paper that he tore from a big roll on the counter. If he was feeling generous, the butcher might treat us to a thin sliver of the cheese to taste.
"Back home, my mother would cut the wedge into pieces and I would help her grate them with our box grater (she always saved a small piece for us to eat while we worked). Then she would stir Miracle Whip salad dressing, which we called mayonnaise, and a small, baby-food-sized jar of drained, chopped pimento."
How he adapted it: "At Watershed, we make pimento cheese several times a week, pretty much like my mother and I used to. We use the sharpest cheddar we can find — a mixture of orange and white, because white cheddar is sharpest, but p-cheese really needs to be orange. We grate the cheese by hand, but instead of Miracle Whip and jarred pimento, we blend in homemade mayonnaise and diced bits of freshly roasted red pepper.
"We serve it on sandwiches at lunchtime and use it for making cheese toast for Sunday brunch. We also serve it as an appetizer, presented in a little dish with cold sticks of crisp celery on the side."
Scott Peacock's Pimento and Cheese
2 cups (8 1/4-cup servings)
Hands on: 30 minutes
Total time: 50 minutes
Scott Peacock makes his mayonnaise from scratch, but since most of us don't have access to pasteurized eggs, we recommend substituting a good-quality commercial mayonnaise such as Duke's or Hellmann's.
2 1/2 cups (10 ounces) grated extra-sharp cheddar cheese
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
Salt to taste, if needed
5 or 6 grinds of black pepper
3/4 cup mayonnaise
3 tablespoons finely chopped roasted red bell pepper or pimento (see instructions below)
Stir together cheese, cayenne, salt, pepper, mayonnaise and roasted pepper in a mixing bowl until well-mixed and creamy. Taste carefully for seasoning and adjust as needed. Cover and store, refrigerated, until ready to use.
To roast peppers: Wash and dry the peppers; then rub each with a very small amount of vegetable or olive oil. Put the oiled peppers into a baking dish and bake in preheated 425-degree oven for 20 minutes. The peppers will look charred in patches and be blistered all over. Remove peppers from the oven and transfer into a bowl that can be tightly covered. Cover and let rest until the peppers are cool enough to handle. Once they are cooled, remove stems, cut peppers open and remove the seeds as well. Resist the urge to rinse under water to clean the peppers perfectly. It is preferable to have an occasional seed or bit of charred pepper than to wash away the delicious pepper flavor. Roasted and peeled peppers can be kept refrigerated for 2 to 3 days before using.
— From "The Gift of Southern Cooking"
by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock (Knopf, $29.95)
Per serving: 304 calories (percent of calories from fat, 84), 10 grams protein, 3 grams carbohydrates, 1 gram fiber, 30 grams fat (10 grams saturated), 44 milligrams cholesterol, 338 milligrams sodium.
— Susan Puckett
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