Strange Days in the South-land

My friend Susan mentioned her love just the other day for all foods Southern, and the addition of the phrase ‘pimento cheese’ brought my childhood back to mind.

My Mom raised us as vegans a lot of the time… then there were those days when she did not. Born just outside of New Orleans, Mom wasn’t even raised vegetarian herself, so it was a hard transition for her when she moved to San Francisco in the sixties and got into what everyone else was doing – sprouting wheatgrass and whatever other kinds of grass they could get their hands on. Growing up, we had basically schizophrenic dietary habits that veered from full-on vegan to lacto-ovo vegetarianism. I can’t say that I ever suffered from this – I managed to be a tubby little thing regardless – but it did mean that we sampled hundreds of the most …unique recipes imaginable. Sometimes they were awesome. Other times… well, we love ya, Mom, but just about every kid goes through the lamentable phase of straight up tossing their school lunch into the trash… Me, on the argument that not even kids in Africa didn’t wanted soggy mashed tofu on sprouted wheat bread. (That was one of her misses. To her credit, she only made it without lettuce once or twice. The bread holds up a lot better if there’s lettuce protecting it.)

Just finishing a novel set in 1940’s Alabama-Iowa-Georgia and then a present-day cross-country trip to the South, I’ve been steeped in the particular food things that go along with the South… Grits. Black-eyed peas. Pimento Cheese. Susan got me thinking — about what pimento cheese actually IS, to those people who didn’t grow up at my house. I looked up pimento cheese, and understand now what the real stuff is: cheese. And cream cheese. And mustard. And hot sauce and pimentos and roasted pimentos and some people put in nuts. Mom’s pimento cheese was really, really, really good, but it didn’t contain any cheese at all. Mom’s recipe went something like this:

2 C. raw cashews

3-4 T. brewer’s yeast

1 C. water

1 C. oil

1/2 t. salt

1/4 C. lemon juice

2 t. onion and garlic powder

1/2 c. pimentos

2 T. soy “milk” powder (optional)

Basically, all that’s left to do is blend everything up, adding the oil last, and make a kind of cashew mayonnaise. Sometimes Mom added about 5 tbsp. of agar flakes to her pimento cheese. Agar gels, so it created the illusion of a more ‘solid’ spread.

When she used agar, Mom stirred it into boiling water, simmered it for five minutes, stirring frequently, and then when it was cooked, she added it to the other ingredients in the food processor. All ingredients were then blended for about three minutes, then poured it into whatever mold and put it in the fridge overnight.

There are a lot of variations one can do with pimento cheese, too – adding chopped green olives, or toasted sesame seeds or caraway or dill… the list goes on. Sun-dried tomatoes and basil is quite good, or you could add onion flakes…

On the face of things, Mom’s recipe seems pretty good, but since I never do know when to leave well-enough alone, I have a few thoughts I’d like to try. For one thing, doesn’t this sound like something that would taste great with the addition of Vegemite? Why use a powdered yeast when you can use the brown glop in the yellow can? And it seems to me that silken tofu should somehow play into this. ‘Cause doesn’t tofu go with everything?

If nothing else, I’ve enjoyed plumbing the depths of my back-brain, and remembering one of Mom’s more random recipes that worked. If only I could figure out a way to make cashews less than 157 calories an ounce, I’d eat this every week…

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