Pimento Cheese Popovers

I recently purchased a popover pan and have been playing around with it with mixed results.  I looked all over Pinterest and through cookbooks, looking for the perfect recipe.  After much trial and error, it turns out the simplest recipe was the most successful.  Go figure.

In my last post, I wrote about my pimento cheese recipe.  That recipe yields over a pound, which is more than enough to feed a crowd.  However, Tom and I are just two people, so preparing that recipe means lots of leftover pimento cheese.  I tried adding pimento cheese to the simple popovers recipe and was very happy with how they turned out.  They were slightly crispy on the outside and pillowy soft and cheesy on the inside.

Pimento Cheese Popovers

Vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 cup skim milk (I use skim only because that's what we drink.  This is by no means a light recipe.)
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch kosher salt
1/2 cup Lisa's pimento cheese

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Add a generous 1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil to each cup of a popover pan or muffin tin.  Put the oiled pan in the oven to warm while you mix the remaining ingredients.

In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs.  Add the milk, flour and salt and stir with a whisk just until smooth.  Fold in the pimento cheese, stirring lightly to combine.  Ladle the batter into the heated pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full.

Bake the popovers for 20 minutes at 450.  Turn the oven down to 350 degrees and continue to cook for 15 to 20 more minutes until you reach your desired amount of browning.  I like mine more on the browner side so I went the full 20 minutes.

When you take the popovers out of the oven, immediately take a sharp knife and pierce the top of each popover.  This will allow steam to escape and keep your popovers from getting soggy.



Popovers are perfect for dunking in hot soup or chili

These popovers would be good with a hearty chili or soup.  Or you can eat them my favorite way, hot out of the oven, slathered with butter.  Yum!

Pimento Cheese for Grown-Ups

One of my favorite things in the world is pimento cheese.  Trouble is, the pre-made stuff you buy at the grocery store can be too sickly sweet.  I searched for years for a decent recipe, trying to find the perfect balance between the savory cheese and the sweet peppers.

 

Finally, I bought Craig Claiborne’s book Southern Cooking.  The late Craig Claiborne, the long-time food editor for the New York Times, was a restaurant critic and a Mississippi native.    There are dozens of traditional Southern recipes in this book, and I recommend it for anyone looking to learn more about our regional cuisine.

 

Kicked Up Pimento Cheese

While I credit Craig for his pimento cheese recipe, I really used it as a jumping off place to develop a recipe specifically suited to my taste.  I replaced the canned pimentos with fire roasted fresh peppers, the full fat mayo with light mayonnaise, adjusted the amount of green onions and added a cayenne kick.  I consider it Pimento Cheese for grownups.

Lisa’s Kicked Up Pimento Cheese

1/2 pound mild Cheddar

1/2 pound sharp Cheddar
3 or 4 small sweet pimentos or 1 large red bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup light mayonnaise (In my house, that means Duke’s)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
Generous dash of Frank’s Red Hot
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

Grate the cheeses, or buy the already shredded kind and combine in a large bowl.

Whole Foods has great organic pre-shredded cheese.  It's a convenience food you can feel good about.

Next, roast the peppers.  I have a gas stove, so I just put them directly on the burner, turning them as they blacken and blister.  Alternately, you can toss them with a little olive oil and broil them, turning after they blacken on one side and repeat on the other side.  After roasting them, place them in a Ziploc bag and seal it.  Let the peppers rest for about 15 minutes.

Fire-roasting the peppers

At this point, the skin should rub off of the peppers easily.  After removing the skin, seed, stem and dice the peppers.  Add to the cheese with the green onions and toss.

Roasted peppers taking a rest.

Leave a bit of the blackened skin on the peppers for extra smoky flavor. 

Combine the mayonnaise, lemon juice, garlic, Worcestershire, Frank’s, black and cayenne peppers. Pour into the cheese/pepper mixture and stir well to combine. 

This pimento cheese is best served after it is allowed one hour or two in the fridge for the flavors to marry.  It has creamy texture from the cheese, savory notes from the onions and garlic, the slightly smoky, sweet flavor from the fire-roasted pimento, followed up by a nice slight afterburn from the cayenne. Just yum.

You can serve this with crackers or celery for dipping.  We put it on burgers with Benton’s Bacon for a real treat.   It also makes an excellent picnic food.  Or just go old school and eat it on white bread and wash it down with a big glass of sweet tea.

Eggs and Peppers

When Tom and I first got married, I couldn’t get him to eat an egg to save his life.  I don’t know if this was due to some sort of childhood trauma or what, but the guy wouldn’t touch them.  Slowly but surely over the past 30 years, I have brought him around and now he is an egg fan.  Scrambled, fried, deviled, poached, frittatas or quiches, you name the egg dish, he’ll eat it.
 

Beautiful, Cage Free Eggs

The way I brought him around was to use added ingredients such as cheese, onions or peppers to spice up the taste of the eggs.  I have used spinach and mushrooms in quiches, chard and sausage in frittatas and - of course - bacon in everything.  By far, my favorite ingredient to add to eggs is peppers, any kind.  I wanted to share two of my favorite recipes for eggs featuring peppers.

On a side note:  One of the advantages we’ve enjoyed since joining a CSA is access to cage free eggs.  Discovering the difference between grocery store eggs and farm eggs was a real eye-opener.  I strongly urge you to seek them out.

Prosciutto Egg Cups

Olive oil

1 package prosciutto (I think it’s 2 oz. pkg.  Get enough to line 6 muffin cups)
1 red bell pepper
5 large eggs
1 glove garlic
2 tbsp. grated parmigiano reggiano
1 tbsp. chopped fresh basil

Rub the bell pepper with olive oil on all sides.  Place the pepper on a cookie sheet and broil it, turning frequently until it is blackened on all sides.  When you take it out of the broiler, put it in a plastic zip big and let it rest until it is cool enough to handle.  Rub the pepper gently until all of the skin comes off, then remove the stem and seeds.   Dice the roasted pepper, setting two tablespoons in a large bowl.  Reserve the remainder for another use.  (They are great in salads.)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
 

Before the oven...

Brush the inside of each muffin cup with olive oil. Line each muffin cup with a single layer of prosciutto.  Add the eggs and remaining three ingredients to the bowl, whisking to combine.  Notice I am not adding any salt to this dish.  Between the prosciutto and parmigiano reggiano, there is plenty of seasoning.

Pour the eggs evenly into each muffin cups.  Bake in the 350 degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes, until eggs are just set.  Makes 3 large or 6 small servings.



...All done!

 

This next recipe uses one of my favorite canned items.  Every year, I put up Sweet Jalapeno Slices.  They are the perfect combination of sweet and heat.  Sweet jalapenos are also available commercially.  Just look for them on the pickle aisle at the grocery store.

Sweet Heat Deviled Eggs

6 Eggs

½  tsp. baking soda
3 tbsp. mayonnaise – I prefer Duke’s mayonnaise
1 tsp. mustard
1 ½ tbsp. finely chopped sweet jalapenos
¼ tsp. salt or more to taste
¼ tsp. pepper
Sweet Jalapeno Slices (for garnish)

Put the eggs in a sauce pan and add cold water to cover.  Add the baking soda to the water.  This ensures the eggs will be easy to peel.  Bring the water to a strong boil.  Turn off the heat and put a tight lid on the pan.  Let set for 10 minutes, then take the eggs out, put them in a colander and run cold water over them until they are cool enough to handle.

Peel the eggs and cut them in half lengthwise.  Put the yolks in a small bowl and mash with a fork.  Combine the yolks with the mayonnaise and the next four ingredients in the bowl, mixing thoroughly.  Using a spoon (or if you want to be fancy, a piping bag) divide the filling between the whites.  Garnish with a sweet jalapeno slice.   Chill in the refrigerator for about an hour before serving.  Makes 6 servings.
 

Sweet heat!

If you like the muffin pan and deviled egg plate pictured in this post, they are made by Temp-tations.  I collect it in the black Old World pattern.  Love it!!!  It’s available at www.buytemp-tations.com or www.qvc.com.  They have lots of colors and patterns.  I’ll warn you though, it’s addictive.

I hope you try these egg dishes and love them as much as we do!

 

 

 

Creamed Corned Beef with Crispy Rye Waffles

Occasionally when I was a kid, my mom would make creamed chipped beef on toast for us.  I absolutely loved it.  After all, what’s not to love? I never understood why it gained the infamous moniker “Sh*t in a Shingle”.  Tasty beef in a creamy sauce sounds good to me. 

I was looking for recipes that I could make to use up the mountain of corned beef I have left over from St. Patrick’s Day.  We had already had corned beef hash and Reuben sandwiches, so what next?  I thought why not Creamed Corned Beef?  The classic recipe calls for dried beef cooked with onions in a white sauce served over toasted white bread.  Since my recipe uses my own home-cured corned beef, just plain white toast wouldn’t cut it.  Rye bread goes perfectly with corned beef but I still wanted to kick it up a notch.  Then it came to me:  Crispy Rye Waffles.  I have got to try this.



Mise en  Place

Creamed Corned Beef

1 cup chopped onion

¼ cup butter
¼ cup flour
½ tsp. salt
2 cups milk
1 ½ cups diced corned beef

Melt butter in a heavy sauce pan and then sauté onions until tender and translucent.  Add the flour and stir to combine and cook for a couple minutes to get rid of the flour-y taste. 

Cooking the flour with the onions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add the salt, and then slowly add the milk, stirring constantly.  Bring the mixture to a simmer, stirring constantly, while the sauce begins to thicken.  Once the sauce has reached your desired thickness, stir in the corned beef.  If the sauce has trouble thickening, stir together a slurry of 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1 tablespoon water.  Add this to the sauce and it will tighten up very quickly. Keep the sauce warm while you make the waffles.

Creamed Corned Beef

Crispy Rye Waffles

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup rye flour
1 Tbsp. baking powder
2 Tbsp. sugar
Generous pinch kosher salt
2 cups milk
1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. caraway seeds

Mix together the flours, baking powder, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Whisk in the milk and oil until thoroughly combined and smooth.  Stir in the caraway seeds.  You can keep the batter in the fridge for an hour or two if you need to.
 

Waffles...yummm

When you are ready to make your waffles, preheat your waffle iron.  When it is hot, brush the hot iron plates with a little vegetable oil.  This will prevent sticking.  (You could use non-stick spray, but that stuff is full of wax and chemicals – yuck.)  For each waffle, pour about ½ to ¾ of a cup onto the waffle iron and close the iron.  Cook the waffle according to the waffle iron manufacturer’s recommendation for crispy waffles.  With my iron, that is about 4 ½ to 5 minutes.  Repeat this process with the remaining batter, being sure to brush the iron plates with oil in between each waffle.  You should end up with six to eight waffles total.

Ladle the hot Creamed Corned Beef over one or two waffles and serve.
 

Creamed Corned Beef on Crispy Rye Waffles

I was thrilled with how this recipe turned out.  The crispy, savory waffle was the perfect bed for the creamy sauce studded with bits of salty, garlicky corned beef.  This will now be a post-St. Paddy’s Day tradition.