Tag: Pimento Cheese

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Flavors of the Delta at King & Union Bar Grocery

At the corner of B.B. King Blvd. & Union Ave., the site of the former TGI Friday’s now offers something that feels a little closer to home. King & Union Bar Grocery, the new restaurant connected to the DoubleTree by Hilton and situated just across the street from AutoZone Park, recently joined the Downtown dining scene with an authentic take on food and recipes from around the Mid-South.

King & Union Bar Grocery’s Charcuterie Board sits in front of the KU Burger

“The Friday’s model was an extremely successful restaurant model for decades,” says DoubleTree general manager David Rossman, “but tastes change, and habits change. When the pandemic hit, we reevaluated our strategy and decided to pursue something that’s more authentic to where we are.”

King & Union, which opened July 20th, has a menu which offers plenty of staples that people who grew up in the Delta would recognize. Glenn Brown, director of food & beverage, grew up in Grenada, Mississippi, and uses his history and experience to inform the restaurant’s offerings. “We’ve got classic Southern cuisine,” explains Brown, “but with a little bit of a twist, too. And that’s what makes it so good, just that extra little bit of creativity.”

And Brown’s outside-the-box thinking is on full display with King & Union’s new Thanksgiving special. A holiday twist on the classic chicken & waffles concept is flipped into turkey & waffles. “The waffle is made out of cornbread dressing,” he says. “We’ve got thick, oven-roasted turkey on top, with gravy and a bacon cranberry chutney. And we’ll serve that over mashed potatoes and green beans.”

King & Union Bar Grocery

Turkey & Waffles Thanksgiving Special

That inventiveness is on display throughout the whole menu, with each plate serving a pretty generous helping. The KU Burger sticks two all-beef patties with the regular fixings, as well as pimento cheese, fried green tomatoes, and the restaurant’s comeback sauce, which Brown describes as a “jazzed-up remoulade.”

“Or a bluesy remoulade,” offers Rossman.

But the X-factor that really catches the eye, and the taste buds, is the pimento cheese, which appears all over King & Union’s menu. It settles nicely on the KU Burger; centers the charcuterie plate alongside kielbasa, deviled eggs, pickled smokra (okra pickled with smokey paprika); and, crucially, anchors its own sandwich. The “Mama Rue” combines sourdough bread, bacon, pimento cheese, and tomatoes, and is a tribute to an important figure in Brown’s life.

“Mama Rue was my grandmother,” he recollects. “But the thing is, she did not cook. The only thing in her house when I was growing up was store-bought pimento cheese, which was horrible! But I thought of her when I was trying to come up with new recipes, so I put all these ingredients together, threw it on the grill, and it’s one of the best sandwiches you’ll ever have.”

And King & Union’s pimento cheese truly does pop. Made in-house, the recipe mixes in firecracker peppers to give it a little extra oomph and a lovely reddish hue, reminiscent of the sunsets over the Mississippi River.

(l to r) David Rossman and Glenn Brown

For the intrepid diners, those keen to try out new things or in search of something unlisted, there’s the “secret menu,” where King & Union tests out potential new recipes. And the experiments are usually right on the mark. Brown initially trialed the King Cristo this way, a breakfast sandwich with “grilled ham, raspberry compote, Dijon mustard, powdered sugar, Swiss cheese, and the whole thing fried just like French toast.” That item proved so popular, it worked its way onto the full menu. As for finding the secret menu, well, you’ll just have to visit King & Union a few times and puzzle that one out for yourself (and never forget to keep an eye on the social feeds).

Underpinning every good food experience, of course, is a loaded cocktail menu, and King & Union delivers. The restaurant retained much of the staff from Friday’s, and longtime bartender Sean Hart has spent years coming up with new drinks to try, all using local liquor.


I went with the Ginger Basil Smash, based around Old Dominick Bourbon and accentuated with a strong dose of ginger, sugar, basil leaves, and lemon juice. The Muddy Waters also merits attention, another bourbon concoction with a coffee-infused caffeine kick, accompanied by Madagascar vanilla and sugar.

Want something that’s not on the menu? The bartenders are more than happy to try anything. “We have a lot of drinks named after longtime regulars,” says bar manager Katie Bowles. “And if you ask for something we haven’t done before, well, we’ll probably name a drink after you, too.” On tap, there are 14 beers, 10 of which are local (Rossman concedes that they need to have Bud Light available).

And King & Union has a perfect atmosphere to kick back and relax in with a cocktail. When establishments are able to fully and safely reopen, it’s easy to see spending a few hours in the entry lounge area, or closer to the comfortable bar area, after a Grizzlies or 901 FC game. Right now, a few skeletal decorations are still hanging around, leftover from Halloween decorations. But instead of taking them down, King & Union has a few seated at tables (dressed in pilgrim hats and other Thanksgiving finery for the upcoming holiday) to demarcate social distancing guidelines.

Bar manager Katie Bowles poses with one of the bar’s leftover Halloween decorations.

But as an extension of the DoubleTree hotel, Rossman wants the restaurant to be memorable for not just locals, but tourists. “We want to be a departure from your typical hotel restaurant,” he says. “A lot of them are forgettable, but we want to create an experience where people coming in from out of town can try something authentic to the area, and mix with people from Memphis.”

An exciting component, and the second half of the “Bar Grocery” moniker, is the store selling locally made, pure 901 goods. Think sweet and savory snacks, like Makeda’s Cookies, Shotwell candies, Wolf River Popcorn, or Vice & Virtue Coffee. Rossman wants to expand the grocery offerings over the next few months to offer standard household items like bread, milk, eggs, cheese, and pasta. “There’s not a lot of places to get actual groceries Downtown,” says Rossman. “So we want to create a space where people come in, grab some essentials, and maybe some pimento cheese or some sliced meats. That’s the next thing we’re looking at probably starting next year.”

While it’s been tough on both the restaurant and hospitality industries due to COVID-19, Rossman has seen a good reception Downtown. “We have a lot of people coming in, and guests are eating here multiple times during a stay,” he says. “And that’s what we wanted: both people from Memphis and folks who are visiting coming in and getting a taste of classic Southern cuisine.”


King & Union Bar Grocery is open for dine-in and takeout breakfast (all day), lunch, and dinner 6:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Thursday; 6:30 a.m.-midnight Friday; and 7 a.m.-midnight Saturday and Sunday. 185 Union Ave., 523-8500. Social media: @KingandUnionBarGrocery

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Best Bets: The Sippi at Clancy’s Cafe

CREDIT: MIchael Donahue

MIchael Donahue

The Sippi at Clancy’s Cafe in Red Banks, Mississippi.

While I recently was on vacation, I tried a fabulous Southern culinary item.

Barbecue? Fried dill pickles? Pimento cheese?

Yes.

The Sippi is all of that. And it’s delicious. But you have to travel about 20 minutes from Memphis to try one. Tyler Clancy put this sandwich together at his restaurant, Clancy’s Cafe in Red Banks, Mississippi.

They run The Sippi as a special, but it’s going on the menu in September, Clancy says.

He describes The Sippi as “everything that is Mississippi in a bun, basically. Pimento cheese — the unofficial state dish. Fried dill pickles, being created at The Hollywood in Robinsonville, Mississippi. Pulled pork barbecue.”

These were all items Clancy already had on hand. “We’ve always done barbecue. We had fried dill pickles on the menu since day one. Pimento cheese from catering events.”

He originally made The Sippi as a special two years ago. “The flavors all worked well. It took off,” Clancy says.

Clancy smokes his own pork, he says: “We smoke all our meats on site.”

He uses extra sharp white and extra sharp yellow in his pimento cheese. He grates his own cheese. “We get 10 pound blocks,” Clancy says.

And, he says, “Instead of pimentos, we use roasted red peppers.”

Also, “Our blackening season for our fish. We put that in there.”

And Clancy adds, “Texas Pete hot sauce. It’s the best hot sauce you can get.”

Clancy uses Clausen pickles for his fried dill pickles, which are hand battered in house.

To top off the sandwich, Clancy uses his “sweet Sippi” barbecue sauce, which is tomato-based and includes brown sugar.

Everything just comes together. “The saltiness of the pickles, the sweetness of the sauce, the smokiness from the meat, and the crispy texture of the fried pickles,” Clancy says.

The only thing missing in The Sippi is fried chicken.

Clancy’s Cafe is at 4078 MS-178, Red Banks, Mississippi; (662)-252-7502


Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

There Will Be Snacks

Super Bowl 50 looms, and we’re determined to clear our schedules and dive into the craziness with just about every other American. We couldn’t tell you we know exactly who’s playing, but we’ll definitely be planning what to bring for the snacks. From our cookbook, The Southern Vegetarian, we’re psyched to make the Hoppin’ John Black-Eyed Pea Butter, and we have some help rounding out the dips and spreads table from two friends and fellow cooks who have recommended a couple of recipes they’ll be using on Super Bowl Sunday.

Cookbook author, food stylist, and restaurant consultant Jennifer Chandler offers up a Tex-Mex Corn Dip, which she deems “cheesy, warm, super flavorful, and delicious with Fritos — my favorite chip!” This one is in regular rotation for game day. “When having guests over, I want to spend time with them — not have them in another room while I’m in the kitchen,” she says. “And when it comes to the Super Bowl, I don’t want to miss any play, so nibbles and dips that can be made in advance are my tried-and-true go-to’s. This can be assembled the night before or in the morning and then popped in the oven just before your guests arrive.”

Jennifer Chandler

Chandler confides, “I actually had this Tex-Mex Corn Dip for the first time at a Super Bowl party hosted by my friend Jenny Vergos. Folks at your next party will be asking you for the recipe just like I asked Jenny.”

Whitney Miller, cookbook author and winner of MasterChef season one, suggests a Southern favorite with an inventive twist: Spicy Pimento Cheese with Crispy Green Tomatoes. She lightens up the dish with yogurt and spices it up with Sriracha, everyone’s favorite Asian hot sauce.

Her recipe came about when she decided to add heat to counteract the sweetness of homemade pimento cheese. “Everyone seems to love pimento cheese, whether it’s their first experience trying it or if they have eaten it all their lives,” Miller says. “It always makes me feel good when people rave over mine. What I love about serving it over the crispy green tomato corncakes is that the cheese is ooey-gooey and melty. This is a one-bite appetizer that will keep your Super Bowl guests coming back for more.”

This weekend, some may say they’re in it for the game, some for the halftime, some for the commercials, but we know the truth: We’re all just here for the food! So head to the store and load up on black-eyed peas, cheese, corn, and pimientos in order to make some amazing appetizers that might just turn out to be more memorable than the game.

Hoppin’ John Bean Butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 large garlic cloves (smashed)

1/2 teaspoon coriander

1/4 teaspoon cumin

1 1/2 cups prepared black-eyed peas (or 1 can drained)

1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce

juice of 1/2 lemon (about 1 teaspoon)

1 tablespoon tahini or peanut butter

1/2 teaspoon hickory-smoked sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

In a medium pan over medium-low heat, add the olive oil, garlic, coriander, and cumin. Cook for about five minutes or until the garlic has softened. Add the contents of the pan to the work bowl of your food processor along with the black-eyed peas, Tabasco, lemon juice, tahini, hickory-smoked sea salt, and cracked black pepper. Blend until smooth. Serve with toasted baguette or pita chips. (Makes 1 1/2 cups.)

From The Southern Vegetarian Cookbook by Amy Lawrence & Justin Fox Burks

Tex-Mex Corn Dip

Tex-Mex Corn Dip

1 cup sour cream

1 cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon garlic powder

3 cups corn kernels, thawed if using frozen

1 jar (4-ounce) diced pimientos, drained

1 can (4-ounce) chopped green chillies

3 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, stir together the sour cream, mayonnaise, and garlic powder. Add the corn, pimientos, green chillies, and cheddar cheese. Stir until well-combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Place the mixture in a two-quart baking dish. Bake until golden brown and bubbly, about 30 minutes. Serve warm with Fritos Scoops or your favorite tortilla chips. For a spicier dip, add a 1/4 cup diced jalapeños; this dip can be assembled one day in advance. Store covered in the refrigerator until ready to bake. (Serves six.)

From The Southern Pantry Cookbook by Jennifer Chandler

Spicy Pimento Cheese with Crispy Green Tomato Corncakes

Spicy Pimento Cheese

2 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 1/2 tablespoons plain Greek yogurt

1 1/2 tablespoons mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Sriracha hot chili sauce

1 1/2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese

1 1/2 cups shredded colby jack cheese

3/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Fine sea salt

1 tablespoon chopped pimientos

Combine the cream cheese, yogurt, mayonnaise, and chili sauce in a medium bowl until smooth. Add the cheddar cheese, colby jack cheese, and pepper to the bowl. Stir to combine. Season the cheese mixture with salt, to taste. Fold in the pimientos. Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator for up to one week. (Makes two cups.)

Pimento Cheese and Corncakes

Crispy Green Tomato Corncakes

4 medium, firm green tomatoes

1 cup self-rising cornmeal

1/2 cup fat-free milk

1 large egg

2 tablespoons canola oil, plus more for greasing

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Dice the green tomatoes, and place in a bowl. In another bowl, mix together the cornmeal, milk, egg, and oil until smooth. Pour about 1⁄ 4 teaspoon of canola oil in the cups of two 12-cup muffin pans. Place the pans in the oven for three minutes. Remove the pans from the oven and immediately spoon 1⁄2 tablespoon of the cornmeal mixture into each cup. Top the cornmeal mixture with 1 tablespoon of diced green tomatoes. Bake for nine minutes. Remove the pans from the oven, and using a butter knife, flip the corncakes over. Return the pans to the oven, and bake an additional four minutes or until the corncakes are browned.

Remove the pans from the oven, and spoon one teaspoon of the Spicy Pimento Cheese on top of each corncake. Set the oven to broil, place the pans on top rack of the oven, and broil the corncakes until the cheese begins to melt. Remove from the oven and transfer the corncakes to a serving platter. Repeat the process with the additional cornmeal batter and diced tomatoes. (Makes about 32 corncakes.)

From Whitney Miller’s New Southern Table

Categories
Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen Pimento Cheese Popovers

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen was first sold at the Agricenter’s Farmers Market and that was it. Today, you can get the original recipe and the chipotle (swoon!) at 130 stores, spanning five states in the southeast. Locally, it’s available at Kroger, Miss Cordelia’s, Superlo, High Point Grocery, Easy Way, John’s Pantry, Charlie’s Meat Market, and Whole Foods. 

In honor of their hard-won success the TTK folks have shared their drool-worthy recipe for pimento cheese popovers.

 

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen Pimento Cheese Popovers
Start to finish: 35-40 minutes
Prep time: 5 minutes
Servings: one dozen

Ingredients:
3 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch kosher salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted – plus additional for greasing pan
1/2 cup Tom’s Tiny Kitchen Pimento Cheese

Step 1: Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
Step 2: Add a generous 1/2 teaspoon of butter to each cup of a popover pan or muffin tin.
Step 3: Put the buttered pan in the oven to warm for one minute.
Step 4: In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs with a whisk. Add the milk, melted butter, flour and salt, and stir with the whisk just until smooth.
Step 5: Fold in the pimento cheese, stirring lightly to combine.
Step 6: Ladle the batter into the heated pan, filling each cup about 2/3 full.
Step 7: Bake the popovers for 12-15 minutes at 450 degrees. Turn the oven down to 350 degrees and continue to cook for 12-15 more minutes until you reach your desired amount of browning.
Step 8: Remove the popovers from 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.
Step 9: Eat immediately or at room temperature. (May be reheated in 350-degree oven for 5 minutes.)

Adapted from Lisa’s Food Life.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Perre Coleman Magness’ Pimento Cheese: The Cookbook

Pimento Cheese: The Cookbook (St. Martin’s Griffin) is exactly what it sounds like: an entire cookbook devoted to the classic Southern spread. Written by Perre Coleman Magness, creator of the Southern cooking blog TheRunawaySpoon.com, Pimento Cheese: The Cookbook includes more than 50 recipes that feature the flavors of pimento cheese. The Flyer met with Magness to find out what inspired her cookbook and to hear her secret to mixing up the perfect batch of pimento cheese.

Flyer: How long have you been cooking?

Magness: My whole life. I’ve never been a chef; I did some cooking classes to determine whether I wanted to go to cooking school, and I decided I didn’t. But I’m from a family of people who cook. When I was a kid, my favorite thing to do was make dinner. Both my parents were always big cooks, too, so that’s always been my favorite passion.

Is this your first cookbook? Why did you choose to feature pimento cheese?

This is my first cookbook. Well, I love pimento cheese, mainly, but I love making pimento cheese. I’ve used the flavors in a lot of different ways, and it just occurred to me that no one has written a book about pimento cheese, the different things you can do with it, and ways to adapt it. The ideas just kept flowing, and I turned it into a book.

Perre Coleman Magness

The book’s introduction says you weren’t raised on pimento cheese. When did you first experiment with it?

When I came home from college. When I was a kid, I thought anything with mayonnaise was gross. But when you start going to a lot of luncheons and wedding showers, baby showers, and graduation parties, people serve pimento cheese, and to be polite, you eat it. And it was good! It’s really, really good. So I started eating it and then developed my own recipe. Now, any place I go, if there’s pimento cheese on the menu, that’s what I order.

How long did it take you to perfect your pimento cheese recipe?

I started really simply with just the cheese, mayo, pimentos, and a few spices. Then over 10 years, I picked up little things that other people do. My “house” pimento cheese recipe has pecans in it, which I picked up from someone who put walnuts in theirs. When smoked paprika became a thing, I liked to put paprika in there. Now, that’s my favorite way to make pimento cheese, but you can start going off in really interesting directions. One of my favorites is a barbecue pimento cheese, where I use smoked cheddar cheese, my house barbecue spice rub, and green onions. I was born and raised in Memphis; I had to do something with barbecue.

What are some of your other favorite recipes in the book?

From the spreads, I would say the barbecue and, of course, my house pimento cheese. I love the pimento cheese biscuits. They’re so good with a bowl of soup or with some bacon. The pimento cheese waffles with pimento syrup and bacon — that’s very good. The pimento syrup is kind of like pepper jelly, syrupy. I do a pimento shrimp with cheddar cheese grits, and there’s bacon in there and creamy grits. And then there are a lot of classic Southern dishes, like squash casserole and green beans where you just add those flavors of pimento cheese.

In sampling pimento cheese everywhere, what’s been your favorite?

I was in Atlanta this weekend, and at Empire State South, they do a big plate of food in jars, like a catfish mousse, field pea hummus, and they do this pimento cheese in a mason jar with bacon marmalade on top, and it’s very good. There are a lot of good ones in Memphis: Trolley Stop [Market] makes a good one; Holiday Ham has a good one; Sweet Grass has a burger with pimento cheese on it; Second Line has French fries with gravy and pimento cheese. In Charleston, South Carolina, [I had] a pimento cheese fritter that was like a fried ball of pimento cheese with a green tomato chutney jam, and that was delicious. So, people all over the South, and probably all over the country, are doing really interesting things with pimento cheese, and that’s fun to sample.

Do you have any future cookbooks planned?

I do, but I’m not ready to announce anything. But looking into Southern food and Southern tradition has given me a lot of ideas. Hopefully new things will be coming soon.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Home Plate

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Tom Flournoy is committed to spreading the pimento cheese gospel.

“A lot of people … their only experience with pimento cheese is the stuff you get in the grocery store, which is generally not very good,” Flournoy says. “If that was the only pimento cheese I’d ever had, I’m not sure I would try pimento cheese again.”

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen, the business Flournoy started earlier this year, aims to change all that. After selling batch after batch of pimento cheese at the St. Agnes Gingerbread House Holiday Sale last December, Flournoy decided to package and sell the distinctly Southern treat on a more regular basis.

“We sold a tremendous amount,” Flournoy says. “We’ve gotten a phenomenal response. People who say they flatly don’t like pimento cheese, when we give out samples they say, ‘Oh, well, I like this, though.'”

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen is a newcomer to local farmers markets, so the first part of this year was spent getting approval from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture and settling into a production system: He makes the pimento cheese (his mother’s recipe), his daughter helps package, and his wife helps sell at the market.

Look for Tom’s signature pimento cheese on Saturdays at the Agricenter and on first and third Thursdays at the Delta Market in West Memphis. An eight-ounce container is $4.50; a 16-ounce is $8.

Tom’s Tiny Kitchen (tomstinykitchen.com)

Ladurée, the Paris patisserie with a signature green and gold facade, has long been an institution for luxury pastries and decadent displays of multicolored macarons.

And it was Ladurée that inspired Memphian Erica Thewis to open her own macaron shop on the e-commerce website Etsy. She named her venture Pistache French Pastry — “pistache” for that pistachio-colored institution in Paris and “French pastry” for the passion she developed in culinary school at Kendall College in her hometown of Chicago.

“When I was in France, I thought these cookies are so beautiful, so mysterious,” Thewis says. “In culinary school, when we did a sweets table, we made macarons and tarts, and from then on, I knew.”

Thewis started buying ingredients in March and began test baking in April. Some ingredients are, not surprisingly, hard to come by, like the raw pistachio purée she uses for her pistachio macarons. She orders as much as she can in bulk and says, “I pay a lot in shipping.”

But the results are exactly as Thewis requires: a crispy shell and smooth filling that become chewy after your first bite.

So far, Memphians have had a lot of questions about macarons: how big they are, what they taste like, what texture to expect. Each cookie is a two- or three-bite treat, Thewis says, and very sweet.

The shells are a meringue-type cookie made with almond meal, and the filling is a silky Italian butter cream or smooth ganache. Thewis has experimented with 15 flavors — from rosewater and mango lime to a rich dark chocolate and milk chocolate-hazelnut. Custom orders of all sizes are available. (Thewis recently made 132 neon macarons for a graduation party.) But standard sizes include a six-piece box for $10 and a 16-piece box for $24.

Thewis’ home kitchen serves as her bakery, but she hopes to open her own pastry shop with macarons, croissants, and tarts. In the meantime, she works at a local cupcake shop to keep her culinary skills honed. Visit her shop on Etsy or her Facebook page to see photos and learn more.

Pistache French Pastry; pistachepastry@gmail.com)