pimento cheese deviled eggs + a crazy thing happened

Well here’s a thing, I have a daughter now. Excuse me what? Yes! For real! Cos and I are proud parents to baby girl, born on July 29th. Her name is Enid Wynn - Enid from the Arthurian legend of Geraint and Enid, Wynn as a tribute to her late paternal grandmother. She has prolific cheeks, epic thigh rolls, and both of her parents completely and utterly wrapped around her tiny little pinky finger. 

But let’s rewind to earlier this spring, back when we thought the pandemic might be a mere passing grievance rather than the persistent upheaval of daily life it is. Remember those days? I had mentioned that we’d had our brush with the non-beer corona, but I was too afraid at the time to mention my pregnancy. Our concern about how our relatively healthy bodies responded to the virus was one thing, but our anxiety over how it would affect the baby? NEXT LEVEL. And how did it, exactly? It’s hard to say. What we do know is that I got sick at the start of the 2nd trimester. (So sick, in fact, that I was not permitted to enter my OB clinic for two! whole! months!) Once I finally got in for an ultrasound around 26 weeks, she measured alarmingly small. It wasn’t until the 3rd trimester, when my month-long fever broke, that she started to grow like a weed. Thank goodness! We don’t really know much else, and quite frankly, I hope we never need to. 

Ultimately, I delivered our girl via caesarean after 75 hours of labor (yes, you read that right). She measured 21 inches long (tall like her mama) and weighed 8lb 6oz, impressive considering our prior concerns over her growth and that she came 2 weeks early on account of me developing gestational hypertension. Sadly, while delivery marked the blessed, merciful end to my pregnancy (’twas a scary affair, this pandemic pregnancy), it was only the beginning of a truly traumatizing postpartum journey. After a full week of being gaslit and scoffed at as overly worrisome by multiple medical professionals, I was re-hospitalized for pulmonary edema and compromised heart function. I spent my first night away from my baby before she was even a week old. 

My birth story, specifically as it relates to the little discussed but often experienced postpartum PTSD, is something I aim to write more about outside of this food blog at some point. For now, it’s safe to say that Enid herself has absolutely been the easiest and best part of it all. She is an objectively easy-going baby, truly a dream.  And lord did we luck out because wow wow wow even the easiest newborns are challenging. It’s a real shocker I know but not sleeping is HARD, and I’m not even someone who needs tons of sleep. Now at over a month in we are finally coming up for air - gathering our wits about us and picking back up where we left off with everything that got dropped when Enid’s birth became imminent.

Which brings me (finally!) around to these deviled eggs. I had planned this post as an announcement that I was having a baby, and I guess it still is though the vibe is admittedly less joyful than I’d hoped. So, why deviled eggs? Well, despite what her birth certificate says - that Enid is, in fact, a native Angeleno - I maintained throughout pregnancy that as my daughter she’d affirmatively be “half southern.” And if my constant craving for pimento cheese while she was in the belly counts as any indication, half southern she most certainly is. (TBD if she’ll have southern accent.) For months, there were not enough opportunities in a calendar day for me to reasonably count a hunk of pimento cheese as a meal...or snack for that matter. I ate it multiple times a day and only gave it up when all that cheese finally made the most aggravating of pregnancy ailments twenty million times worse (IYKYK). Sometimes I even branched out and ate it with something other than whatever carb was nearby. You know like a vegetable or protein, nutrition and stuff! These eggs were born from one of those times.

Now normally, this is the part where I’d start to wax on about the flavors and textures and irresistibility of it all, but we’ve already orbited the moon twice in this post, and honestly these taste exactly like deviled eggs stuffed with pimento cheese. So I’m going to trust that if you’re into those things you’ll want to get into these. They’re pretty cute with a little piece of bacon on top and maybe some chives or scallions for garnish. But those things are, along with being pregnant during the time of corona, totally optional and not at all necessary for maximum enjoyment. 

Pimento Cheese Deviled Eggs, from Umami for Days
makes 12 deviled eggs

Deviled Eggs
6 eggs, hard-boiled (instructions below)
1/4 to 1/2 cup pimento cheese spread (recipe below)
1 tsp dijion mustard
2 to 4 tbsp mayonnaise
A few dashes of vinegary red hot sauce like Frank’s Red Hot or Texas Pete or 1/2 tbsp distilled white vinegar + dash of cayenne pepper
kosher salt and cracked black pepper to taste
Crispy bacon and chives or scallions for garnish (optional)

Peel hard-boiled eggs, removing all bits of shell. (I like to rinse quickly and pat dry with a paper towel to be 100% about it.) Slice each egg into two pieces - top to bottom for the traditional deviled-egg look (outer circle in photos above) or through the middle for a round, humpty-dumpty vibe (middle two eggs in photos above). Carefully…wait, even more carefully than that…remove the yolks to a medium bowl and arrange the sliced and hollowed out egg whites onto a serving platter.

Add to the medium bowl with the egg yolks: 1/4 cup pimento spread, 1 tsp dijon mustard, 2 tbsp mayonnaise, a couple dashes hot sauce (or vinegar and cayenne pepper). Mix well and taste, season with salt and pepper, then add more pimento spread, mayonnaise, hot sauce, or dijon mustard as needed. Once this mixture tastes good enough to eat, you are ready to fill your eggs.

Place a tumbler cup on the counter (roughly 8 oz cup). Open a ziploc bag and line the inside of the cup with the bag, turning down the top half of the bag over edges of the cup (photo above). Fill the bag up to the top of the cup with the egg and pimento mixture, then gather up the top of the bag and twist it off just above where it is filled to remove the air. Snip the end of the bag off and use this makeshift pipping bag to pipe the egg mixture back into the eggs. You will have some extra even if you overfill the eggs, which FYI, tastes real good on crackers.

Chill in the fridge for at least an hour. If well-covered these can be prepared 24 hours in advance of when you need them before they risk taking on the smells of whatever else is hanging out in your fridge (ie, the dreaded “fridge smells”). When ready to eat, garnish the eggs with a small piece of crispy bacon and some chives if you feel like it.

Pimento Cheese
8 oz sharp cheddar cheese, GRATE YOUR OWN PLS!!!
A 4 oz jar of pimento peppers, drained
1/4 (or more) your favorite mayonnaise (Duke’s is mine, the GOAT)
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, or more to taste
Kosher salt and black pepper

This is more a formula than a recipe. Mix and taste, season and mix and taste some more, and so on until you’ve got a pimento spread you can’t resist eating off the spoon. If you’re the kind of person who uses cream cheese in your pimento spread, DO YOU! I’m an all mayo kind of woman, so that’s what I’ve written here.

Perfect Hard-boiled Eggs
A pot of boiling water
Eggs
A timer

Bring a 3 quart (or larger) pot of water to a boil rolling boil. Once it’s really going turn it down so that it’s constant but not aggressive. This is so that it won’t toss the eggs around too much and crack them. Using a large serving spoon, lower the eggs down into the water. Set a timer for 9 minutes. When the timer rings, drain the eggs into a strainer then rinse with cold water until they are no longer hot to the touch. (Or you can use an ice bath. I’m usually too lazy for that.) If you have time, pop them in the fridge for 30 or so minutes, overnight is even better. Day old eggs (or at least well-chilled eggs) are much easier to slice without breaking. If you’ve let them cool for the shorter end of the timeline and upon peeling one it doesn’t peel nicely - STOP IN YOUR TRACKS! At this point try an ice bath or let them wait longer in the fridge if you can because these babies are not ready and low key they will look heinous if you keep going!