Pimentuna Casserole
A meal that’s easy to make at home in a matter of minutes
I probably shouldn’t be surprised anymore that the best ideas so often start out as silly jokes. The Pimentuna casserole began about a decade ago with a bit of light culinary humor and ended up as a classically delicious, go-to, make-at-home Zingerman’s dish.
The whole thing started when my significant other, Tammie Gilfoyle, had the good idea to mix our Zingerman’s Pimento Cheese with tuna. I tried it, and she was right: it was terrific. This grew into the highly popular Pimentuna melt sandwich that ran as a special at the Roadhouse for a while, grilled on one of my Bakehouse favorites, Roadhouse Bread.
Making Pimentuna really couldn’t be much easier. Start with a container of Zingerman’s Pimento Cheese, and mix it with roughly the same volume of really good tuna. You can adjust the ratio, of course, to fit your taste. Add salt and pepper as you like, and you’re ready to go. Enjoy it in a sandwich or as a salad!
A year or so after all that, we were still joking around—this time with the notion that we ought to turn our new mix into a Pimentuna casserole. I would be a throwback to, and a takeoff on, the tried-and-true mid-20th-century classic. This sounded a little crazy at first, too, but then it started sounding better and better … and I decided to make it, tossing the Pimentuna with the Mancini family’s marvelous bronze die-extruded, slowly dried maccheroni.
The Roadhouse crew had the great idea to seal the deal by topping the dish with a handful of Zingerman’s Black Pepper Potato Chips to add some crunch. What can I say? Killer! Comforting, compelling, and definitely worth taking a few minutes to make for lunch!
