If anyone out there has any idea, I need to know: how did they come up with this?
Given that there is already so much going on with this recipe, and especially given that banana can be a challenging flavor to match and pair, I decided to go with boxed Jell-O for this occasion, specifically the strawberry-banana flavor. I don't know about you, but I cannot imagine much that is less appetizing than lime or orange and peanuts. So for once I made this recipe exactly as written.
It is a good idea to serve this in individual molds as indicated in the recipe since peanuts don't slice that easily, but using my particular individual ring molds was the only part of this recipe that wasn't dead simple. It took quite a bit of chopping to get the banana pieces small enough to fit in the molds, which of course makes oxidation more of an issue. However, I chopped the banana immediately prior to dunking it in the clear gelatin, minimizing this problem.
Unless you want to be a perfectionist and break out a blender or whisk for this dish, there will be a few globs of mayo that don't mix in well with the reserved gelatin. Take heart, though--it won't impact the final look or taste of this dessert whatsoever. Yes, this recipe is in the "Two-Way Salads" chapter. No, I won't dignify that travesty by calling it a salad. This is obviously just a dessert recipe, albeit a strange one.
Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, the photos in this post are all from my phone. My sincerest apologies.
To be utterly honest, this dish doesn't look great. The nearly fluorescent red and pink gelatin makes the chunks held within seem a little less benign, and strawberry-banana Jell-O stinks when it's cooking and setting, so I started off with a very bad feeling about how the taste would turn out. To my total surprise, this tastes...fine. Good, even. It's sweet, but the peanuts add a savory, crunchy contrast that actually works, and the mayonnaise further tempers the saccharine nature of the Jell-O. The strawberry-banana flavor wasn't even too overpowering or artificial-tasting. I was shocked, but pleasantly shocked.
I still can't imagine this in one of the citrusy variations, though.
There's just one warning I have to make about the Banana Peanut Salad for those who wish to try it: despite gelatin's amazing preservative powers, the banana will start to oxidize around the edges and the peanuts will become slightly soggy after roughly a day and a half after making the recipe. I strongly recommend consuming the entire recipe's worth of gelatin either the day it's made or, at most, by the following day. This does create a slight paradox, though: this recipe is one of the most important ones to serve to a sizeable group of people all at once, yet it is one of the recipes that would be most difficult to convince a sizeable group of people to eat all at once. How you reconcile this conundrum is beyond the scope of this post, but I thought it needed to be said regardless.
Despite having enjoyed this "salad," I could not tell you what its most appropriate setting or manner of serving would be, except perhaps to say that this is a dessert that will easily make six servings for under $5 of ingredients if you already have mayonnaise on hand, which is not an unimportant merit. If for no other reason, I give General Foods kudos for creating a "salad" that tastes alright on a very tight budget.
As a hint of what's to come, the next recipe I do will be one that might be even stranger than the Banana Peanut Salad.
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