Howdy, Jigglers! I know it's a bit cliche at this point to bring it up, but with widespread employment loss and quarantine due to coronavirus, I wanted to post a recipe that packs in actual nutrition with minimal, easy-to-find ingredients, so here is Savory Spinach Salad.
I live in a very small town, and it took a while for our grocery stores to show any signs of shortage, but the last time I went, there were very few canned goods and fresh products like dairy, eggs, and fruit. What there was plenty of, however, was canned spinach. I don't think any soul walking around today has a fervent, Popeye-esque love of this vegetable in canned form, but I likewise think that everyone can recognize the nutritional value of these leafy greens in any form, so if shortages are bad in your area, this recipe will actually make them taste like something.
Since I had some frozen spinach on hand, I used that after thawing it and cooking to dry it as much as possible. In place of the Jell-O I used the juice and zest of two large lemons plus unflavored gelatin. The only other thing I changed was the onion. As I've previously mentioned, I have some home-fermented red onions on hand, so I used some of that, finely minced, in place of grated onion. I left in the salt, the vinegar, and the proportions of the ingredients--everything else, in essence, is the same. If you plan on making this salad, please see my recipe notes at the end of this post for some further tweaking recommendations.
This recipe is a snap to make. The only even vaguely difficult part is checking up on the hardening gelatin enough to catch it at the right stage to fold in the vegetables. Gelatin has an uncanny knack of knowing exactly when I'm in a hurry, because whenever I just want to get everything squared away in a mold and on to my next chore, I swear it takes about three times longer for it to set up. At any rate, the Savory Spinach Salad eventually made five salads in my small individual molds, though this depends highly on exactly how much spinach you use.
I know this is not the prettiest recipe--my husband remarked that it looked like I set moss in gelatin and called it a day. But how does it taste? Well, oddly enough, it tastes nothing like spinach. The rest of the ingredients overpower the spinach element entirely. The main flavor is that of acid, and between the lemon juice and the vinegar, it is most similar to sauerkraut in flavor. It is very acidic, to the point that I recommend toning down the lemon juice to the juice of one large lemon or increasing the amount of water by a half cup and increasing the gelatin to match. Even so, you do still get a good hint of onion flavor as well. The whole package is rather refreshing, though the texture definitely has a bit of that stringy processed cooked spinach sensation. As you're chewing, just remember how much Vitamin C you're getting and pretend it actually is sauerkrat and you'll be alright.
As you can see in the recipe, General Foods recommends serving it over lettuce and garnished with mayonnaise and hard-cooked eggs. While I couldn't get ahold of fresh lettuce, I did have mayo and eggs on hand, so I tried it this way, and it is a definite improvement. Both the mayonnaise and the eggs cut down on the acidity and, of course, provide fat and protein, so the whole package winds up being a very filling snack or a light lunch.
I only had the Savory Spinach Salad on hand for four days, but it held up perfectly through all that time. On the whole, this recipe was not as bad as I was expecting, but it wasn't terrific either. If I had plenty of a mild lettuce, though, I would not feel bad about serving it to company as long as I dialed back the lemon juice or vinegar a little and served it with the eggs and mayonnaise. It's not something you will crave, but I can easily commend General Foods for creating a completely virtuous spinach gelatin salad that isn't terrible.
Howdy, Jigglers! Today I bring you a Two-Way Salad recipe that I was very excited for because it stars one of my favorite flavors in all the world: ginger. Enter the Ginger-Upper, a fruity salad dessert with ginger ale, lemon juice, and pears. Okay, maybe I shouldn't be so hard on the categorization of this recipe, because I guess you could serve this as a salad on lettuce and it would be fine with some flavors of Jell-O, but if you make this with strawberry, cherry, or any flavor that includes banana, this will instantly turn into a dessert dessert, guaranteed.
In my case, I thought the citrus and ginger flavors would go great with orange, while still maintaining a semblance of salad-ness, so I used the juice and zest of three Valencia oranges and unflavored gelatin in place of the Jell-O and some of the water. Other than that and adding a bit of lemon zest for good measure, I made this recipe exactly as written.
Last time I made a Jell-O recipe with fresh pears, I used some pears at the peak of ripeness, and they turned brown pretty quickly. So I used this recipe as an opportunity to experiment with fresh pears that were still just slightly hard but not astringent, peel and all.
I really liked how much color the orange juice imparted to this mold, and let me tell you, adding zest contributes a whole new dimension of flavor to citrus gelatin flavored with real juice. The contrast of the green pears looked very nice, too. Tastewise, with the addition of the ginger ale and orange juice, this mold had all the sweetness it needed, and the pears tasted ripe within a day or so. On the whole, this dish was a fresh and tasty salad that was...sadly lacking in gingery zing for a recipe with "ginger" as the first word in the title.
Granted, ginger ale normally has a subdued ginger taste, but it is just barely noticeable mixed with all the citrus and pears, and if you were to used boxed Jell-O, it would be even less apparent. Thus, I recommend that if you want this to have more of a punchy ginger taste, you ought to use ginger beer instead of ginger ale or add a tablespoon or two of grated fresh ginger into the mix. That should do the trick.
The Ginger-Upper held up fairly well in storage, though within three days the pears got slightly brown around the edges of the peel, but that was certainly an improvement over the other time I used fresh pears. Overall, I was quite pleased with how this turned out. It made a good side dish, but I was disappointed with the lack of convincing ginger flavor. With my recommended adjustments, it should turn out much zippier. To be fair, though, I understand that in 1964 it was probably harder to find fresh ginger or ginger beer, so I can excuse General Foods's use of ginger ale. I just can't excuse their insistence on boasting so much about how gingery this is when, in fact, it isn't.
Howdy, Jigglers! Today we are going to take a look at one of the recipes in JOJ that is specifically designed to be molded in a can.
This concept is one of several introduced in the book that make me think "Well, you could do this, but I don't know why that would make you think that you should." While, yes, tin cans are easy to find and will mold your Jell-O into a shape, it will be immediately obvious to the casual observer that the mold is can-shaped, which is about the cheapest-looking presentation I can possibly imagine. In addition, it will be fiddly to cut neatly due to having a rounded bottom, and furthermore most of these recipes do not fit in a can, so you have to make a can mold plus an individual mold or something along those lines, which is a little awkward.
In any case, the recipe had to be made, and I had some canned pineapple on hand, so here is Minted Pineapple. The recipe makes it out to be a relish-type side salad to be served alongside "hearty meats."
To make this recipe the best it could be, I subsistuted the juice of half a lime, one drop of green food coloring, and unflavored gelatin for the Jell-O. I also used the juice from the pineapple can in place of some of the water. Other than that, I followed the recipe to the letter, though you will notice that the pineapple I had on hand was in chunk form and not crushed form, so the texture was slightly different but otherwise the dish was the same. I also chose to make this in a serving bowl for aforementioned reasons. There will come a time when I will mold a Jell-O recipe in a can just to see how it works, but I was too lazy to do so this time. But for those of you who are just dying to see Minted Pineapple molded in a can, here is this photo from the book:
I feel as though, when the General Foods photographers were setting up this shot, they asked "What exactly would be an appropriate garnish for this recipe?" After a few minutes of racking their brains, they came to the conclusion of "We have to pick something just to get this shoot over with--somebody go grab some parsley!" Anyhow, this recipe was very simple to make, and it turned out fairly attractive, and it wound up smelling just slighly of mint. Thankfully, no trace of vinegar could be distinguished.
The taste of this odd combination of ingredients was surprisingly harmonious. The vinegar gets lost in the general tanginess of the pineapple and lime, which is offset by the pineapple's sweetness and the sweet overtone of mint. Despite the inclusion of salt and vinegar, this recipe easily falls into the growing category of savory Jell-O that isn't. If you blindfolded a hundred people that you found walking down the street, had them taste this dish, and asked them what kind of a dish it was, all of them would tell you that it's a fruity dessert. It isn't overpoweringly sweet, but it is a sweet dish.
...Which brings me to my next question I wish I could ask of the General Foods gremlins: what sort of meat was intended to be accompanied by this? If it were just pineapple and lime, I would say Hawaiian-style ham, and if it were just lime and mint I would say pork or lamb roast, but it's all of that. At the end of the day I guess this would work best alongside chicken or potentially white fish, but only because their flavors are so mild. Ironically, these are about the least "hearty" meats I know, but this would definitely not go well with any red meats.
Despite Minted Pineapple's failure as a salad or a relish, I liked it quite a bit on its own. I did not expect mint and pineapple to go well together, but I was wrong. The overall flavor of the recipe was well balanced, too, and it exceeded at one of the nicest abilities of gelatin, which is to make you feel like you are eating something substantial that is, in all reality, very light. It would certainly be nice as a light, fruity dessert at a summer barbeque or any similarly warm occasion.
Though misguided and miscategorized, Minted Pineapple is a tasty and unique variation on the Jell-O theme that I would certainly make again, just not in a can.
