Howdy, Jigglers! I got too lucky last time I played Jell-O Roulette and got the Avocado Pie, which at least theoretically speaking is a dessert. This time, due to having some particular leftover vegetables after making a soup, I got to make Summer Salad.
Though it isn't the most appetizing-sounding of recipes, in a way I was excited for it. Out of all the "salad" recipes, this is the purest: a vegetable-flavored gelatin matrix mixed with a minimum of weird ingredients envelops salad vegetables. That's right: not salad vegetables and fish, or salad vegetables and fruit, or any other inexplicable combination. Just salad vegetables. The simplicity was refreshing, in theory.
Besides, it's summer! That means you have to make Summer Salad, right?
Anyway, as I said, I already had most of the ingredients on hand for this one, including enough celery that I decided to go ahead and puree a bunch of celery to express its juices to use with unflavored gelatin in place of the Salad Gelatin, which of course is no longer available (I wonder why...). The only other change I made to the ingredients, though, was replacing the regular or onion salt with celery salt, just to punch up the celery-ness even more. Other than that, I made the recipe exactly as written.
May I take this opportunity to state that the photos of Jell-O salad molds in JOJ are definitely not to scale with the recipes as written? Case in point:
Honestly, this is one of the better-looking gelatin salads I've made, but it's not nearly as pretty as the picture. And I'm just now noticing that there are clearly green onion slivers in the photo, though they aren't in the recipe. Come on, General Foods!
The celery juice turned the whole thing slightly murky, but not too bad. Now, the taste of this salad was about as you would expect. It tastes of celery and cucumber with a little salt and vinegar. The green pepper flavor, which I usually find overpowering, was barely noticeable. The tomato, however, is a different story. I like tomatoes, but for some reason they just do not work in this salad. Maybe if I had gotten a less ripe or less flavorful tomato it actually would have been better, but the umami savoriness of the tomato mixed with the strong celery overtones was not a success.
I'm going to go ahead and call it: I would never serve the Summer Salad to anyone even though I didn't hate it. It's passable, but the same combination of vegetables served over, you know, some lettuce and salad dressing would be more palatable and wouldn't make people think I'm batty. General Foods, why did you insist on putting vegetables in Jell-O?
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