The Joys of Jell-O Recipe #128: Cauliflower Radish Salad

Howdy, Jigglers! Apart from being very busy with a new job and traveling over the holidays, one of the reasons I haven't posted much this winter is that I was at the end of a list of five Jell-O recipes that my husband picked out for me to make next, and Cauliflower Radish Salad was the last on the list. I love cauliflower, but radishes can be a little tough to like for me. I like them thinly sliced as a garnish (e.g. on mole tacos or a grain and kale salad), but I never make them the star of the show.

Then last weekend I got a new Jell-O mold at the thrift store, so I had to face the music and make this in order to get any more Jell-O recipes on my list. I figured I needed a vegetable side for my lunches anyway, so here goes nothing.

As celery salad Jell-O hasn't been available for over half a century now, of course I knew I was going to have to make some alterations to the recipe. For the gelatin itself, I used my standard unflavored gelatin powder mixed with celery salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. I also subbed in red wine vinegar for the white vinegar called for. How well did this work? Well, spoiler alert: I'm going to suggest some further alterations down below, but you're just going to have to wait to find out what they are.

As for the rest of the recipe, I omitted the grated onion and salt but followed the rest of the recipe to a T. Stirring in the ice cubes made the gelatin set very fast--in fact a little too fast, and so I had to add a little hot water to get it to be fluid enough for enough time to mix in the vegetables. Somehow in all this tumult, I did remember to reduce the quantity of each vegetable by roughly half to get a visually appealing mold. As per usual, they vastly overstate the amount you need (or vastly understate how much gelatin mixture you need).

Once I managed to get the veggies in, though, this set up in a flash and I had myself...a cauliflower radish celery Jell-O salad. Joy. It tastes...like celery-infused snot with the vegetables in it. I'm not a fan. The cauliflower is fine, but the taste of radish just needs to be offset by something stronger and tastier. I wish I would have put worscestershire sauce in it, or A1 sauce, or something to amplify the flavor a little bit above just celery.

It was, however, edible, and I did finish all of it. By the end, though, I had a few thoughts on how to fix this clunker of a Jell-O salad:

1. add chicken stock

2. add worcestershire sauce

3. add olives and diced jalapeno peppers

MAYBE that would be an acceptable picnic mold. Maybe. This was a hurdle that General Foods put in my path, so I had to overcome it, but let's face it: it wasn't enjoyable. At least now I get to go on to bigger and better things.