IN DEFENSE OF JELLO SALADS AND "IM THINKING ABOUT ENDING THINGS": California Waldorf Gelatine Salad, Tomato Aspic, Molded Egg Salad, and a Yule Log Cake.
Holiday food.
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*Spoiler alert: this text analyzes Charlie Kaufman’s film I’m Thinking About Ending Things (as well as the story by Iain Reid in which it is based) from beginning to end, so I advise you to watch it first if you haven’t. It’s available on Netflix.
It amuses me how one thing can lead to another when writing about food and I wonder, how much does that have to do with intuition? “Sometimes the thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action”, but I say that food-related thoughts can be even closer. They may appear so fleetingly before us through the agency of our senses that they sometimes can’t be assimilated as thoughts right away. Though “they stay. They stick. They linger. They dominate” somewhere in our subconscious, hoping to come to the surface someday. And then it happens; they all of the sudden reappear in our minds like a Déjà vu or as references of something else, and we can finally grasp them. That is how I became interested in jellied salads, if it makes any sense (or I hope it does at some point), and also because they are an idyllic dish for any glammed up holiday table[1].
It all started two newsletters ago (apparently, because the idea had been wondering in my mind at least a month before that), while I was writing about inmigration and how wonderful celebratory holiday dishes can come out from the assimilation of two cultures, in that case, the Mexican and American cultures. As I interviewed my friend, fellow cocinera, and food-photographer, Linda Campos (@lindarcampos) about her Thanksgiving-food traditions as a daughter of Mexican parents raised in Texas, she mentioned among other things “a weird gelatine dish” her mother used to make that got my attention. She could not remember where the recipe came from and I was not able to picture very well what she was trying to describe to me from memory: plain gelatin, grated carrots, torn up pieces of cheddar singles, whipped sour cream, crushed pineapple, maybe raisins?… though, I was instantly attracted by the bold combination of flavors and textures that it involved.
On an unrelated event: that same afternoon, my mother dropped off a pile of cookbooks in my house that a friend of hers was getting rid of and thought I might be interested in keeping (which I was, of course, since I am a natural cookbook hoarder). Among them were a 1975 copy of From Julia Child’s Kitchen, a Cajun & Creole cookbook, Martha Chapa’s The Art of Mexican Cookery, an International soup encyclopedia by Kay Shaw Nelson, a Betty Crocker cookbook from the seventies, a compilation of fancy microwave recipes, and a stunning Winter food special edition by Spanish socialité magazine ¡HOLA! that I proceeded to arrange in a free corner of the dinning-room table (next to my sons’ temporary distance-learning setting) hoping to miraculously find them a spot in my bookshelf soon.
A couple of days later, Linda sent me the recipe she got from her mother, who said to have acquired it many years ago from a neighbor and adopted it ever since. She also mentioned that different versions of these “jello salads” were traditional in the Midwest and commonly found in religious gatherings. As I googled for recipes similar to Linda’s Mother’s, I bumped into an astonishing variety of fancy-looking vintage gelatines. It turns out that these jellied extravagancies were some kind of a cult dish from the mid 20th century to the early eighties. That’s when my recent acquisitions came to mind and I thought that given their antiquity, I might get lucky and find something there. So I flipped through the Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, which seemed like the most obvious choice, and there they were, not one but a complete section dedicated to “molded salads” and “aspics” (which is how the savory-brined versions of this gelatine dishes are known).
How was it possible that a relatively food-savvy person like me was not aware of the popularity of these glossy delicacies? A new comestible frontier had opened before my eyes. I mean, it’s not that I hadn’t tried any molded savory foods before, I’m familiar with terrines and also the kind of person who eats the jellied part of some patés and adores queso de puerco (brawn), but these jellied vintage fantasies take molded food into a different level. Jelling food is like giving a three-dimensional quality to it. Molded salads can definitely achieve very attractive forms, though the combination of textures and flavors aren’t always equally appealing. So, how did these odd treats became so popular and, all of the sudden, fell from the grace of the public in the eighties?
Well, according to Sarah Grey in A Social History of Jell-O Salads: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, the trend for jellied foods had less to do with flavor and more to do with home economics and the industrialization of the food system. Cleanliness, practicality, convenience, and looks were favored over taste during the postwar era. Science was introduced to food and jello salads became “a symbol of domestic achievement”[2] (at least, until the more practical and less-nutritious microwaveable-foods debunked them); they were good-looking, as nutritious or sugary as one decided to make them, easy to prepare, and mess-free, which meant that the ideal housewife could save time to groom herself and look as perfect as her perfectly set table and her perfect middle-class family life: the florid wallpaper against the bountiful setting with the roast, the gravy, the corn cobbs, the buttered vegetables, the dinner rolls, the creamy or mashed potatoes, the wine, the jello salad, the nervous laughs, the awkward silences… Jello salads and perfect middle-class American families had been in my mind at least a month before I was intuitively drawn to Linda’s mother’s Thanksgiving recipe, as well as farm-life and landscapes, especially cold, nostalgic, and isolated landscapes. They appeared before me the first time, as I watched Charlie Kaufman’s film adaptation (or should I say “reinterpretation”) of the book I’m Thinking About Ending Things by Iain Reid. The movie-the recipe-the cookbooks-the movie… Did I make all of these coincidences happen or were they set-up for me by some external entity? Is an unspoken idea unoriginal?
What is true is that I had promised myself to watch that movie again and now I had an extra reason to do it. There are times when one or two viewings are not enough to fully grasp the content of the movie. Verifying that the jello salad was not a figment of my imagination (which, by the way, is also mentioned in the book along with a golden-on-the-outside bloody-on-the-inside slice of meat and a chocolate yule log cake) only took a second watch, though being able to fully appreciate I’m Thinking of Ending Things took me more than that.
It could safely be said that Charlie Kaufman turned Iain Reid’s story from a plain salad into a jello salad. He added not only a second dimension to it but also a third one (especially in terms of the complexity of the characters). So to better appreciate this film you have to disassemble its layers and watch it in three different ways: as a silent movie, paying attention solely to images, frame by frame, detail by detail as to unveil all of its symbolic elements and hidden messages; as a blind movie, focusing only on the dialogs to identify the literary references (it’s full of them); and as a fragmented movie, watching each sequence as if it were a movie in itself, and then putting it together again, using the previously gathered literary references and visual cues as a thread, just like powdered bone marrow would act as a connective tissue of otherwise unrelated ingredients in gelatine.
Another perplexing recourse that can be better understood by disarming this film, is the use of time. There are at least two stories that develop simultaneously during the plot, and the one that seems to be the main story doesn’t have a beginning or an end because it doesn’t happen in real life, but rather, in a paracosmic world created by Jake’s troubled, solipsistic, and regretful senile mind. Every time that it seems like the protagonist can read his girlfriend’s mind when she is “thinking about ending things” he is actually listening to the voice of fear, to the words of an inner critic as despiteful and ruthless as to render him unable to be happy even in his self-fabricated fantasy.
I don’t even know who I am in this whole thing anymore, where I stop and Jake starts […] says Lucy as she travels up and down the staircase of Jake’s childhood home, like “the wind blowing through his present, his past, and his future” […] Jake needs to see me as someone who sees him. He needs to be seen, and he needs to be seen with approval. Like that’s my purpose in all this, in life. As we can deduce by Jake’s interaction with his parents during dinner, Lucy is no more than a confabulation of the arrested psyche of a solitary, introverted “genius” child. If we really pay attention to every detail of Jake’s parents’ house, we can find pieces of Lucy everywhere: in the movies and books in his room, in the living room pictures, in the abandoned paintings in the basement, and also, in the intellectually pretentious dialogs that the couple holds while in the car (actually if you watch through the credits of the movie you can find a list with all of these references).
To me, what is most deceiving about the fantastic nature of Jake’s and Lucy’s interaction throughout the plot, is the fact that both, the actress (Jessie Buckley) and the director, succeed in rendering a character that appears so full of life, that at times it seems like she intuitively wants to challenge the fantasy. But, aren’t some real-life relationships just like that, like playing a part in someone else’s delusional narrative, or becoming nothing more than an isolated ingredient trapped in the fantastic realm of an apparently perfect-looking jello salad?
[1] Both quotes in this paragraph come from the opening narration of the book I’m thinking about ending things by Iain Reed, which is reproduced literally in the first sequence of Charlie Kaufman’s adaptation. [2] Grey, Sarah, A Social History of Jell-O Salads: The Rise and Fall of an American Icon, 2015, Serious Eats. https://www.seriouseats.com/2015/08/history-of-jell-o-salad.html
CALIFORNIA WALDORF GELATINE SALAD
For 6 to 8 people.
*This recipe is adapted from one that was published by Bon Appetite magazine.
This salad favorite is kind of a safe starting point if you are new to the world of molded gelatinous foods: not too sweet, not too savory, and not too alien in terms of ingredient combinations. It can be eaten with crackers, preferably something buttery and flavorful to contrast the sharpness of the onion dressing.
Ingredients:
2 tbsp of unflavored gelatin
5 tbsp fresh lemon juice
½ cup of sugar
½ teaspoon kosher salt
½ cup of onion dip (make your own)
½ tsp of salt
½ cup of chopped apples
¼ cup of chopped walnuts
¼ cup of chopped celery
Heat the water and dissolve the gelatin, add the sugar, the salt, and the lemon juice.
Add a ¼ of the gelatin mix to the onion dip and pour in a greased mold. Let cool in the fridge until it sets but not completely so the second layer sticks.
Mix the remaining gelatin with the rest of the ingredients, set aside for a while, and then add to the first layer.
Let cool in the fridge until it sets.
Serve with crackers.
TOMATO ASPIC
For 8 to 10 people
*This recipe is adapted from Betty Crocker’s Cookbook (1979).
Tomato aspic is like eating a gelatinous gazpacho or a “jello bloody mary”, I regretted not realizing this before I made it to pour some vodka into the mix, but you definitely could. Crackers do not go well with this kind of jelly, so if you feel the need to accompany with something to balance acidity, I would recommend some crudités like cucumbers, celery, jícama, or radishes.
Ingredients:
2 tbsp of unflavored gelatin
1 cup cranberry juice
3 cups tomato juice
A bunch of chopped parsley
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
A few drops of your favorite hot sauce
1 cup of chopped celery
Salt to taste
Heat the cranberry juice and dissolve the gelatin in it.
Let cool and add the rest of the ingredients.
Grease the mold and pour the mix.
Let chill in the refrigerator until it sets.
Serve with crudités.
MOLDED EGG SALAD
For 6 to 8 people
*This recipe was adapted from one that was published by Southern Living.
This jello is a little more adventurous than the previous ones but still not too odd. It does take little time to overcome the strangeness of the texture when one is not accustomed to eating gelatinous savory foods. Though the combination of flavors is actually quite tasty. I recommend pairing this jello with a more plain kind of cracker since it already has a very well-balanced combination of acid, savory, and sweet flavors.
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons unflavored gelatin
2 cups of water
4 tbsp of sugar
1/3 cup lemon juice
3 hard-boiled eggs
¼ cup mayo
2 tbsp of chopped parsley
¼ cup of chopped celery
¼ cup chopped green olives
Boil the water and dissolve the gelatin.
Stir in the lemon juice and the sugar and let cool.
Cut the eggs in half, remove yolks and mash them with the mayo.
Add one-third of the dissolved gelatin to the mixture and pour on a greased mold.
Let chill until firm, but not completely so the second half of the gelatin sticks.
Mix the remaining gelatin with the rest of the ingredients, including the chopped egg whites. Let sit for a while and then add to egg salad gelatin.
Chill until firm.
Serve with crackers.
YULE LOG
No perfect Christmas table is complete without a yule log, bûche de Noël, or tronco de Navidad. I can’t believe it took me so long to make one, and now a don’t plan on letting go of this tradition.
For the sponge:
6 eggs separated
2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
100 + 30 g of sugar
30 g of cocoa powder
A pinch of salt
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Grease a regular size rectangular tray (2 cm deep), and cover with parchment paper (cover the sides as well).
Preheat the oven to 250*C (480*F).
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar (100 g) until fluffy (8 min approx).
Fold in the flour, the cocoa powder, the pinch of salt, and the vanilla.
On a separate bowl, beat the whites until it makes soft peaks, add the sugar, and beat until firm.
Fold the whites into the mix.
Pour the mix into the tray and level with a spatula.
Bake for ten minutes or until the dough sets.
Use a cloth the size of the tray and sprinkle it with cocoa or powdered sugar.
While the sponge is still hot, separate it from the tray, and then transfer it up-side-down into the tablecloth.
Cover with more powdered sugar or cocoa, roll it into a log and let rest while you prepare the ganache.
For the ganache:
200 g of milk chocolate chips (sweet)
90 g of butter
120 g of whipping cream
2 tbsp of powdered sugar
A pinch of salt
1 tbsp of rum or coffee liqueur *optional
Put the butter and the chips in a bowl and melt it in a bain-marie or in the microwave.
Fold in the cream, add the liqueur, and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes.
Take out the ganache from the fridge and beat it to make it fluffy.
Unroll the log and spread the ganache inside.
Roll it again and cut a small part of the log in a diagonal to make a small log.
Paste the small log to the big one on the side with some ganache and cover everything.
Decorate the log as you wish and sprinkle it with powdered sugar.
You have inspired me to make a gelatin salad!