Sunday, October 2, 2011

Vegan MoFo Day 2: Congealed Pickled Peach Salad


The South has a strange fondness for congealed salads: food encased in jello, often bizarrely found on the "vegetables" menu in restaurants. This recipe is based on one which was served at the now-closed Choices restaurant on Main Street in Franklin, Tennessee.

I'm sure this would be better with real pickled peaches (which I wasn't willing to risk on an experiment), but Choices made theirs using this cheater method: Take two 15 oz cans of peaches in heavy syrup. Chop the contents and place with the syrup in a saucepan. Add 1/2 c cider vinegar and 12 whole cloves. Bring to a boil, cool, and refrigerate for several hours. Drain and remove the cloves. Mix 2 3 oz packages of Natural Desserts Raspberry Vegan Jel with 3 c boiling water. (The original recipe called for orange jello, but the store happened to be out of orange vegan jel and raspberry looked good.) Stir in the drained peaches and refrigerate till firm. Vegan jels are infamous for not working if additions are too acidic, so I was a little concerned. However, this set up nicely - and tasted great!

2 comments:

Amey said...

oh nice! I've been wanting to make a vegan jelled salad for a long time now. I remember eating things like this a lot as a youngster. mmmm.

Monique a.k.a. Mo said...

I love pickled peaches!