Creation #1: Shrimp Chili Mold a.k.a 'Whale Poop'

My inspiration for this blog was a book I discovered at my local library, The Gallery of Regrettable Food. This was a entertaining look at some of the more interesting culinary creations of the 50's and 60's, culled from a variety of old cookbooks. While I was horrified by a lot of these concoctions and amused by all of them, I wished the book included all the recipes. Sure, some of the recipes were in there, but for the most part they weren't because that wasn't the point of the book. Of course, being the strange person that I am, I felt determined to find some of these old cookbooks for myself so that I could actually make these dishes and horrify my friends and family with my efforts. Who wouldn't?

Last week I took a tour of some of my local area antiques stores (which were fantastic). After a lot of digging through every ridiculous thing that could possibly be considered an antique I started finding some treasures. Among them, several wonderful jelly molds, including three old but solid copper molds and a rather plain round mold. I also found a whole stack of old booklets for all kinds of frightening recipes. I decided my friend and unwilling guinea pig Michal and I would make something right away, and we decided on Shrimp Chili Mold, from a booklet called 'Gel-Cookery Recipe Book.'

Shrimp Chili Mold was picked because it sounded particularly repellent. Its ingredients included shrimp (fully-cooked fresh or canned), chili sauce, lemon juice, pickle relish, and gelatin. Yummy.

Also, I decided that we would also make some egg-and-olive penguins. These adorable little garnishes were apparently all the rage in the '50's, and when I saw them I had to make them.

At the grocery store we were particularly delighted to discover that Knox brand unflavored gelatin, which the recipe called for, was still the unflavored gelatin of choice today. The rest of the ingredients were fairly easy to find, but then we had to decide about the shrimp. Should we go with real shrimp or canned? Which would be cheaper? We considered the canned shrimp for awhile. I didn't even know there was such a thing as canned shrimp, but I was sure it would add character to the recipe. Unfortunately, canned shrimp is surprisingly expensive, especially considering the quality of the product, and it was cheaper to go with a bag of frozen shrimp from the seafood department.

Once we were in the kitchen with our purchases, I set Michal to work hard-boiling some eggs and defrosting the shrimp while I began mixing the dry ingredients for the mold. The dry ingredients would be 1 envelope of Knox unflavored gelatin, salt, more sugar than I would have reasonably expected, and cayenne pepper (which is expensive, especially when you only need a dash). Once these were mixed thoroughly I could add hot water to the mixture, stirring until the gelatin was completely dissolved. I have always been a little worried about dissolving gelatin. I think this stems from an early teenage attempt to make Jell-O that went horribly wrong because of undissolved gelatin. Anyway, I was very determined to dissolve the hell out of that gelatin.

As I mixed gelatin, Michal mixed me up some chili sauce and lemon juice, and then turned his attention back to the eggs. He had finished hard-boiling them and was now peeling them.

When I felt as though the gelatin was quite dissolved it was time to pour in the chili sauce/lemon juice mix, creating a rather unappetizing blood-like mixture in the bottom of the bowl. This was then to be put into the fridge to chill until it was the consistency of 'unbeaten egg whites.' This would give me time to help with the construction of the penguins.

With the penguins I had no instructions, I just knew it involved eggs, olives, and toothpicks. How hard could that be? Not very. An olive is speared into the top of the egg to form the head of the penguin, and then half olives are speared into the sides of the egg for wings or flippers or whatever penguins have. The beak is usually pimiento and the feet could be anything. Michal creatively decided to use cheese for both.

Bits of cheese were cut into little triangles for the feet and a little triangle for the beak, and with that our penguins were complete. I'm not sure why we needed to make three, but it probably was because they were just so darn cute.


Throughout this process I checked on the gelatin mixture on a very regular basis. I wanted to make sure that I didn't remove it until it was absolutely the consistency of unbeaten egg whites and nothing more or less, because I was sure the success or failure of this recipe would depend on it. The mixture tended to gel from the outside first so it would get a gooey ring around it but be pretty much liquid otherwise. After awhile, though, it slowly started getting to that perfect snot-like texture it needed to be, and it was time to add the shrimp. I poured in the shrimp and mixed them in as evenly as possible, then poured the whole frightening mess into the jelly mold chosen for this experiment, a round decorative copper one that I thought might be too big, but I think it was an excellent choice (or would have been had this not been such an interesting learning experience). Once it was in the mold, I smoothed over the top, making sure the shrimp were evenly distributed and none were sticking out, and put the whole thing in the freezer. I was at Michal's house, using his kitchen, and really didn't feel like being there all night, even if it was in the interest of science. We felt putting it in the freezer would expedite the matter.

Doesn't that look delicious?

Now we had to wait. Ideally, a good three hours of firming (or even more ideally overnight) would have been best, but like I said, I had better things to do that evening. Besides, what were we supposed to do with ourselves while we were waiting for gelatin to set? Play with our penguins?

That was, however, to be our first step towards disaster. Or at least less than perfection. However, this was my first attempt at making anything gelatin-related, and it was to be a learning experience. I was sure perfection would come in time.

I checked on the mold several times and finally decided that it was firm enough to be done. It could have been a lot firmer, but I figured it would be close enough for the purposes of our experiment. This is where we ran into snag #1: How to get the gelatin out of the mold. We seemed to think it would just slide right out onto the plate, and we were disappointed to discover that this wasn't the case. We placed a plate on top of the mold and flipped it over, setting it on the counter, and slowly lifted the mold. Nothing came out. Hmmm...

This is when I made the terrible decision to try helping it along with a rubber spatula. All this essentially did was ruin the lovely design that would have appeared on the sides of the mold and effectively make the whole thing smaller. It also didn't make the gelatin move at all.

Michal, always ready to surprise me, said he thought he once heard something about putting it in warm water to loosen the gelatin. This sounded like an excellent idea, and we tried it at once. While it floated around in the sink of hot water we chatted and cleaned up a little bit, losing track of time. When we decided we'd given enough time to really loosen up we pulled the mold out of the sink to discover that the hot water had helped to further melt my already less-than-firm gelatin into a rather soggy mess. We decided to put it back into the freezer for awhile to firm it back up.

While we waited for it to chill again, we went online to Google the correct way to loosen a gelatin from it's mold. Michal basically had the right idea, but was fuzzy on the details. The water has to be warm, but not too warm, and we're only supposed to put it in the water for about 30 seconds. Good to know. See? It was a learning experience.

A little while later we decided it was at least as firm as it had been before we melted it, so it was time to loosen that gelatin. This time we did it properly, following the directions online, and it still turned a bit soupy. At this point, however, I was getting tired and ready to be done, so we decided to proceed. I effectively removed what was left of our gelatin ring and slid it onto a plate. That's when I realized for presentation it needed to be on the romaine leaves we had specifically bought for this purpose. Annoyed, I quickly arrange some leaves onto a cutting board and Michal took over the tricky task of getting the gelatin ring from the plate onto the lettuce without breaking the ring and ruining the whole thing once and for all. i couldn't even watch I was so sure it was doomed, but somehow he managed. Our last part of the job was to arrange the penguins, and at last we had our complete presentation of our completed Shrimp Chili Mold:

While it had turned out runnier and smaller than it should have, I now knew how to do it properly and could perfect it in the future. I would let it set for the full time allotment or overnight, I would make sure to remove the gelatin from the mold properly, and I would make sure I had prepared a proper spot for it to go once removed from the mold. For my first time, I thought our Shrimp Chili Mold looked magnificent. Michal thought it looked like 'whale poop.'

It was now for the second part of our experiment: the taste test!

Michal, being the brave little guinea pig that he is, was first to try our creation. Here he is, all ready to try his first bite of Shrimp Chili Mold. This would be his last smile for the evening.

To be fair, Michal is not especially fond of shrimp, and I'm not sure why he agreed this would be a good recipe to start with. The whole process revolted him with the exception of the penguins, which he was especially fond of making.

I was starting to get grossed out just watching him begin to eat it. The expressions on his face just seemed to get worse and worse...



I think we can safely say that Michal did not enjoy this particular dish. At all. What's peculiar about the situation is that after that first bite he continued to eat what was on his plate. He had found it absolutely disgusting, and yet for some inexplicable reason he continued to eat it.

Then it was my turn!
And believe it or not I thought it was pretty good. While making it and then when eating it, it was obvious that this was really just shrimp cocktail all mixed up together and held together with gelatin, and that's exactly what it tasted it like. In fact, it was surprisingly flavorful and tasty. While Michal may not agree, I think this was actually a very good dish that I would probably make again, not only to horrify friends and family members, but to also enjoy the wonderful and tasty dish that is the Shrimp Chili Mold. I think it would be especially good served with crackers.