A Different Aspic Ratio

W always e provide our guests at Etzlenu with a thank-you gift, which most of the time is a crowd-pleasing mini sponge cake doused in confectioner’s sugar. Every once in a while, though, in a quixotic effort to broad others’ palates, I toss gift something different, like this amazing tomato aspic, pictured here. Based on the crickets I hear in response, my tomato aspic is not a world-conquering success.

I get it. I really do. My paternal grandmother Annie Melaver would sometimes serve as aspic as part of a holiday meal. There was no fucking way I was going to eat something that jiggled like that. And that color? A kinda sickly pastel, like an amateur water-colorist trying to get that perfect shade of sunset and getting a really bad pink instead. And then there were these other holiday occasions when, instead of tomato aspic, an ill-conceived meat-based one was served up, looking like a big square of acryllic into which was set an ungodly mix of hard-boiled egg, pieces of beef, and other things I couldn’t bare to look at, much less taste. In short, in the pantheon of undesirable food dishes — which included Brussels sprouts, pickled beets, and stewed prune compote — aspic was clearly relegated to the lowest rung in my caste system. Fast forward 50 years later: Am I really trying to convince my guests that tomato aspic merits a serious, second look?

Yep. I do. It’s a kick-ass dish, tart with a bit of lemon, beautiful autumnal color, not really jiggle at all if you get the gelatin ratio right. Still, I’m not all that optimistic and have stopped gifting what I believe is a real treasure.