In this week's installment of Taste 40, our ongoing blast from four decades of Taste's past, I discovered a shrimp "mousse" from a December 1974 story on holiday entertaining. It immediately reminded me of a similar recipe that's been a family staple since the early 1980s, one that originated with my uncle D.J. and auntie Susan Olsen.
Let it be said that my uncle D.J. Olsen probably disavows any knowledge of or connection to this recipe. He's the chef at Lou, a swell cafe/wine bar in Los Angeles; it's pretty safe to say that Campbell's tomato soup and Knox gelatin are not staples in the restaurant's pantry. I was in college when Unky married Susan Schmidt, and she made this recipe, a favorite of her mother Audrey's, a much-anticipated part of our extended family's holiday celebrations.
Somewhere down the line, I asked for the recipe, and Unky obliged. Every so often I trot it out and after I've made it I always ask myself the same question: How do so many low-brow ingredients transform themselves into such a sure-fire party hit?
Yeah, you can gussy it up its Kmart roots by skipping the Campbell's and going with an organic product (Amy's, for example) and buying top-shelf cooked shrimp. But here's the thing: While those efforts will give the end result a bit of a flavor bump, it won't be by all that much.
Last week, Auntie Susan provided her version of the recipe; I've combined mine with hers.
"It's quite 70's, in a retro, 'Open-up-the can/package' sort of way, but it's still going strong in the Schmidt family," she wrote. "Now my youngest sister Laura is the official maker, and I could also mention that we have a traditional way of serving it? [In] Mom's glass bowl shaped like a flower pot, which is as much a part of the ritual as anything. That thing is like a relic."
Auntie's sister, Kathy Ryan of Minneapolis, offered a suggestion based upon her longtime Audrey's Shrimp Dip experience.
"To tell you the truth, it should be served with potato chips," she said with a laugh. "The salt, the crunch, it's perfect."
