Our family had an old favorite from the 1950's or '60's. We called it green mold. It was a coleslaw with lemon and lime Jell-o to mold it. The Jell-o made it sweet, like the ones with pineapple or whatnot, but it was really good (at least to me, who grew up on it). It was tortured for many years to make it more diet friendly. It had artificial sweetener, lowfat or fat free "mayonnaise", and all the possible substitutions of yoghurt, etc. I won't list all the ways that it was disappointing, but I did lose my taste for it. I found the recipe and made it once (that's how I know that those who didn't grow up on it don't get the appeal). I followed the recipe, as stated, with all the mayonnaise, etc. It was delicious! It was delicious before the Jell-o was added, and that was really just enough to mold it and add that hint of sweet. You couldn't "see" the Jell-o (which you could once it got tinkered with). Do yourself a favor. Make it the right way, or make a different salad.

I keep coming back to this recipe ... sounds darn good ... going to have to try it.

So, the first experiment went well. I'd call it a success. Calls from Europe and people to be picked up nonwithstanding. So my time allowance got messed up, and at some point it turned into just lunch. :) I started making the dressing a couple of days ago, more or less as I said, but even the Vita-Mix couldn't emulsify it. It needed the egg yolk, but I hadn't pasteurized the eggs yet. I was thinking of starting over anyway. The flippin' cricket was yammering on about using the very floral Spanish EVOO which I like, but it was on a sealed new bottle, and the Italian EVOO was open and not rancid (I did taste as well as smell), so I thought not only should it be Italian for an Italian inspired dish, but it should also get used up before it does go off. Big mistake. I really do hate olives. Straight tasting from a spoon, a little sip didn't taste bad at all, but in the dressing, even though the reduced wine and lemon juice were present, it tasted obnoxiously like olives. Maybe from the aeration trying to get it to emulsify without egg yolk. Bleh. So I stuck it in the fridge. I poached the chicken (boneless breasts) in white wine last night. Today, out of time and having no plan B for lunch, I added a bit of the lemon/wine/oil dressing to some pretty good jarred mayonnaise. I was out of time for mincing and toasting the garlic, so I just added garlic pepper blend to the mayo. The lemon was very there but not forward, much like in a good piccata. The salad was just the chicken, capers and dressing. It could have used to sit and meld a while, but it was declared good. I offered the veggies, but no one wanted warm, so we ended up with just arugula, which went nicely. And buttered toast from the toaster since there was no garlic butter pan. So...not what I planned, but a good lunch and, I think, proof of concept. Notes: The quantity of the doctored mayonnaise was similar to the amount of vinaigrette I would have used. It wasn't a goop-fest. The chicken was diced fairly small, not minced. It didn't stick together like some chicken salad does. I wouldn't have liked it goopier, but that's a matter of taste. The toast would have fit better with garlic, but ordinary garlic toast would have been fine. I had purposefully underseasoned the lemon/wine/oil dressing so I could fix it up later, so the pepper and salt in the garlic pepper were needed. I think the toasted minced garlic might have been overwhelming to the doctored mayo, though it would have been just right with the original dressing. Anyway, it was good, and now that I have a pasteurized yolk saved from an eggwhile in the marzipan, I'll probably try again soon. Since there were no beautiful steamed vegetable chunks with the lovely portion of chicken salad on top (even as it was, it was served family style), I didn't take a picture, but if someone really wants it, I can take a picture of the leftover chicken salad. :)

Chicken salad reminds me of a former deli on Silver Spring Drive in Whitefish Bay, WI, that used to make the most wonderful curried chicken salad. I was a poor grad student at the time and couldn't afford to buy it regularly, but I would experiment at home in replicating the ingredients. It contained raisins, onion, celery, and curry. I didn't care for the raisins, but the curry... it was the first I experimented with curry, and it now goes into every chicken salad I make.