Recipe: Auntie Dianne's Avocado Jell-O Pudding

Mayo runs through my blood. Also, I'm very much on the fish beat.

I’ve had my head down on the fish beat recently. My new column for the Inquirer launched at the end of last week. It’s called “Hands, Please” and it’s a space for me to answer all your cooking, sourcing, and kitchen culture questions. If you have any specific kitchen (home or professional) questions to send my way, I am actively soliciting them at chef@inquirer.com

How do I buy raw fish to serve at home? kicks the column off…and my original draft was so long, we ended up chopping it in half (a guide to sustainable seafood shopping is forthcoming).

I also ask, Has the handroll sushi wave finally found its way to Philly? Philly only has two handroll bars, Yuhiro and Chubby Nori (and I’ve tried to count the ones in NYC, but there are so many I gave up).

For my S. Pellegrino’s Fine Dining Lovers column Trend to Table, I noticed in the last few months that lots and lots of chefs are neatly piling seafood on top of latke logs: The Latke Goes Upscale.

Every winter, my culturally but not religiously Jewish husband reminds me, “Hanukkah is just a minor holiday,” as he shreds potatoes, squeezes them dry, and fries them into crisp, golden discs.

While my husband Ari’s latkes are in high demand every December, they’ve transcended Hanukkah, appearing on fine dining menus year-round. Latkes—by any name—have become ubiquitous in high-end dining. If a restaurant leans casual, they’re called hash browns; if it leans refined, they’re potato pavé.

The template of the latke appetizer de jour seems to involve potatoes formed into a log, crisped on all sides, and piled with some form of very fancy and expensive seafood (or sometimes an equally fancy meat). And they almost always come in pairs.

At Philadelphia’s My Loup, chef Alex Kemp balances pastrami-spiced beef tartare on two latkes, decorating the stacks with pinches of sauerkraut and pairing the bites with a pickle and a cheeky paper ramekin of yellow mustard.

Farther up north in Philly, at Middle Child Clubhouse, okonomiyaki latkes are served by the piece, topped with unagi, kewpie mayo, pickled ginger, thinly sliced scallions, and optional trout roe. It’s a greatly embellished, Japanese-esque version of the crunchy and surprisingly light hash brown slab they serve at their original sandwich location, Middle Child.

In South Philadelphia, Scott Calhoun has just rolled out a menu that features swordfish crudo balanced on top of two rectangular sunchoke hash browns with bonito aioli and tangerine segments.

The column wraps up with a joint recipe by me and Ari for Poke Latkes.

I’m heading back to Hawai’i unexpectedly later this week, so I’ve been rather frantically trying to get work stuff in order before I go. The silver lining to this trip (well, there are two, since I’ll be seeing my family on Kauai) is that I’ll be writing a Philadelphia’s Guide to Honolulu for the Inquirer while I’m there.

There are some things you’ll never taste in restaurants though (unless you came to my restaurant), and many of my dearest throwback recipes involve mayo and Jell-O. This particular one involves both. Trust me, it’s very, very, very good. I often fudge the portions to lighten things up (I like my desserts less sweet, so this is the original recipe but wherever I say “or less” I just hold back the measurements a little.) I call it Auntie Dianne’s recipe because she’s the one who gave it to me, but I think it was conceived by her mother.

I don’t think recipes like this really exist anymore, or at least they’re not really written like this anymore. I think it belongs to the realm of the 70s Jell-O pudding, but I promise you that it doesn’t taste…vintage or odd. It’s just the creamiest pile of pale green wonderment.

Yes, I did serve it as a special at Poi Dog the restaurant, and for many events. It was always a hit.

Avocado Pudding Recipe