mustard 2: the giftening
December 25, 2011
Thirty six jars of the stuff, and still there are leftovers from five of the six batches.
Posted by jodi on December 25, 2011 at 7.09am
mustard: the tastening, episode one
December 22, 2011
When last we talked about mustard (I KNOW YOU GUYS LOVE TALKING ABOUT MUSTARD), the first four had gone to Milwaukee to be tasted around the AmericanThanksgiving holiday table at the home of my dear friend Merouda Pendray. Because I am Merouda’s apprentice, she took the mustards to a Kingdom of Northshield event and entered them into the arts and sciences competition there, where they tied for populace favourite, with the Lombard Mustard being the most well liked (which it was at Merouda’s table as well). So that was super gratifying and now there will be no shutting me up about making mustard SO THERE. Just wait until you see just how much I can talk about mustard. Maybe next I’ll start making my own pretzels and after that you know there’s going to be no sense in even coming here any more.
Two weeks later the mustards, along with three new variations on the Lombard, were put out for tasting at my birthday party. Surprisingly, the Strong #2, which was the only Strong Mustard deemed not yet ready for eating at AmericanThanksgiving, was the clear favourite of this type*, while Lombard #2 received the most praise for its type. It was universally agreed that Lombard #4, the one with the bourbon in it, was pretty much awful. Because I’m a nice person I did not force Shane Potvin** to eat all of it, as I’d been threatening to do all week. Instead, since it’s quite thick, I’m planning to put it back into the blender and thin it out with more cider vinegar to see if it can be altered enough to save it. Peter has suggested I cut my losses and throw it out but there’s no stopping the crazy mustard lady once she gets started (WATCH OUT). In the meantime, only the first 6 mustards will be potted up into smaller jars for Crimbo giving. Because I am a nice person.
*The only difference between Strong #1 and Strong #2 is that with Strong #2 I actually read the recipe before starting and thus didn’t accidentally use twice as much vinegar as needed. Not that it turned out to be a bad thing.
**I feel he would have deserved it because, knowing I was getting kind of antsy about so many events conflicting with my birthday party, he told me that he was going to this other party instead where they were “going to have like six kinds of mustard” to which I replied because I can’t help myself I AM GOING TO HAVE SEVEN. Really you can’t blame the guy when it’s SO EASY.
Posted by jodi on December 22, 2011 at 5.23pm
notes on mustard, volumes 5, 6 and 7
December 1, 2011
In between our trip to Milwaukee for Americanthanksgiving and our trip to Toronto for Roller Derby World Cup, three more variations on the Lombard mustard were put up. Samples of the first four mustards came with us to Milwaukee to get tasted: Mustard #1 (Strong #1) is pretty much ready to eat (but is Very Strong and needs to be used With Caution); Mustard #2 (Strong #2) was deemed not yet ready and set aside to age further; Mustard #3 (Strong #3, the red wine vinegar variation) is also ready and in my opinion was the nicest of the three; Mustard #4 (Lombard #1) was by far the best and much milder than the rest although it too has a bit of a kick to it. The texture is a bit strange due to the softened creamed honey, but the taste is lovely.
Mustards 5, 6 and 7 are all further variations on the Lombard (from The Forme of Cury, 1390).
#5 (Lombard #2) (this is going to get so confusing; they’ll have to be given proper names when they’re bottled for gift-giving): used 50% white wine vinegar, 50% white wine (a Pelee Island Chardonnay, chosen based on proximity as it was the only white wine in the fridge). The mustard seed was initially soaked overnight in white wine vinegar. Liquid honey was used, and ground almonds used in place of bread crumbs.
#6 (Lombard #3): used 75% red wine vinegar, 25% Pelee Island Chardonnay. The mustard seed was initially soaked overnight in red wine vinegar. I thought about using red wine as well, but the white was already open. Liquid honey was used, and ground almonds used in place of bread crumbs.
#7 (Lombard #4): used 75% apple cider vinegar, 25% Makers Mark bourbon. The mustard seed was initially soaked overnight in Makers Mark. Like the others, this one has liquid honey and ground almonds. Oddly, although this mustard contained more liquid than the other two (we were running out of mustard seed and came up a bit short but inadequate note-taking made me forget that when adding the liquid later on), it was the thickest coming out of the blender, almost stiff. Perhaps it should have been thinned with a bit more vinegar, but oh well. This batch may end up being a complete disaster, as its taste on bottling was something between Everclear and acetone. We shall see.
Posted by jodi on December 1, 2011 at 8.56am
notes on mustard, volume 4
November 18, 2011
Moving on from the recipe used for the first three mustards, this one follows the recipe for Lombard Mustard found in The Forme of Cury. The recipe is as follows:
Take Mustard seed and waishe it & drye it in an ovene, grynde it drye. farse it thurgh a farse. clarifie hony with wyne & vynegur & stere it wel togedrer and make it thikke ynowz. & whan þou wilt spende þerof make it tnynne with wyne.
The modern version given to us by Edward fitzRanulf called for 1 cup mustard seeds, 0.5 cup white vinegar, 0.5 cup bread crumbs, 2 tsp. salt and 0.5 cup honey. Modifications for Mustard #4:
-blended yellow and brown mustard seed instead of using all brown, as usual; this was a double batch and we used all the yellow mustard seed we had, so the blend was something like a bit less than half a cup of yellow and a bit more than 1.5 cups brown
-substituted ground almonds for bread crumbs
-white wine vinegar (you are just never going to convince me that it’s a good idea to use straight up white vinegar for anything that isn’t pickles or washing windows)
-we used creamed honey softened in the microwave, but it occurred to me later that Edward probably meant for liquid honey to be used, because Americans don’t seem to use creamed honey like Canadians do: while living in Georgia creamed honey was difficult for me to find, and the first time I brought it to the studio one of my colleagues shouted, WHY ARE YOU PUTTING LARD IN YOUR TEA? So anyway, we’ll use liquid honey next time. The honey gave the mustard a grainy, sparkly quality that’s a bit odd looking, but on first tasting it was pretty nice, if still a bit strong.
The original recipe says to use vinegar AND wine, so for the next batch we’ll try a blend of wine vinegar and a dry white wine.
As for the first three mustards, #1 is finally settling down into something edible, and the strong bitter edge is all but gone. In fact, there seems to be little difference now between Mustards #1 and #2. We’ve used both in salad dressings with good success but have yet to try them on a sandwich.
Posted by jodi on November 18, 2011 at 8.13am
notes on mustard, volumes 2 & 3
October 30, 2011
Mustard #2, another variation on Edward fitzRanulf’s Strong Mustard, (a translation of a Kenelm Digby mustard, 1669) was put up on October 4 and is already mellowing out better than the first attempt. Modifications to the original recipe are as follows:
-vinegar used was 1/2 apple cider vinegar and 1/2 white wine vinegar
-ground almonds used in place of bread crumbs
-demerara sugar
Mustard #3, the third (and final, for the time being) variation on Edward’s recipe, was put up on October 29. On initial tasting before it went into the jar to chill on the counter for a while, this mustard tastes much sweeter than the first two. Modifications:
-red onion substituted for white
-red wine vinegar
-ground almonds in place of bread crumbs
-demerara sugar
-horseradish omitted (this is likely the biggest contributor to the sweeter taste)
While Mustard #1 is still too harsh to eat straight up or on sandwiches, I tried it in a simple salad dressing (large dollop of mustard, dollop of honey, olive oil, cider vinegar, sea salt and black pepper) and it was pretty good (but strong!). Usable in this manner even if it doesn’t mellow any further, but it’ll sit out for a while longer just to see if a bit more of the edge comes off it.
Next I’ll be moving on from the Digby mustard to one more that we were given by Edward fitzRanulf, the 1390 Lombard Mustard found in Samuel Pegge’s The Forme of Cury. It’s a simpler recipe, just mustard, bread crumbs (again I’ll likely use almonds), vinegar, honey and salt. I’m going to try using a mix of yellow and brown mustard seed (instead of all brown) in hopes of producing a lighter flavour.
Posted by jodi on October 30, 2011 at 9.17am
i almost forgot to show you guys this crappy nighttime photo of my pie
October 15, 2011
Pie gets made in our house seldom enough that apparently we don’t even own a pie plate, although we both remember having more than one (I do have a recollection of one getting broken, though). At any rate, a square pan works out fine for pie, you just have to be gentle getting the pastry into the corners. Now that my mom has seen this pie, I’m pretty sure there will be a proper pie plate waiting for us under the Winter Holiday Tree.
It’s apple, by the way. And it was delicious.
Posted by jodi on October 15, 2011 at 8.27am
notes on mustard, volume one
October 2, 2011
While at Pennsic this past August, Peter and I attended a class with Edward fitzRanulf on medieval mustards, where we discussed the place of mustard in the medieval household, looked at recipes from period sources, and sampled the instructor’s modified versions of the recipes. I came home determined to make pints upon pints of mustard and give it away to everyone on our WinterHoliday gift list (dear family: if you’re not so much into the mustard, please tell me now). The basic method for mustard-making is to grind your mustard seeds (brown or black, never yellow!), mix them with vinegar, then throw in all manner of things that are meant to tone down the harshness of the vinegar and mustard mixture: sugar, spices, bread crumbs, ground nuts, sweet wines. Now, doesn’t that sound like an easy and fun project? I thought so.
Peter and I were much more impressed by the strong, savoury mustards than the sweeter ones (although they were pretty good too, and will get a little go-round in our kitchen at some later date), so our experiments with homemade mustards will begin with Edward’s redaction of a 1669 recipe for “strong mustard”. Below is the original recipe, found in The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened (pages 194-5).
TO MAKE MUSTARD
The best way of making Mustard is this: Take of the best Mustard-seed (which is black) for example a quart. Dry it gently in an oven, and beat it to subtle powder, and searse it. Then mingle well strong Wine-vinegar with it, so much that it be pretty liquid, for it will dry with keeping. Put to this a little Pepper beaten small (white is the best) at discretion, as about a good pugil, and put a good spoonful of Sugar to it (which is not to make it taste sweet, but rather quick, and to help the fermentation) lay a good Onion in the bottom, quartered if you will, and a Race of Ginger scraped and bruised; and stir it often with a Horse-radish root cleansed, which let always lie in the pot, till it have lost it’s vertue, then take a new one. This will keep long, and grow better for a while. It is not good till after a month, that it have fermented a while.
Some think it will be the quicker, if the seed be ground with fair water, in stead of vinegar, putting store of Onions in it.
My Lady Holmeby makes her quick fine Mustard thus: Choose true Mustard-seed; dry it in an oven, after the bPage 195read is out. Beat and searse it to a most subtle powder. Mingle Sherry-sack with it (stirring it a long time very well, so much as to have it of a fit consistence for Mustard. Then put a good quantity of fine Sugar to it, as five or six spoonfuls, or more, to a pint of Mustard. Stir and incorporate all well together. This will keep good a long time. Some do like to put to it a little (but a little) of very sharp Wine-vinegar.
I won’t reproduce Edward’s version of the recipe here, but you can find it in this Barony of the Cleftlands feast menu. Some of the ingredients are left open to interpretation: cooking onion or sweet onion? what kind of sugar? should the mustard seeds be dry roasted first (as appears in the original, but isn’t specified in the modern version)? So we are going to tweak it this way and that until we find our favourite methods.
Our first batch of mustard was started on September 11 and put up in a jar on September 14.
Notes for the first batch:
-Edward’s recipe calls for white vinegar, but Digby’s calls for “strong wine-vinegar”. I used half white wine vinegar and half chive blossom vinegar (which I made earlier in the summer from this recipe, using half white wine vinegar and half white vinegar).
-mustard seed (unroasted) was doubled, but then I forgot to double the rest of the ingredients, so this batch isn’t going to be very toned down. Too much vinegar was added, enough to make this soupy instead of a thick paste. It all worked out in the blendering though, and two weeks later the mustard is nice and thick but not stiff.
-used regular yellow cooking onion.
-the original recipe calls for a whole root of horseradish; Edward’s calls for “pureed horseradish” which I suspect means from a jar? possibly because that’s sometimes easier to come by. I used fresh horseradish root, grated finely. As well, I didn’t have the horseradish yet when I started the mustard, so it was thrown at the end with the spices and didn’t steep overnight with the onion and vinegar.
-used granulated white sugar.
-Edward used bread crumbs in a lot of his mustards, but one of the sweeter recipes contained ground almonds instead. I try not to add extra wheat to things, and I want the option of sharing these mustards with my gluten-free friends, so all of our mustards will contain ground almonds instead of bread crumbs.
Batch #2 was started on October 2nd: mustard seed put up to steep overnight in 1/2 apple cider vinegar, 1/2 white wine vinegar. Pureed yellow cooking onion and grated horseradish root steeping in the same vinegar ratio.
Posted by jodi on October 2, 2011 at 2.31pm
you guys. try this.
September 20, 2011
Take some nice plump Roma tomatoes. Slice them about half a centimetre thick (doesn’t matter in which direction), put them all on a parchment lined baking sheet, brush them with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and then grind up a bunch of pepper over the whole thing. Now roast them; you can slow roast at 200°F/95°C for ten hours, which makes the tomatoes richly complex and delicious, or do them up quick at 350°F/175°C for an hour and a half, which makes them still ridiculously good but perhaps less complexly so. I’ve got some in my freezer done both ways and they’re all wonderful, so it may just depend on how big a food snob you are.
Okay. Eat a few right off the tray while they’re cooling. Good, right? But that’s not all. Now stick that cool tray into the freezer, and when the tomatoes are nice and solid, slip them all into a jar or freezer bag and pat yourself on the back for providing yourself with lovely tomatoes, roasted at the peak of their season, to throw into your cooking all winter long. But! That’s not the best part.
Here’s the best part: fast forward to later in the winter, or if you’re like me, just grab some of those frozen tomatoes bagged up with yesterday’s date on them and bust them back out right away. Chop them up to throw into whatever you’re cooking (it doesn’t matter what). But first, eat one of the frozen pieces. Or two. Or maybe a whole handful. If you’re like me. You guys, roasted tomato popsicles are my new favourite kind of popsicle. The only thing that could make them better is if they were available in July for heat wave popsicle relief. Now I don’t know if the half bushel I’ve put up will even last until the first snowfall.
I never even used to like tomatoes.
Posted by jodi on September 20, 2011 at 4.46pm
july 4 supper (baked tofu recipe)
July 6, 2011
Couscous, broccoli and cauliflower soup using homemade vegetable bouillon, both recipes courtesy of the lovely 101 Cookbooks. The bouillon recipe says to use about a teaspoon per cup of water, but I find that doesn’t have enough flavour so I’m using more like one heaping dollop (dollop = as much as you can fit on a soup spoon without spilling any) of bouillon per cup of water. Which is just as well, because I made enough of this stuff to fill two big peanut butter jars and that’s a lot of bouillon to use up before it gets freezer burned.
Salad with sunflower seeds, chopped almonds and baked tofu, and the House Dressing from jae steele’s Get It Ripe, which is the favourite salad dressing in our house at the moment. I brought this salad, tofu and all, to my meat-and-potatoes family xmas celebration and it was well enough received that I was requested to bring it again to an upcoming family birthday party, and it’s all because of the amazingly rich dressing.
Here’s how I make the tofu, which is a conglomeration of a couple of versions of baked tofu I’ve tried, one from an old issue of Vegetarian Times and the others here and there around the web.
Baked Tofu
Ingredients:
1lb (one package) of firm or extra-firm tofu
1 Tbsp. red miso (white is okay too if it’s all you have)
1 Tbsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. honey or maple syrup
1 tsp. Thai red chili paste (when I don’t have this, I use half a teaspoon of dried red chili flakes)
1/2 tsp. garlic powder (or 1 clove crushed fresh garlic, if you don’t mind the chunks)
about 3 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
1/4 cup of soy sauce, or enough to obtain the consistency of a thin barbecue sauce
a few cranks of the old black peppermill
These amounts are approximate, as I just throw things in without measuring. Also I usually do a double batch.
Drain the water from your tofu and slice it into approximately 12 even pieces. I sometimes cut the block in half first to get 24 square pieces instead of 12 rectangular ones, but if you’re using the tofu primarily for sandwiches rather than just for snacking, the larger pieces are easier.
Whisk all other ingredients together in a bowl. Lay the tofu slices on a parchment lined baking sheet and brush with half of the marinade. Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, then flip all of the slices, brush with the remaining marinade and bake another 20 minutes (check it after 15, as these are my cooking times but my oven seems to run a little cool).
This tofu is great in a sandwich with whole wheat toast, fresh greens and lots of mustard, on its own for easy standing-at-the-fridge-door snacking, served warm on a bed of steamed greens and grains with a sprinkling of chopped almonds, or in a salad as above. I often use it in sandwiches made with the sesame seed “bread” (gluten free!) recipe from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, which I find to be a great pairing; the tofu seems to go particularly well with nutty flavours.
Posted by jodi on July 6, 2011 at 8.15am
vegan sesame snaps
June 28, 2011
I can’t remember now where I found the original, non-vegan sesame snaps recipe, but I’ll edit this to give credit if I do run across it. My version replaces the egg with a flax egg, which could be, at the same time, the grossest and the most magical thing I’ve ever produced in my kitchen. I don’t make these often, because we don’t really eat cookies or refined sugar in general, but I was on my way to a work party and these are a good way to get some protein and a little burst of sugar rush when you’re active.
ingredients
-2/3 cup flour (I’ve used unbleached all purpose flour exclusively in the past, but am planning to try it with whole wheat next time, since there’s so little flour-to-other-stuff anyway)
-1/4 teaspoon baking powder
-1/2 cup margarine (I use Earth Balance because I am A Hippie)
-1 cup packed brown sugar
-1 flax egg (see below)
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1 1/4 cup toasted sesame seeds
method
Prepare your flax egg in advance, as you’ll need to let it sit for 30 minutes or so in order for it to magically obtain the consistency of an egg. Mix one tablespoon of ground flax seed with three tablespoons of water and microwave on “high” for one minute, then let sit. You can also cook it on the stovetop instead for a minute or two, or just mix the flax with warm water and let it sit without cooking. This will produce an amount of flax egg that is equivalent to one egg.
Toast your sesame seeds in a large flat skillet on high heat, watching and stirring constantly to prevent burning. I’ve tried leaving the heat on lower and walking away from it, but that seems to take forever so it’s better to just crank the stove. But be vigilant! Because when these seeds burn, they burn all of a sudden, and they burn smoky. When about ten percent of the seeds have taken on a golden brown hue you can take the pan off the heat, but keep stirring or shaking it for a few minutes as the seeds on the bottom will continue to cook.
Combine the flour and baking powder in a small bowl.
In a larger bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar, then blend in the vanilla and the flax egg. Add the flour mixture and seeds and stir to combine. I like to add the seeds while they’re still hot from toasting, as the melting effect on the margarine and sugar seems to make the finished cookies more snappy and less doughy. If you like a thicker, more flour-y cookie then be sure to let the seeds cool first.
Drop in teaspoon amounts onto a cookie sheet that’s been oiled or lined with baking parchment (I use parchment). Leave some space for the cookies to spread. I haven’t tried this yet but you could probably also spread the whole mixture out on the pan, pull it out of the oven halfway through baking and score it with a knife to make rectangular, snap-apart cookies.
Bake for 6 to 8 minutes (this is what the original recipe said; my oven runs a little on the cool side and I like a dark bottom on my cookies, so I baked mine for closer to 12 minutes) at 350° Fahrenheit. Move them carefully onto a wire rack for cooling, as they’ll still be quite soft and floppy after baking and may stick to your spatula a bit. They’ll firm up nicely as they cool.
Posted by jodi on June 28, 2011 at 11.42am
