[Sca-cooks] Grinding mustard seed

[Nick Sasso]

<<<pacem et bonum,
niccolo difrancesco
(got a 22 of 25 on my mustard research and samples.  Next time I grind
all my own seed to flour!)>>>

So, having mentioned this in a closing, has anyone actually ground
large quantities of mustard seed themselves?  I can ojnly describe what
I have done as a huge pain in the @ss.  Goodman of Paris says soak and
motar them . . . dioable, but inconsistent paste, and very difficult for
large quantities of over a couple tablespoons.  I have used a Corona
grain mill at its closest setting, and the tiny seeds still run
everywhere, and get simply broken rather than ground.  My hand crank
coffee mill does not go small enough to keep seeds from falling through
a lot.  Pepper grainder seems a possibility, but I have no siggestion of
whether that approximates what would have been used in, say, 14th
century France, though that is not a target time/place by any stretch.

All this because judges of my entry dropped a point and made comment
due to lack of complexity of the entry, and that my research and
documentation raised my score in that category.  I compared and
contrasted 10 mustard sauces from different sources in my documentation,
then prepared 4 of them for tasting.  One I made using hand ground seeds
(the Menagier one that gives those directions) and the rest I used
pre-ground mustard flour from the Farmer's Market, declaring it as a
product likely enough available to cooks from spiceries.  My
presentation lacked as all I did was slop them in some ramekins with
spoons and provide some flatbreads for tasting . . . spartan to
highlight the actual flavors.

I appreciated the considered feedback, but want to increase liklihood
of banging home a perfect score somehow at Kingdom A&S by addressing
their suggestions and critique.  I have entered maybe 7 competitions in
15+ years, because that's not my thing.  Now that  have done another
one, I want to take it to the best it can be.  PResentation next time
will be a prepared dish of some sort, that will take mustard as its
sauce, comnplete with its documentation.  A wooden trencher wil hold the
dich, and have four sauce wells along its edges as well as a salt
cellar.  These will be part of the actuall platter, cut into the wood in
the style of the plate someone on this list reported seeing in a London
museum (I'll have that reference as well).

So, grinding mustard seed into paste or flour?

pacem et bonum,
niccolo difrancesco
(22 of 25 as cooking entry, and docs got 17 of 25 as research paper
because of admittedly poor formatting <since it was created as entry
documentation> among other things like typoes in the last paragraph).