[Sca-cooks] Mustard and mortar/pestle

[Maggie MacDonald]

At 09:20 AM 6/1/2003,Patricia Collum said something like:
>Original recipe (translated in english from Das Kuchbuch der Sabrina
>Welserin (1553): To make the mustard for dried cod:
>
>Take mustard powder, stir into it good wine and pear preserves and put
>sugar into it, as much as you feel is good, and make it as thick as you
>prefer to eat it, then it is a good mustard.
>
>I decided to use canned pears instead of pear preserves like the redaction
>that I read in 'Making Medieval-Style Mustards' by Jadwiga
>Zajaczkowa/Jenne Heise.(Thank you for a wonderful article!)
>
>my redaction: 1 cup freshly ground mustard seed (starting with about 1
>Tbsp of brown mustard seed to 3 Tbsp yellow)
>
>2 small cans (8 1/2 oz.) pears in heavy syrup, drained well
>
>1/2 cup sugar
>
>1/2 cup red wine vinegar
>
>1/4 cup cooking sherry
>
>dump all contents into a blender and whirl until smooth.

So .. if you work with mustard at an event, in the field, how do _YOU_ (the
group in general) deal with grinding mustard seed? I've tried really hard
to do the mortar/pestle route, but it never gets fine enough in a decent
amount of time (and frankly, my wrists can't take that much stress). I've
tried the traditional marble m/p, I've used the flat plate shaped m/p, and
the very coarse plastic ones from the arabic stores. NONE of them do a
really good job. I've even tried that very coarse volcanic looking metate
setup. It was fast, but the stuff all got down in the holes in the stone,
and just left a really icky cleanup job.

I have one of those hand crank coffee grinders, with the drawer in the
bottom, and I recently acquired a turkish grinder (like an oversized pepper
grinder). I once tried the coffee grinder for the mustard seed, but it
never got a find enough grind.

So, what do you, as a group, find that works for this??? I'm ready to just
go t'heck withit, and just stick with electric whirly devices for mustard
sauces.

Regards,
Maggie MacD.