[Sca-cooks] Mustard and mortar/pestle

[Patricia Collum]

At the classes I teach, I give each of the students a chance to grind there
own seeds. I have enough morters and pestles for each to give a hand. Then
we plug in the coffee grinder and grind the rest. The park we use the most
has electrical outlets in the ramadas. If they didn't, I would grind enough
fresh before i go out to the site for the class that day.

Cecily
----- Original Message -----
From: "Maggie MacDonald" <maggie5 at cox.net>
To: <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 1:06 PM
Subject: [Sca-cooks] Mustard and mortar/pestle


> 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.
>
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