In Good Taste #81: Mustard
An easy fermented condiment; I finally finish The Power Broker; Hacks
Well, hello there! How are you?
Good I hope.
(Not up for the chitchat? Completely get it. Click the email title to go to a web-based version then jump straight to the recipe or Cultural Fun.
It’s been a full week of sunshine so I am allowing myself to believe that this is not Fool’s Spring but the real thing. Don’t try and persuade me otherwise. Sometimes you just want to live the lie a little.
I had a lovely weekend in Newcastle staying with my friends Sammy and Clare and teaching a couple of workshops at Gosforth’s Hut on the Green. Such a nice place, only open since last year but already attracting a lot of people to its talks and art classes and becoming a real community space.
I hope to be back up in the summer so make sure you’re subscribed to get the dates as soon as they’re announced.
Recipe: A basic mustard
I was at the Hornsey Vale Community Centre yesterday, cooking for the monthly Lunch Club. One of the volunteers asked me what was for pudding and misheard my answer as “apple crumble and mustard”.
I don’t entirely hate the idea. It’s a bit Heston maybe. But I can kind of see a lightly mustardy ice cream working alongside an apple-based dessert? Or a savoury apple crumble as an accompaniment to roast pork with a mustard sauce? Not something I’ll be bringing it to a supper club menu soon but not entirely hideous to think about…
This isn’t that though. This is just mustard. You can put it on whatever you like.
Mustard is itself a preservative so doesn’t need to be fermented to extend its shelf-life but the process adds extra flavour. This makes approximately one 400ml jar and is endlessly variable. See notes for some suggestions
For the ferment
100g mustard seeds (I used a mixture of yellow and brown)
15g salt
250ml warm water
4 garlic cloves
To finish
50ml vinegar (I used cider vinegar)
1 tablespoon honey
Method
Blend the seeds to a paste. Put the mustard seeds, salt, water and garlic in a blender and process until a rough paste consistency.
Leave to ferment. Put the paste in a jar leaving no air pockets. I piped it in to make sure. Cover the surface with a circle of greaseproof paper, deal the jar and leave at room temperature for a week.
Finish the mustard. After this add the vinegar and honey. You can either blend again for a smoother finish or just stir it in. Place back in the jar and store in the fridge.
Notes (If Ifs And Ands Were Pots And Pans…)
Yellow mustard seeds are sweeter than brown which have a bitterness to them. I like an even mixture of the two but you could vary the balance or go with just one.
Garlic is a great addition but you could add turmeric root (an inch or so) or horseradish as well or instead. Plus any herbs or spices you like.
The longer you blend the seeds for, the creamier your mustard will get.
For extra flavour and microbial goodness could use leftover pickle brine in place of the water.
Cultural Fun
I am loving the third series of The White Lotus. Maybe not quite as much as I loved the Sicily-set second one, but a lot. It’s a little slow to get going but the characters are so well drawn and all the simmering doom just makes it harder to wait for each new episode. The inevitable over-privileged family! The envious frenemies! The age-gap couple! Delicious.
I also really enjoyed the third series of Hacks. Which took such a long time to be available for streaming in the UK I was beginning to despair.
For a comedy-about-comedy, I don’t actually find Hacks laugh-out-loud funny. But I am so invested in the creative push-pull between Jean Smart as the aging, Joan Rivers-esque comedy diva and her idealistic young writer played by Hannah Einbinder that I don’t care.
I feel this way about a lot of comedy of the last few years (Ted Lasso, Starstruck etc.) - the jokes aren’t zingers (with a pause for laughter from the studio audience) but are the sort of things that actual funny people would say to each other in reallife. Not necessarily hilarious but relatable.
In a very different vein I can heartily recommend Oliver Burkeman’s latest, Meditations for Mortals. I banged on a lot about Four Thousand Weeks, his anti-productivity time management book, and this is a companion piece. A series of short essays or meditations on accepting life’s imperfections (including the fact it will end) and thus being able to embrace it more fully.
I was particularly struck with this line he quoted from Roman poet Horace: “The days are more fun than the years which pass us by while we discuss them. Act with zest one day at a time, and never mind the rest.”
Also - you guys! I’m so proud! - I finally finished The Power Broker. 13 months after I started I got to the end of Robert Caro’s epic biography of the unelected urban planner who built modern New York. It was well worth it but I’m not sure I would have stayed the course without the monthly 99% Invisible podcasts to help me along.
I’m not sure I have it in my to embark on Caro’s multi-volume Lyndon B Johnson biography. Not for a while anyway. But I have got the audiobook of Working and am looking forward to hearing more about this meticulous man’s method.
Bye! See you next week!
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I like the crumble idea to be honest.