Dijon Mustard

There was a time when a jar of dijon mustard would last in my fridge for up to a year. In fact, when I began this project in October, I was finishing up a jar and there were two full jars in the pantry, a surplus that meant we were prepared for the Big One, or the Apocolypse or a large Bratwurst party. I thought the day would never come that I would need to make my own with such bounty. Well as the variety of available condiments fell by the wayside, dijon mustard took on more and more importance. In fact, thanks to the genius of Thomas Keller, we practically can't even eat a roast chicken without it anymore. And since roast chicken makes a weekly appearance in our house, we ran out of dijon a few weeks ago. Yellow, Spicy Brown, Honey Mustard, we still have all of these and they each have their place. (However that place is mostly on foods I do not yet have the wherewithal to make...) So we have been feeling the loss of the dijon. So tonight we set it to right. I found this recipe on bigoven.com, it said it came from Colorado Cache Cookbook (1978). I am always comforted by recipes published in the 1970's, it's post the 1950's Cool Whip revolution of industrial food and before the onset of mass production of high-fructose corn syrup and the low-fat overthrow of the 1980's. The 70s, in my mind was a brief revival of real food eating. And Dijon mustard has a very 1970's feeling of sophistication. Like something you would serve on the side at a Fondue/Key Party.

2 c Dry white wine
1 c Chopped Onion (I used a shallot. I think it was fine.)
2 Cloves Garlic, minced
4 oz Dry Mustard (I only had 2 oz of dry mustard, and...Get ready to be shocked...didn't check this until I already started boiling the wine... but it was ok, I halved the rest of the recipe and used the leftover wine in a salad dressing)
2 Tb  Honey
1 Tb Vegetable Oil
2 tsp Salt
4 drops Tabasco sauce (or whatever hot sauce you've got.)

Combine wine, onion, and garlic. Heat to boiling. Lower heat and simmer 5 minutes. Set aside and cool.
Put dry mustard into a small sauce pan and strain cooled wine mixture into it. Beat until very smooth. Add remaining ingredients and heat slowly, stirring constantly until mixture thickens.

Cool. Pour into a non-metal container (like an old, cleaned, mustard jar) and cover. Chill at least 2 day to blend flavors.

Well I served it immediately. It was extremely strong. Clear your sinuses, bring tears to your eyes, "i just ate a spoonful of horseradish" strong. So I think the instructions probably mean, chill at least 2 days to let the mustard mellow out a bit... I hope so anyway. I'll let you know. This did not stop me from slathering it all of my chicken though. It just meant I had to blow my nose a few times and made some very amusing faces.

Mayonnaise Disaster

Pride goeth before a fall. Yesterday I attempted to make mayonnaise again. This time I used the recipe from "I Know How to Cook" instead of Julia Childs strict and fussy instructions, with all her hysterical warnings of averting crises. The IKHTC recipe was simple and straight forward with fewer steps and alarums. I was certain that, like her ridiculously labor-intensive roast chicken recipe, Julia was just being excessively gourmet and French with these instructions.

Well I couldn't have been more wrong. First of all Julia's recipe calls for three egg yolks, IKHTC calls for just one. I thought this was great because the whole process would go that much more quickly. IKHTC said to beat the yolk in a large bowl, so i used my large stainless steel mixing bowl. Way, way too big for one egg yolk. So the yolk was spread all over the base of the bowl, making it very had to get a sense of how it was coming together as I added the oil. Julia also has you add mustard and vinegar before starting with the oil to aid in the emulsification process and to "prepare the egg yolk to receive the oil". IKHTC just has you jump right in, adding the vinegar at the end, and no mustard at all. I think if I had added vinegar and mustard to the one egg yolk it would have helped the too large bowl thing at least a little bit. Anyway, there I was mixing the thin layer of egg and oil with my electric hand mixer and it seem to be thickening up just fine, I'd probably added about 1/4 cup of oil, so I guess I got over-confident and started adding the oil a little more quickly, all of the sudden the whole thing seemed to fall apart. It just stopped thickening, and lost all thick, emulsifiedness it seemed to have before. No matter how much mixing I did, nothing worked, it remained thin and liquidy and would begin to separate as soon as I stopped mixing. I ran for Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as I remembered Julia having some advice for just such disasters. She said if you added a tablespoon of mustard to a 1/4 cup of unemulsified mayonnaise and mixed heartily it would fix it right up. She said this always works. Since I have decided not to doubt her methods anymore I am going to assume she means always if you follow her instructions from the begining... it did not work for me at all. Now I had an oily, eggy, mustardy liquid in a bowl.

At this point I decided this batch was not to be rescued, but wasn't quite ready to just throw it all down the drain. So I opened a can of tuna and dumped it in. It actually was a pretty tasty, but rather wet mess, so I added one more can of tuna and chopped up some celery, carrots and scallions and that absorbed enough to make it a rather nice tuna salad that I mixed with a bunch of greens and had for lunch. So all was not lost. However, I now know that I have not achieved mastery of the egg yolk and am not in a position to take such a cavalier attitude toward  the making of mayonnaise and I don't plan to veer from Julia's well laid course again for a good while.