Cutting the mustard

Readers, please don't think for a moment that I have abandoned you. Tales are forthcoming about community garden workdays and cooking lessons and working with various farmers markets leading up to the start of the season. (Farmers' market season, that is, though tax season is also breathing down my neck.)

Today -- or tonight, rather -- I offer a simple recipe, one which I have been fiddling with for a couple of years now. I recall the evening my friend Vinnie and his partner had me over for dinner those many nights ago, toward the end of which I left with an old issue of Saveur magazine that contained the base recipe for my now much beloved mustard recipe. There are a few standard ingredients -- namely, the ground spices -- and there are some variables: 1) mustard seeds, 2) vinegar, and 3) beer. The variations on this theme are endless.

The original recipe calls for stout, brown mustard seeds, and red wine vinegar. I tried that the first time and it was inarguably delicious. I gave most of it away as Christmas gifts that first winter. Necessity -- i.e., it being too cold out some nights to head out on my bike when I'd sense the first tinglings of a mustard craving -- has led me to try everything from balsamic to apple cider vinegar, and all kinds of mixes in between. I've sometimes snagged a few cups of yellow mustard seeds, and other times the smaller dark seeds, and still other times a mix of the two from dad (who should probably start buying stock in bulk mustard seed, considering his frequenting of the Middle Eastern spice shop since I picked up this mustard making habit). I've experimented with porters, English ales, apricot ales, my own pumpkin ale. Most recently, one of the last bottles of the Tall, Dark, and Belgian made its way into a batch of exceptionally spicy, stone-ground mustard. (The real secret that puts the current batch over the top? Garple.) Slathered on corned beef for a St. Patrick's Day gathering or two this weekend, stirred into horseradish for a sandwich, or mixed into salad dressings, I assure you, this mustard holds its own.

Okay, enough stalling: here's the recipe so you can make your own
Basic Spicy Mustard
Ingredients

• 12-ounce bottle of beer
• 1 1/2 cups whole mustard seed
• 1 cup vinegar
• 1 TBSP salt
• 1 TBSP freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice

Directions

Combine all ingredients in a glass, plastic, or ceramic mixing bowl (or if you're really careful with the beer pouring, this fits EXACTLY into a glass quart jar -- yeah, I just threw down that challenge).

Cover with a towel or recycled sandwich bag and let the mixture sit on your counter for about 2 days. This allows the flavors to talk to each other and the mustard seeds to soften.

Puree in a food processor, pausing occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl. After about 3 minutes, you'll suddenly see the mustard thicken and become creamy. (It's kind of like magic. At least Kenton and I think so.) You're done! And friends and family will be so impressed, while you secretly know all it took were a few simple ingredients and a couple days of patience.

You can smear some on a sandwich right then, but be sure to put the rest into a glass container, or a few smaller containers, and store in the refrigerator. It starts off quite spicy, but it'll mellow after a few weeks. Use it within about 6 months... not that I've had ANY mustard last that long around here....

Nobody leaves without pickin' the blues

I spent most of this past week at my cousin Caroline's place in Pennsylvania. Hey, with temps over 100 in the District, I was glad for the reprieve in the slightly cooler Poconos climate. We did a fair bit of work pulling and cleaning garlic, but mostly I did some writing and enjoyed the company of the fun folks with whom I found myself as we laughed and swam and cooked -- I was there for the 4th of July, after all, and it's practically illegal not to have a barbecue that afternoon. (Less illegal, apparently, than buying PA fireworks as a PA resident. Still trying to figure that one out. But I digress.)

We did take a break from garlic cleaning and swimming on the final morning of my visit, before I was to head to my friend Mitch's wedding in Philadelphia, to go blueberry picking. Caroline had mentioned it during our (garlicky) dinner the night before, and I couldn't shake my sudden desire to eat my body weight in the season's first tart berries. I stuffed my formal wear in the back seat of the car, packed us a picnic, and we were off for the blueberry fields at the crack of... 11am. It was rather steamy by the time we got there, but the berry harvesting gang was not to be deterred.

Soon after we arrived, the foreboding stormclouds rolled in. But I couldn't leave without pickin' the blues! (I can't help but think of that famous scene in Adventures in Babysitting. You know the one: an adorable Elizabeth Shue shuffles across the stage with her young charges at the underground blues club in Chicago in an effort to escape the villains, only to be stopped by a large, stern black man who insists, "Nobody leaves without singin' the blues." So she does.) Well, much cooler pickin' when it's overcast....

Okay, I was the first to dive under cover when it really started raining. Actually, it was under the cover of the hatchback of Caroline's station wagon, where I had fully laid out and taste-tested the picnic by the time the rest of the blueberry crew joined me. Even with my comparatively shortened picking stint, I made off with a solid 4 1/2 pounds of delicious, organically grown berries.

Yum. I think I'll be making some blueberry shortcake tonight.

Garlic on the brain (and in the blood)

With the last of the fireworks exploding and the final dishes washed for the night, I'm snuggled up in the guest room at cousin Caroline's on this 4th of July. It's a beautiful cool, clear evening, and tired as I am -- and early as I need to wake up tomorrow to catch a series of rides to get myself home again (5am? Really? I'd gone *to* bed later than that back at the height of my salsa dancing days) -- I find I have a lot on my mind. As usual, my visit to the 3rd-generation farm tucked up in the Poconos has reminded me of how rewarding (oh, the food!) as well as how challenging (grow, dammit!) sustainable farming can be. Take this year's garlic crop....

Unlike the drought much of the country has been facing, poor Gary and Caroline have been battling constant rain here in rural PA. At one point yesterday morning, just after another crack of thunder followed by pouring rain, we started joking about growing rice here instead. Lord knows the ground has been wet enough these past few months. I believe this is when we were tying up the previous day's harvest of braiding (softneck) garlic in the barn. A bit later, fearing that another bout of rain would surely result in root rot overtaking the bulk of the main crop if we left it in the ground much longer, we all trudged around in rubber boots and silly hats and jackets and pulled up some of the porcelain hardneck variety. Too small. Shoot.

Plants need rain to grow, sure, but they also need lots of sunshine. Allium crops all over the region are stunted and behind schedule because of the freak weather patterns, we learned from Gary's series of conversations with other farmers in the area. With one's main cash crop prone to rotting amid excessive moisture, what is an heirloom garlic farmer to do with 12,000 heads in the ground? Harvest too-small bulbs? Risk disease while waiting for the sun to show its face and encourage the plants to grow to normal size? Frankly, it's kind of a crapshoot, and I wonder how farmers aren't nervous wrecks.

(Another sign that I'm not cut out to be a farmer: I almost lost my cool after accidentally ripping three or four softneck garlic plants in a row while trying to pull them the other day. I had to go pick some raspberries -- conveniently located at the edge of the garlic field -- and scarf a few handfuls before I managed to calm down. Bah. Who wants braiding garlic anyway?) At least we pulled in a decent load during Saturday afternoon's harvest, when we had a bit of sunshine, but really, this weather has got to stop.

It's not all doom and gloom. I mean, they eat well. (Consider tonight's grilled venison, cilantro soup, roasted potatoes, and strawberry rhubarb bars.) And the small CSA seems to be going well, with diversified crops and maple syrup picked up weekly by their 7 shareholders. And there should be some sunshine this week (when, alas, the extra hands to help harvest will be back at their day jobs in New York and DC). If there's one thing I can say about Gary and Caroline, it's that they don't give up. Sure, there are losses and frustrations and (somewhat frequent) changes of plan, but they're still growing some beautiful, delicious stuff up here at Mountaindale Farms. And if the final crop is anywhere near as tasty as what I sampled tonight -- in the form of roasted, dark-chocolate-covered garlic and a post-dinner shot of youth-preserving "garple elixir" -- I think everything will turn out alright.

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Final days in PA

I spent most of Friday at a workshop on transitioning from conventional to organic farming at The Rodale Institute (something of a Mecca for farmers and gardeners on the east coast, and one of the groups consulted by the Secretary of Agriculture during the drafting of plans for a garden on the National Mall). It was another cold, damp day, and we all clutched cups of coffee and folders in our shivering hands, but the presentations and discussions were totally worth it. Speakers filled us in on the practical concerns -- what organic certification means, what to expect during the process, how long it takes, how to apply -- as well as federal and state (PA) financial assistance options, online resources, and various programs that can help farmers begin, convert, or expand their land to an organic operation. All of the speakers were great and many fielded some pretty tough questions. I learned a ton.

After a wonderful dinner, hot bath, and solid night of sleep in a comfy bed at the home of some dear family friends in (relatively) nearby Kintnersville, my cousin Caroline and friend Jim came by Saturday afternoon and joined us for an impromptu picnic before whisking Ollie and I up to Stroudsburg for a few days. Jim, my unflagging guide to the sustainable farming community here, brought me first to Josie Porter Farm, where veggies for the 100-family-strong Cherry Valley CSA are grown. Heidi and I planted flats of tomatoes and tomatillos as she told me about the history of the formerly biodynamic farm and some of her aspirations for the future of the place. Apparently I couldn't get enough of Josie Porter because I found myself back there on Sunday morning planting nearly an entire row of peppers with Heidi and weeding the onion patch with her friend Somaili visiting from West Africa. Sunday afternoon found me planting sunflower and loofah seeds and weighing garlic scapes with Caroline, Gary, Eric, and Jessie at Mountaindale Farm, followed by a dinner of venison weinerschnitzel, homemade applesauce, and asparagus/garlic scape salad. (Talk about a local meal: I think the bottle of Malbec was the only thing on the table that had traveled more than 200 yards from where it was grown.)

Monday morning found me once again back at Josie Porter Farm, but only for about 2 hours of planting and weeding before Jim transported me to Henry's Homestead Farm in Cresco. I chatted with Jeff and Mary Jean while they harvested mushrooms (part of Jeff's research project for his herbalist certification) and prepared for their 21 members' weekly CSA pickup. Theirs was an amazing and unique farm, with about a dozen small (150 foot or smaller) plots of beets, chard, garlic, onions, lettuce and more scattered about the property. After some conversation with the pair (exchanging recipes for yoghurt, cheese, garlic scapes, and broccoli rabe), Jim and I checked out the state-of-the-art greenhouse, were greeted by packs of truly free-range chickens in the forest (they made me a bit nervous, actually, with their complete disregard for human notions of personal space: about 2 dozen birds sidled right up to me, but Jim insisted they were harmless so I tried to dispel Hitchcockian scenarios from my mind), admired the creek, and learned a bit about the history of the land which had been in Jeff's family for generations. And I even had a chance to try my hand at milking Delilah, their lovely, infinitely patient cow. We left soon afterwards and I departed with the distinct impression that this farm was a place teeming not only with healthy food but also curiosity and joy. As Jeff and Mary Jean expand their efforts in coming years, I hope others seek out a similar model of sustainable food production.

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