Rowley’s House Mustard — with a Filipino Twist

I like a spot of mustard.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been making my own. I started around the same time I began brewing my own beer. I was old enough to buy mustard; not so much the beer. Sure, I still buy unusual or specific mustards — moustarde au violette, creole, Scharfersenf, or Dijon — but whipping up a batch of perfectly respectable homemade stuff is fast and cheap. It’s also so easy that I often make it just by eyeballing ingredients.

I’ll make several different kinds over the course of a year, but I’ve become fond of incorporating Sukang Iloko, a Filipino sugarcane vinegar that’s become the workhouse vinegar around here for sauces, marinades, and vinaigrettes — and it’s cheaper than bottled water. Check with local Asian supermarkets, but if it proves tricky to track down, other vinegars such as rice or white wine stand in just fine.

Here’s my eyeball method for making our house mustard: pour an equal measure of yellow and brown mustard seeds in a large jar (maybe a little heavy on the brown seeds). Cover with two fingers of cane vinegar and let the whole mass soak. If the seeds are particularly thirsty, top off with more vinegar the next day. After 3-5 days, transfer to a blender (or use an immersion blender), then add mild mustard powder, a bit of salt, and a few tablespoons of honey. Blend to crush the seeds lightly. Store in clean glass jars. It’s ready to use as-is, but benefits from a few days’ rest.

If you’re more comfortable with specifics, try this:

Rowley’s House Mustard

½ - ¾ cup black/brown mustard seeds
½ cup yellow mustard seeds
1 - 1½ cup Filipino cane vinegar
½ cup yellow mild mustard powder
1 Tbl salt
3-4 Tbl honey

Soak mustard seeds in vinegar 3-5 days. Add remaining ingredients and blend the whole mass in a blender for 5-12 seconds until the seeds are lightly crushed. Store in clean glass jars.

You can store this mild mustard at room temperature in the cupboard or pantry, but the coolness of a fridge seems best to preserve its fugitive bite.

North Carolina Barbecue Sauce

Sundays are my lazy days, a weekly chance to read papers, enjoy of cup of tea or five, and do kitchen tasks. Sharpen knives, clean the fridge, refill containers — inventory and maintenance type stuff mostly. For a few hours this past Sunday, I had the house to myself, so I pulled out all the spices and dried herbs from the cabinets, washed the shelves, and took stock of what was there.

Plenty of kala jeera, but not enough barbecue sauce.

Simple enough to fix. After making ice, it's one of the easiest recipes I know. The vinegar-spiked red pepper sauce I’d learned to make in North Carolina was nearly gone. Unlike the thick, tomato-based Kansas City-style sauce we see today, the stuff I came like so much in North Carolina has no tomato, onion powder, or other such embellishments. Other than vinegar, in fact, it has only four ingredients; chile powder, salt, pepper, and a touch of sugar. Some recipes call for “crushed” red peppers. Wrong. You don't want the stuff that goes on pizzas. What is needed here is powdered chile, preferably Chimayo red from New Mexico.

I’d come to appreciate the style at a BBQ place called Bullock’s in Durham, North Carolina while living in the area. It was also at Bullock’s where I had the epiphany that heavily-sweetened iced tea perfectly matched the tart vinegar sauce on the pulled pork. The less-sweet tea of my Kansas City youth made sense as well: not as much vinegar in the sauce there, so it doesn't need sweetness to balance the meal.

When I was leaving North Carolina, I pulled up to Bullock’s, ate my last pulled pork and hush puppies plate, and bought a liter of barbecue sauce on the way out the door. I’d brought my own bottle. I doused eggs with it, dashed it over collards and kale, drizzled some over fish, and, naturally, paired it with slow-cooked pork.

This isn’t Bullock’s recipe (I didn’t even bother asking), but it does put me solidly in a North Carolina state of mind. It's fair to say I haven't been without it for 15 years.

This stuff’s been known to eat through metal caps, so I store it in glass bottles with plastic screw-on caps. Some refrigerate it, but I hardly see the point. Mine stays in the cabinet where I can grab a bottle without rummaging around.

North Carolina Barbecue Sauce

4 cups/1 liter vinegar, divided (see below)
4 Tbl/60ml New Mexico chile, powdered
2 Tbl/30ml salt
2 Tbl/30ml black pepper, freshly ground
1 Tbl/15ml sugar

For a little over a liter/quart of this thin, piquant sauce, combine all the spices with 3c/750ml vinegar in a large measuring cup, jar, or pitcher. Whisk thoroughly. Before it has a chance to settle out, pour through a funnel into a clean glass bottle. Add the remaining cup/250ml of vinegar to the mixing container, swirl it around to get any spices that might be adhering to the sides, then quickly pour it into the bottle. Cap and set aside to cure for a few days (though, in a pinch, you could use it right away).

Which vinegar to use? Plain ol' grocery store distilled white is fine. Better still, use cider vinegar. That's the stuff I like. You can certainly use rice wine vinegar, but I wouldn’t waste the money on champagne vinegar. Balsamic is the wrong flavor entirely. Might be good in some other BBQ sauce. Not this one.

Pork Tenderloin in Mexican Peanut Sauce

Sauces thickened with seeds and nuts are an old part of Mexico’s culinary patrimony. Pre-Columbian, even. Americans might know some of these moles, such mole poblano—a chocolate-tinged sauce beefed up with ground seeds and nuts often served over chicken or turkey.

Mexico’s peanut-thickened sauces are less familiar. Sure, we know about beef or chicken sate/satay, but pork or chicken in fried chile-and-peanut sauce is drifting into uncharted waters—even for many Mexicans.

Pity. It’s easy to make and tasty as hell. The fried and simmered sauce is thick and deeply flavored with cinnamon, pepper, and chiles.

After tasting a dish of pollo en cacahuate at a San Diego restaurant called Ranas, I dug into my library to compare notes among my Spanish-language food books. The version here I adapted from Filete de Cerdo en Cacahuate in Larousse de la cocina Mexicana. Spanish isn’t my first language, but I'm conversant enough not to starve or go homeless when I'm in Mexico or Spain, so I’m including the original recipe below for anyone who wants to see where I veered from its directions. In Mulli: el gran libro de los moles, Mexican chef Patricia Quintana suggests covering a similar dish—encacahuatado—with a massive amount of ground chiles piquin dusting the top of chicken in peanut sauce. There's enough heat here to suit my taste (it's a chiled peanut sauce, after all, not a peanutted chile sauce), but if that grabs your fancy, go ahead.

No need to fry nuts when perfectly good roasted peanuts are available from the store. Planters or Trader Joe’s low salt versions are fine. If you don’t have access to hoja santa, use two bay leaves and bump up the black pepper just a bit. Not the same anisy kick, but a good flavor, anyway.

Pork Tenderloin in Mexican Peanut Sauce

1 kg trimmed pork tenderloin (two should do it)
1 cup peanuts
3 oz of French bread or roll, into 1” slices
2 tablespoons corn oil
5 g ground cinnamon
salt to taste
1 Tbl guajillo chile powder
2 Tbl ancho chile powder
3 tomatoes, cored and chopped
1 hoja santa (sub two bay leaves if not available)
½ onion (125 g)
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1 tsp black peppercorns
5 small hot peppers
1 tablespoon sugar
2 chipotle chiles in vinegar
2 cups (250 ml) chicken broth
2 tablespoons cane vinegar
1 cup (125 ml) red wine

Season the tenderloins with cinnamon and salt. Set aside. Meanwhile, fry the bread in oil in a deep heavy pot or Dutch oven until lightly browned. Set aside and brown the tenderloins in the oil. Set aside.

In a blender, grind to a puree the guajillo and ancho powders with the tomatoes, hoja santa, onion, garlic, peppers, sugar, peanuts, fried bread, and chipotle with enough stock to make a pourable paste.

Reheat the oil in the same pot and pour the sauce into it. Fry, stirring, and cook this paste in the oil over low heat 40 minutes. Stir frequently to prevent sticking and scorching. When the sauce thickens, remove the fat that rises to the surface.

Add the remaining broth, the vinegar and wine, stirring until fully mixed.

Add the browned pork and simmer whole 15-20 minutes or until cooked. If the sauce thickens a lot, dilute it a bit with additional chicken broth.

Remove the tenderloins and allow to rest about ten minutes. Slice them into oval medallions. Now, either return the slices to the sauce and serve hot or nap a plate with the sauce, arrange a few slices over the top of that, and serve.

Goes well with fried plantains (right). Leftover sauce can be used to make enchiladas. Be careful on reheating to use a gentle fire and stir often: this will scorch easily.

And the original from Larousse de la cocina Mexicana:

Filete de Cerdo en Cacahuate

1 kg de filete de cerdo limpio
1 taza de cacahuates tostados y pelados
1 pan bolillo en rabandas
2 cucharadas de aceite de maiz
5 g de canela en polvo
sal
2 chiles guajillos, desvenados y remojodos
3 jitomates bola
3 chiles anchos, desvenados y remojodos
1 hoja santa
½ cebolla (125 g)
2 dientes de ajo pelados
5 pimientas negras
5 pimientas de Tabasco
1 cucharada de azúcar
2 chiles chipotles en vinagre
2 tazas (250 ml) de caldo de pollo
2 cucharadas de vinagre de caña
1 taza (125 ml) de vino tinto

Fria el cacahuate y el pan en la mitad de aceiete sin dorar demasiado.

Espolvoree el filete con canela y sal.

Dore el filete con el resto del aceite y reservelo.

Muela la chile guajillo, cuelelo y reservelo.

Muela jitomates, chile guajillo, chile ancho, hoja santa, cebella, ajo, pimientas, azúcar, cacahuate, pan frito y chipotle.

Cocine esta mezcla a fuego lento 40 minutos, mueva constantamente para que no se pegue. Cuando la salsa espese, elimine la grasa que suba la superficie.

Anada caldo, vinagre y vino sin dejar de mover hasta integrar totalmente.

Agregue el filete entero y concinelo 15 minutos o hasta que este cocido. SI la salsa espesa mucho, rebaje con caldo de pollo.

Repose el filete y rebanelo en frio.

Regreselo a la salsa y sirva caliente.

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