Hi all - Well, this afternoon is August's KTC event...And I still haven't published July's blog post. Eeeek! Let's just say we've had a few more things than usual taking up our free time these days - my apologies for the delay!
Thinking back, way back, to early July....We all congregated at Joyce and Jessica's house for Jessica to meander through the magic of making mustard. In attendance were J&J, Meg, Shawn, Fernando, Sebastian (his first cooking group experience!), Anne, Rick, and Jessica and Joyce's friends Piper and Kristen, in town from Portland to compete in a bike ride (I think? Jessica?). Very exciting!
Jessica greeted us with great hospitality - AND a festive-looking tumbler of blueberry sangria (Jessica, where did you find that recipe? I'll post it here if you can tell me where it lives...)! Yum!
The
mustard recipes we would try came from the
Pacific NW magazine that is published in the
Seattle Times each week.
The first step in
giving our food a personal zing was to soak the mustard seeds ahead of time, a step which Jessica completed prior to our arrival. Here are three batches of seeds soaking for the three kinds of mustard (Ginger-Cilantro-Lime, Simple Mustard, and Chinese-Style Honey Mustard - I think!) we'd prepare:
Our menu couldn't consist, of course, of mustard alone - Our gracious hostess had planned a fun summertime collection of burgers, sliders, and dogs for our afternoon of pungently condimented fun. At our disposal we had happy ground turkey, ground beef, and ground pork from
PCC.
The plan was to create our own versions of burgers/sliders from these meats and various other ingredients we found in the house. We added different combinations of eggs, breadcrumbs, veggies, yogurt, cheese, and more - it was fun to think of how to put everything together.
While we collectively created burger patties, Shawn realized she'd forgotten her camera, and would be stuck snapping iPhone pics all night. She assigned the blame to little Sebastian, the all-consuming but oh-so-cute newest member of our cooking group. Here he is, seemingly in deep thought about all the mustardy goings-on--he even bedecked himself in yellow for the occasion.
Burger creation continued, and yielded several different options, from an all-pork burger to a turkey-veggie burger to blend of meats sandwiching a healthy dose of blue cheese in the middle.
We all ran around, working hard:
Kristen organized a veggie tray for adorning our burger creations:
And no summertime burger bonanza can take place without frying up a little bacon to give them a little extra oomph.
As we prepared each mustard variety, the final product seemed surprisingly watery, as seen below. We read that, ideally, we should let each rest in the fridge for a couple of weeks to obtain optimum consistency, and that it would thicken right up with no additional effort.
Next up on the menu was the
Grilled Apricot, Arugula, and Goat Cheese salad. The apricots were already really soft and ripe when they went on the grill, so by the time they came off, they were nearly like jam. Not exactly the texture we were going for, but oh-so-delicious all the same.
Next up was to cut goat cheese coins. Jessica or Joyce dug out some dental floss to use for slicing the soft cheese. Of course, who more appropriate to carry out that particular task than our resident dentist? The dental floss trick worked like a charm!
Now we were close - some kind of green sauce (help me out here, Kissers - I missed the whole thing!) went into the blender for blending, and didn't quite have the expected result for which we were hoping. Oops!
Dinner was nearly ready. The outdoor table was prepared for our al fresco dining experience, what a delight! Plates were prepared, and folks settled in to eat. There were major differences from burger to burger, depending on the recipes, but general consensus was, "Yum!"
As we finished up, the table emptied - Fernando and Shawn tag-teamed for baby care, Rick and Meg and others worked on dessert:
Rosemary Strawberry Shortcake (speaking of "Yum!").
T'was berry season, and these looked lovely...
The original recipe makes a pizza, but we decided to create individual shortcakes in the grill instead.
Here are the dessert ingredients, ready to assemble:
And, here, the delightful final product! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Rosemary Strawberry Shortcake! It tasted as good as it looked!
And voila! The quick and dirty version of our evening together creating mustard. We all took home doggie bags of mustard, and Fernando and I have used nearly all of ours - big hits included baked fish with our ginger mustard and some really great salad dressings.
We're meeting in less than 2 hours, so I'm going to wrap up this post - I'll try and get the next one out in a more timely fashion. See you all at Meg's in a bit (Anne and Rick apparently had a very unfortunate plumbing incident at their place, so we had a change of venue...). Until then, Kissers!
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