Our Chinese restaurant, in the USA, guards their in house mustard. If you don’t ask for it, they don’t give it. It is kept in the refrigerator.
I don’t know if it is pricey, or they figure most people don’t want it.
But a spring roll without it, is boring.
Thanks for sharing the recipe. I will have to make some. The Chinese restaurant here doesn’t have any. Which is surprising given the appeal of spicy food here.
I made a mustard in a class one time, as I recall it had brown mustard and cardamon and some sort of vinegar. It tasted pretty blah to me until I added salt to it later. the flavors really bloomed with the addition of salt.
Silenus nailed it. Colman’s dry mustard. Prepare and let it bloom. You can adjust the consistency but it’ll be what you are looking for.
I was wondering about that myself. Mustard, horseradish, and wasabi are all from the same family and derive their spiciness from allyl Isothiocyanate. It’s a very different type of spiciness than chile peppers, and I almost wish there was a different word for it, as liking one type of spiciness does not mean you like another (my father could eat the most pungent mustard and horseradish, but couldn’t deal with very hot peppers; similarly, his Mexican workmates could eat hot peppers fine, but couldn’t deal with my dad’s horseradish. They’re very different.) Anyhow, a “hot” mustard can taste a lot like it has horseradish in it. Now, there are mustards with horseradish, but it’s a very similar flavor and burn. If you take some Colman’s English mustard and whip it up yourself, you can get a very similar burn (a quick, breath-taking type of sting, as opposed to a lingering heat that builds as with chiles–the after affects of horseradish and mustard don’t last long at all) as you would with grated horseradish.
Bengali has different words for all the sensations covered by “hot” or “spicy” in English.
গরম - [gɔrom] - garam - gorom - hot, meaning high temperature, as opposed to cold
ঝাল - [d͡ʒʰal] - jhal - meaning the hotness or spiciness of chilies, which burn your mouth, tongue, and lips
মশলা দেওয়া (Among other terms) - [mɔʃla dæowa] - masla deoya - moshla daowa - spiced, made with spices, not necessarily burning or hot
ঝাঁজ - [d͡ʒʰãd͡ʒ] - jhanj - jhãj - the sinus-clearing hotness of mustard or horseradish. This is the burn that shoots upward to your eyes and forebrain.
No mixing bowls on tables, but combining mustard and soy sauce is sometimes done down here in the New Orleans area, as well.
There’s a popular ersatz Chinese dish here in New Orleans called “Mandarin Chicken” that comes with a sesame-oil-based brown gravy. I find the hot mustard complements that gravy very well. My understanding is that either (a) this dish is uncommon in the rest of the U.S. or else (b) other places have it under a different name.
Nice, I like that. Then there’s also that ginger kind of spiciness, which is probably a bit more jhanj than jhal, and Piper peppercorn spiciness, which I find probably more like jhal than jhanj, at least to me. Are those classified along these scales? (Though I guess the spiciness of ginger isn’t really experienced in most dishes – only if you eat it straight or experience it in ginger beer.)
The packaged stuff varies wildly. I’ve had it at places where it was basically a tan flour paste, and other places where it would eat the finish off the plates. It seems to get hotter as general restaurant quality increases.
Yup. Even the cheapest strip mall take-out places around here keep the good stuff in a refrigerator and put the plastic packets out on the counter for those who don’t know enough to ask for the good stuff.
Good hot Chinese mustard is pretty much the same as good hot English mustard: it’s mustard.
Our favorite dim sum joints in the Brooklyn and Manhattan Chinatowns put out bowls of the sinus-clearing stuff and don’t offer packets at all. We’re always the only non-Asians in the place, though.
Definitely recommend using a condiment.
Put a drop or two of white vinegar in that–makes it just a bit more volatile.
As for what’s in the take out packets, my guess is strained cat vomit. Or something created by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike mustard.
There isn’t any horseradish in Asian take-out mustard, but there surely is in Philippe’s mustard. The inventors of the French Dip sandwich make a killer hot mustard that will clear your great-grand-kids’ sinuses.
That’s nice and all, except with that interpretation garam masala makes no sense.
Maybe its name is metaphorical, but in that case we’re right back to square one, aren’t we?
I believe that “garam” in “garam masala” refers neither to spices nor to burning sensations. It’s a reference to folk theories regarding “warming” and “cooling” foods. For example, yogurt is cooling. Goat meat is warming. Traditional healing theories have it that certain health-related circumstances call for eating one or the other kind of foods. “Garam masala” is a spice mixture (masala) that is warming (garam).
In any case, this usage doesn’t result in any ambiguity in the way that “hot” and “spicy” do in English.
Indeed now that I click on your Wikipedia link, I see that the third sentence says exactly what I explain above.
So, no, the phrase doesn’t contradict my explanation at all.
Nope. That’s mustard. No horseradish required. Indeed the Oholippe’s website says exactly that.
The prevalence of American yellow mustard has blinded Americans to the true qualities of mustard.
I keep a jar of Chicago-made Plochman’s yellow mustard in my fridge, along with Dijon and horseradish and a couple other varieties. For some things, the mild heat and strong vinegar tang of yellow mustard is perfect. Chicago-style hot dogs, for example.
French’s yellow mustard, the top-selling brand, however, is like watery dogshit.
That may be. But such concoctions feature none of the qualities of mustard. They’re kind of a vinegary turmeric flavor. The fact that Americans experience that as the primary association with the word “mustard” is a tragedy.