Mostarda di Cremona is a wonderful accompaniment to certain dishes.
For folk not familiar with it, it is various fruits soaked in a sugar
syrop (akin to glacé fruits) laced with mustard of some sort. At
least, that is what is should be and, indeed, has been when we've
bought it in the past. However, recently purchased jars lack that hot
taste of mustard and when one scans the ingredients you find there is
no mustard in it whatsoever! The reason, I am told, is that unlike we
Northern Europeans (and the good folk of Cremona apparently) Italians
in general do not like mustard; so it's left out!
So now comes the problem of putting the mustard back into the jars of
mostarda in our larder. Thinking that powdered mustard would make the
syrop unacceptably cloudy, my wife managed to buy some mustard oil
(used in Indian cuisine, I'm told). We've never used mustard oil
before, but thought of draining the syrop from the mostarda (probably
heating it up) and mixing in the oil. We've not yet done this nor do
we know the quantity - a bit hit 'n miss, I guess. However, if any
cooks or dedicated Italian diners who like their mostarda to be
authentic have already tackled this problem we'd be grateful to hear.
(Just to complete the picture, we are anxious to get it right because
we wish to serve it with zampone, with which it is excellent)
Derek
(Surrey, UK)