Mustard

Of all the spices, mustard is probably my favorite. A cosmopolitan ingredient, mustard adds spark to cuisines across the world. A squirt of yellow sauce on a hot dog is as American as a zesty mustard-bound vinagrette over greens is French, as a dollop of pale yellow sauce for your dim sum is Chinese. I love mustard for its fresh, perky zip. For years it has occupied a primary place in my kitchen armory.

Imagine my chagrin when, not long after moving in together, my roommate informed me that he is horrifically allergic to my King of Spices (I've seen the damage -- it is horrifying). You see, we mostly follow a traditionally gender-based division of labor at my house. I do most of the housework, my roommate pays many bills I never see. And he buys most of the food. 6 nights a week on average, I turn that food into dinner.

So this mustard thing? It is no overstatement to say it has completely changed the way I cook.

• My five different kinds of mustard? Those jars live on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator now.
  
• All of my prepared salad dressings? They too have been banished to the darkest reaches of cold storage.
  
• Spice mixes, such as for tacos or Indian food? They contain mustard, so I don't use them.
  
• Preseasoned items, such as croutons? Mostly I can't use them. Mustard is everywhere. All labels must be scrutinized. Sometimes even that is not enough. Often the last ingredient is spices. And spices is food label subterfuge for mustard or garlic.
  
• Even seemingly innocuous foods can be harmful. I'm looking at you SOUP and at you SNACK chips.
  

No meal can be prepared, no grocery junket completed without an exhaustive investigation of labels.

This fall passed without a single cup of curried pumpkin soup. So long as the roommate and I shall dine together, there will be no blanched green beans topped with cherry tomatoes in a red wine and shallot vinagrette bound with dijon. No turkey sandwiches will be decorated with a smart smear of cranberry mustard. No spicy potato salad flecked with parsley and bacon bits will soak up the goodness of a southern french dressing. In fact, salads generally have fallen by the wayside. Even when cooking just for me, I tend to forget that I have bottles and bottles of yummy dressing hiding at shin level behind the 7 month old, shrink-wrapped mass of 5 pounds of bacon.

The last cookbook I purchased is a 20 year old tome called Easy East\West Dinners for Family and Friends. Written by Madhur Jaffrey, a native of India who is best known for her Indian cookbooks, the book pulls culinary themes from all over the globe. She too adores mustard. It stars in many of her recipes. You know I can't wait to try them.

There is another fresh, perky flavor that she favors. And this flavor has given me pause for thought. In fact, the more I mull it over, the more I think I may have finally found a workable replacement for mustard.

In short, I think the answer may be ginger. Although it's a rhizome, not a spice, and it won't work in recipes that contain unsoured dairy, it won't necessarily cause chaos in the kitchen either. Ginger meshes well with citrus and plays nicely with garlic. It enhances fish, fowl and vegetables. It's a natural mate for tomato based dishes.

Tonight was the first of the ginger inspired menus. I broiled tuna with a pineapple-honey teriyaki glaze and steamed broccoli tossed with an oil-free citrus-ginger dressing.