My first idea for this month’s TGRWT was to marinate some meat with mustard, peppermint and garlic. The meat was OK, but it wasn’t great and the flavors didn’t really come through. There was either something missing or the balance was wrong. I also suspect that the mint flavor is not very well suited for BBQ’ing.
The peppermint mustard marinade didn’t work out quite as expected.
Instead of tinkering more with the marinade I decided to google mint and mustard and found a recipe from the blog Beyond Salmon which I modified slightly:
Peppermint and mustard sauce
6 T sour cream
2 T mustard (coarse type)
1 T brandy/cognac
1 T white wine vinegar
1-2 T coarsly chopped fresh peppermint
1-2 t sugar
1-2 t worcestershire sauce
salt
pepper
Mix all ingredients. The amounts are quite approximate, all spices should be added to taste.
I served the sauce with oven grilled trout fillets, rice and steamed broccoli. The fish is easily prepared: Lay out the fillets in an oven proof tray, brushed with olive oil and maple syrup, sprinkled with salt and pepper and grilled for approximately 6-8 min at 200 °C (depending on thickness). Use thermometer if desired and aim at a core temperature of 45-50 °C.
Verdict: The sauce has a fresh, light tartness. Peppermint and mustard compliment each other very well. All in all a very delicate sauce. I wish I had made some more!
Peppermint leaf in the rain, seconds before it was harvested for the sauce.
Too much heat seems to scare off the nice minty volatiles. Maybe for the marinade you could use a tiny bit of mint oil (or maybe a vodka extract of mint or a rub with dried mint) and throw on some fresh mint at the end (like in a southeast Asian salad)? Still might not work, but you would at least have the fresh mint at the end.
Maybe the heat aspect is also important for the mustard as it is a volatile flavor. Hence with classic sauce Robert, the mustard (like black pepper) is added or whisked in at the end.
This combination seemed alien to me at first, then I realized that I already had a menu item in place right now that utilizes both. We serve an Indian spiced duck confit (it took a while to get the right balance in the Indian ‘sand’ to infuse the flavors during the salt/pressing stage of the confit) that is accompanied by a spicy brown raita. In the raita, the spicy brown mustard seeds are toasted, then ground up and allowed to ‘ferment’ in the yoghurt base for a couple of hours. The minced mint is added later to make a nice contrasting sauce to the salty spiced duck. A further sweet/sour element is added with a 2nd sauce of tamarind banana chutney (maybe I should have added parsley to this to qualify for 2 episodes of TGRWT).
Just sharing thoughts….
Chadzilla
barney: I agree! Throwing the mint in at a later point makes sense.
Chad: Interesting recipe! Perhaps you’d want to write a post on it and join TGRWT #4?
[…] Trout with peppermint and mustard sauce (recipe) by Martin The sauce has a fresh, light tartness. Peppermint and mustard compliment each other very […]
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