Passing Mustard Makers Of Gourmet Mustards Spread Their Tasty Condiment Across Eastern Washington

Maybe it’s the proximity to the prairie provinces of Canada, the world’s largest producer of mustard seed. Or maybe it’s an attempt to bottle the golden color of the sun.

Whatever the reason, food-minded entrepreneurs in Eastern Washington love making mustard.

It’s not just for hot dogs anymore. Gourmet mustards offer low-fat appeal and versatility, a great source of potent flavor with few calories.

Although mustard is one of the oldest known condiments, the explosion of designer mustards didn’t begin until the 1980s.

Health-conscious consumers wanted something to enhance salad dressings, season poultry and add zest to other recipes. Mustard, with a typical 10 to 20 calories per tablespoon, was the perfect choice.

Today mustard is the second most-used spice in the United States, behind only pepper.

The rich assortment of mustards rivals coffee in number of varieties. Eastern Washington is home to several mustard makers with stories as varied as their products.

Spokane’s Shirley Donoian took her mother-in-law’s sweet-hot Armenian mustard and jazzed it up with caraway seeds. She made the mustard for her family for years, with no thoughts of selling it. It took one off-the-cuff remark to change that.

When her friend, Susan Hunt, was looking for work a couple of years ago, Shirley jokingly said: “If all else fails, you can always work as a mustard maker.” To her surprise, Hunt decided to take her up on the idea. Mustard Mania was born.

Customers use their Hot Stuff mustard on sandwiches, as a dip for pretzels and for coating the inside of a salmon before cooking it.

Lon Cook and his wife, Miss Ellie, started Miss Ellie’s Jellies in Oroville after flunking retirement.

“I’m just no good at retirement,” says Lon, who worked as a chef for more than 20 years. He and his wife merged their culinary skills, tossed in a dash of marketing know-how and started a huckleberry honey/mustard business.

Always enamored of huckleberries, the Cooks developed a strain of wild berries they could raise on their farm.

“Unfortunately, we cannot produce enough,” Lon says. “Each year we gather about six tons of huckleberries. We end up buying or picking a lot of them in the mountains.”

On the farm, bees keep busy making an intensely sweet huckleberry honey, which some people thought was too sweet to eat straight. The Cooks cut it with mustard and the result is a distinctive Huckleberry Honey Mustard.

For 20 years, Alice Jones’ job as a bookkeeper kept her passion for cooking only a hobby.

“Then I decided it was time to do something I really enjoyed before I got too old,” the Pasco resident says. “So I turned in my two weeks’ notice and overnight started a catering business.”

About a year later, in 1990, her youngest son suggested she sell the mustard she’d been making for the family. It sounded like a good sideline to her catering business, so she started bottling it under the Edible Arts label.

Jones’ imagination couldn’t stop with just one mustard. She and her daughter, Juli Massingale, now produce nine varieties: Sweet Hot Walla Walla Sweet Onion, Walla Walla Onion Bacon (with imitation bacon), Horseradish, Honey and Dill, Tomato Basil, Jalapeno Pepper, Chili Pepper, Bing Cherry and dry Chinese mustard. You can taste-test them at the Pasco Farmers Market.

In neighboring Richland, caterer Susan Thiss makes one mustard, called Rattlesnake Mountain Mustard.

“It’s garlic-onion mustard with whole black mustard seeds, somewhere in between a stone-ground mustard and smooth mustard, only different,” Thiss explains. “It’s an all-purpose mustard with a nice after-flash.”

She recommends using her mustard on toast (“Trust me”), baked chicken, mixed with Italian dressing and “on fingers.”

Some mustard makers resurrected old family recipes. The genesis of Cecile’s Mustard, made by Spokane’s Cecile Costa, was a recipe from an old boyfriend’s Welsh great-great-grandmother.

“The original recipe wasn’t exactly the way I like it,” Costa says. After tinkering with the flavor, she started giving it out to family and friends as gifts.

In 1982, a neighbor suggested Costa take her mustard to a three-day boutique. It sold out the first day. She now makes 60 quarts at a time in her basement kitchen.

“It’s sweet-hot mustard, great in tuna salad, deviled eggs or vegetable dip,” Costa says. “Some people cook with it, putting it on ham, chicken or beef during the last 20 minutes of baking. The heat of the mustard dissipates in the oven heat and you’re left with a moist, delicate flavor.”

In 1983, Nancy Turner of Dayton, Wash., started experimenting with her great-grandmother’s 100-year-old recipe.

“I took different mustards down to the firehouse where my husband worked and the firefighters voted for their favorite,” Turner says. “The barley mustard won.”

Turner took her dry barley mustard mix to a food expo and sold out 50 batches within an hour. Her Bumpercrop business has been hopping ever since.

Bumpercrop Sweet-Hot Barley Mustard, which comes prepared or dry, has a slight nutty taste that jumps from sweet to hot and back to sweet. Special high-quality barley is grown on the family farm, then ground using centrifugal force so the whole kernel goes into the flour. “That’s what gives it the slightly grainy taste,” Turner says.

Meta’s Gourmet Mustards, a family enterprise in Kennewick, got started with the help of a 100-year-old recipe from Meta Bahr Anderson, LaVonne Anderson’s mother-in-law.

“When I first came into the family, my mother-in-law used to make up what we now call our Original Recipe Mustard,” LaVonne says. “She kept it in a peanut butter jar in the cupboard. My husband grew up using it on just about everything.

“Since that time my daughters and I have branched out and come up with other flavors - dill, garlic, herb and horseradish.”

LaVonne started selling the mustard at Christmas bazaars. “Then stores in the area requested we deliver to them,” she says. “The business just evolved from there.”

Some producers make mustard as a sideline to other food items.

In 1985, Sharon Hall and Carla Danielson formed Hall-Mock Productions in Colfax and started producing Palouse Red, a red bell pepper sauce, using a recipe from Danielson’s mother. After six years of marketing the one product, they decided it was time to expand their line.

“Being in the gourmet food business we saw gourmet mustards were very popular,” Hall says. “We wanted to keep the red bell pepper theme, so we began working out a recipe. We decided we liked the honey mustard and the red bell peppers were a nice complement.”

Hall recommends using their Palouse Red Sweet Red Bell Pepper Mustard in potato salad, as a vegetable dip, with ham or on chicken.

In Pasco, Michelle Preston uses her family’s primary product, Preston wines, to enhance her mustards.

The Black Peppercorn Mustard, made with red wine, was created by her father, winery founder Bill Preston. White wine is a central ingredient in the Original Mustard. Both are good in potato salad, on sandwiches and for dipping appetizers.

The next time you’re in a specialty store, reach for a jar of golden gourmet mustard. You’ll not only brighten your day, you’ll be adding a new low-fat seasoning to your diet. Keep it up and you might become a mustard connoisseur.

If you want to try mustards from across the United States and around the world, call The Mount Horeb Mustard Museum at 800-GET-MUST. It offers a catalog of mustards and “The Proper Mustard,” a newsletter that’s said to be “the best in yellow journalism.”

Dijon Mustard Sauce

2 teaspoons reduced-calorie margarine

2 teaspoons all-purpose flour

1/2 cup low-fat milk, heated

2 tablespoons sour cream substitute

1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard

1/8 teaspoon white pepper

Melt the margarine in a heavybottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add flour and cook, stirring constantly; allow to bubble, but do not brown.

Gradually add hot milk, continuing to stir. Reduce the heat and cook, stirring frequently, until mixture thickens. Stir in sour cream substitute, mustard and pepper.

Pour sauce over your choice of cooked green vegetable or use with chicken, pork or fish.

Yield: About 1 cup.

Mustard Vinaigrette

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup vinegar

2 tablespoons prepared, strong-flavored mustard

Dash of pepper

Whisk ingredients together in a small bowl. Best served cold. Stir before using.

Molasses Mustard Chicken

Adapted from “Low-Fat Grilling” (HarperPerennial)

2 tablespoons molasses

2 tablespoons flavorful mustard

1 tablespoon cider vinegar

1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme, or 1 teaspoon dried

4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (about 5 ounces each)

2 teaspoons vegetable oil (preferably canola)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a shallow dish just large enough to hold the chicken, combine the molasses, mustard, vinegar and thyme.

Use your hands to flatten the chicken to an even thickness of about 1/2 inch. Rub with oil on all sides, then sprinkle lightly with salt and generously with pepper. Add to the marinade, turning to coat both sides; let stand 30 minutes at room temperature or refrigerate up to 2 hours, turning occasionally.

Prepare a medium-hot barbecue fire. Oil the grill rack or coat with a nonstick spray. Grill the chicken, turning once, for a total of 6 to 8 minutes, until the meat is white throughout.

Yield: 4 servings.

Mustard makers

Here’s how to contact the mustard makers mentioned in this story:

Anderson Farms/Meta’s Gourmet Mustards, Route 3, Box 3620, Kennewick, WA 99337 (586-3254). Original, Horseradish, Garlic, Dill and Herb mustards. Available at specialty markets and by mail order.

Bumpercrop, P.O. Box 32, Dayton, WA 99328 (382-4028). Sweet-Hot Barley Mustard, prepared or dry. Available at specialty markets and gourmet shops.

Cecile’s Mustard, 2653 E. 39th, Spokane, WA 99223 (448-5707). Available at specialty markets, gourmet shops and by mail order.

Edible Arts, 313 S. Fourth, Pasco, WA 99301 (547-3440). Sweet Hot Walla Walla Sweet Onion, Walla Walla Onion Bacon (uses imitation bacon), Horseradish, Honey and Dill, Tomato Basil, Jalapeno Pepper, Chili Pepper, Bing Cherry and dry Chinese mustard. Available in specialty markets and by mail order.

Hall-Mock Productions, 110 E. Spring, Colfax, WA 99111 (397-2137). Palouse Red Sweet Red Bell Pepper Mustard. Available at specialty markets.

Miss Ellie’s Jellies, P.O. Box 206, Oroville, WA 98844 (476-2116). Huckleberry Honey Mustard. Available by mail order only.

Mustard Mania, 704 W. Park Place, Spokane, WA 99205 (327-1239). Hot Stuff Mustard. Available by mail order and in specialty markets and gourmet shops.

Preston Wine Cellars’ Mustard, 502 E. Vineyard Drive, Pasco, WA 99301 (545-1990). Black Peppercorn Mustard and Original Mustard. Available at the winery, by mail order and in specialty markets.

Rattlesnake Mountain Mustard, 141 Sherman, Richland, WA 99352 (375-0453). Available by mail order and at specialty markets.

MEMO: Colleen Foye Bollen is a freelance writer living in Seattle.