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Corti Brothers Newsletter for Summer 2008 Page 6 Boetje Stone Ground Dutch Style Mustard Talking about mustard is probably like talking about sex and politics: It will start an argument. However, for a full flavored, grainy style, delicious mustard to be used as a condiment, one of the finest American ones I’ve tasted is Boetje. Pronounced “boat-chee,” it is an all natural mustard produced at Rock Island, Illinois, solely from Canadian brown mustard seeds, water, vinegar, sugar, and salt. The ingredients are blended, aged in wooden vats, then stone ground to blend all the flavors, and bottled. As a summer (or winter) condiment it has no peer. The company was founded in 1889 by the Boetje family; the current owners are the Kropp family, only the third owners in 119 years. They continue to follow the same Dutch recipe and technique. Well known in the Midwest, Boetje is rarely seen in California or the West. If you like excellent mustard, Boetje is for you. Since outdoor eating cries out for forceful flavors, Boetje is perfect in stuffed eggs and sandwiches; with hot dogs and hamburgers, or just with pretzels and a cold beer. Cold roast chicken or ham warm up to Boetje very well. This is not a “designer” mustard, just an exceptional one.
Nocino is the traditional green walnut liqueur made from young, green walnuts, harvested at mid summer before they have a chance to form a hard shell. Typically made in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region with a little in Tuscany, now it is made in Napa Valley. And it is very good! Not so much a nut liqueur like, say, amaretto or Fra Angelico, it is the maceration in high proof alcohol of cut up tender walnuts where the extraction is of the walnut hull, not the nut meat. Dark black in color, the addition of several spices and other woody elements plus sugar syrup makes this an unusual, yet delicious liqueur. In Italy it is normally homemade and households vie to see which produces the best. There is even an official tasting of Nocino. Rarely seen here, it took the Aceto Balsamico revolution to generate interest in Nocino. The more people visited the Emilia Romagna, the more Nocino was seen. A young Californian, George Monteverdi, has just begun producing a traditional Nocino in canonical style, that leaves some Italian products in the lurch. It takes time to produce Nocino–Nocino della Cristina is 17 months in production before release. Generally aged in bottle for several years to let its flavor meld, once open it remains delicious until the bottle is finished. Aging some will allow you to have a better product in the end. Wonderful with coffee, it is perfect for lingering at table on lazy summer evenings. Its slightly bitter-sweet taste makes it the perfect digestivo. Serve cool or with an ice cube.
This coffee is selectively picked, ripe coffee cherries, from Caturra, Catimor, and Cataui cultivars of arabica strain coffee trees grown in the vicinity of Doi Chang, in Chiang Rai province of northern Thailand. Grown under the shade of fruit and nut trees, at 3600 to 4800 feet elevation, it is completely organic. Since late 1970, the Akha tribe, of about 800 families, one of the hill tribes of the “Golden Triangle” where opium poppies were previously grown, now grows these arabica coffee plants which produce this peaberry coffee. Corti Brothers has offered Sigri estate peaberry from Papua New Guinea in a previous newsletter and now we have this truly limited production, small batch, Thai coffee which has never been offered before in the U.S. We are pleased to make this exclusive, small production coffee available to our customers. Doi Chaang aged peaberry is a hand picked (only ripe cherries), wet processed, sun dried coffee. Peaberry means that in grading coffee, the bean resulting from the “mis-development” of two beans in the coffee cherry, a single bean, oval in shape rather than flat, is separated. These beans are then aged as green beans which changes their acidity and body. Peaberries produce a different, sometimes better, cup than normal beans. Piko is the name of the founding father of Doi Chaang coffee. The roast level is Full City. We recommend using a French press to make this coffee. It has a soft, low tone flavor, with spicy, chocolate hints. A juicy, almost tart initial taste gives over to cedar and leather notes with a long deep finish. This is a coffee for someone who can be attentive to his coffee. It is a “meditation” coffee rather than a jolting one.
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Corti Brothers
Sacramento CA
