Mistakes I've Made - Mustard

So I found this recipe for a banana blossom stir fry, and at that time I'd never even heard of a banana blossom. But when I went to Tropical Fruit World, they were selling some and when I saw it, my eyes lit up like Joey's in Friends when he finds out that Monica and Chandler are going out, and I took one home excitedly, knowing exactly what to do with it.

I've always been a person of substitution in recipes. I remember one time, I was making poached pears, and I replaced everything BUT the pears. And obviously it turned out awful, and that kinda taught me to only cook a recipe if I actually have relevant ingredients.

This stir fry kinda reminded me of that.

They wanted coconut oil, I used the oil that was already in the pan from the T-bone I'd cooked to go with it.

They wanted a dry chilli and dry chilli powder, I used a fresh chilli and cayenne pepper. Which was a bad choice in itself.

They wanted jaggery powder, I initially left it out, until I tasted the chilli, to which I added coconut sugar.

They wanted tamarind paste, I used dried lime rind (to dry your own rind, just rind your citrus and lay it out to dry by itself. It has its own oils to keep it moist in that sort of way, and you can use it like fresh rind. It helps when you don't want to go out of your way to get a lemon JUST (italics) for the rind.

They wanted fresh coconut, I used desiccated, even though I had semi fresh stuff (my coco snow would've worked well in it).

They wanted mustard seeds, I used wholegrain mustard. Which, I found out, is a big no-no.

So the recipe goes 'Fry the mustard seeds until they splutter' and I could definitely imagine this if I had proper mustard seeds, but I took a teaspoon amount of wholegrain mustard and whacked it into my piping hot pan and broke it up immediately. After stirring it around for probably ten measly seconds, both mum, in the next room, and I noticed that there was some gas emitting from these frying seeds, and we couldn't help but sneeze and cough and wheeze like maniacs. It was crazy! That stuff is dangerous when you fry it. I brought the heat down but for the next ten minutes we were almost struggling to breathe. It was unbelievable how badly that stuff could affect the air. It was a hundred times worse than cutting onions or anything like that.

And the stir fry? I cooked the rest in the way they wanted me to (seeing as I'd already broken the tried-and-trusted recipe), but they gave me no indications to know when this alien vegetable thingy was going to be cooked. So I fried and fried and I overcooked it. I burnt it. Good job Jordie. I think, behind that charcoaly taste, it tasted pretty bad anyway, so my dinner went from this:

to this:

And that stir fry crap was chucked out. I guess I'll have to go to India or something and try it when it's not burnt to a crisp, and when the chef hasn't been fumigated to near death.