Mountain of Mint

Russ and I had a few hours alone today so we started cleaning out the garden in preparation for planting next month. A large crop of volunteer mint had worked its way into the garden. Mint will take over if you are not constantly ripping it out. So I asked Russ to rip it all out knowing it will still come back.

He put the tender stems in my garden basket until it was almost too full to carry. There were also roots and dirt among the good leaves, but the basket held a mountain of spring green.

I brought it in to process it, which entailed washing it twice and then stripping the good leaves from the stems. I placed the leaves in a salad spinner, rinsed, spun and repeated.

I let each batch dry and then put smaller bunches back in the salad spinner and washed and spun three more times. I counted seven washings just to make sure no dirt or debris clung to the tender leaves.

Into the cuisineart they all went with a few tablespoons of sugar. I pulsed those babies up in a fine mince, just before purée. The entire garden basket when processed only came to about a cup of minced mint.

I warmed rice vinegar in the microwave and poured it over the mint and sugar and placed the jar in the fridge. We are now ready for Easter.

If you have never had a perfectly cooked lamb chop with English mint sauce you have not lived. Next time you go to a gourmet store and see the price of mint sauce just consider how much trouble it is to strip and clean 10,000 mint leaves to make that one small jar.