This is how the conversation went. We were standing in our garden ten years ago holding a couple of small mint plants in their little plastic containers. Fresh from the green house.
“Will these survive?” Suzen asked. It had been a hard winter.
“In Oregon, mint grows like a weed,” I said. It did. One of my childhood chores was keep the mint at bay. I’d cut it, and then chew it. The start of a lifelong relationship. And when I married mint with chocolate, well, life began in earnest.
“In Portland, it does not get to 10 below,” Suzen noted. She knelt down, took the trowel and planted the mint into our rocky soil. I thought that the soil, not the winter, was the challenge confronting the teeny mint plants.
It’s ten years later and our mint has survived every Catskill winter. And the rocky soil. Not survived, thrived.
“Why did we plant this?” Suzen muttered last weekend. She has a bed of lavender that the mint has invaded. It has also spread to the herb bed beyond and in the other direction all along the side of the house. To quote from a famous movie, “It’s alive, it’s alive.”
To calm Suzen down, I made her a mojito with, what else, the freshest possible mint. And to make us both happy — and you, too, by the way — here’s a lovely way to use up lots of mint. This mint syrup can be used on meats, in a salad, to top off roasted carrots, or simply to decorate a plate. In fact, this recipe comes from Payard Desserts where the mint syrup is used to dot the outside of a dessert plate filled with buttermilk scones, buttermilk ice cream, and strawberry tomato jam. Isn’t it just like mint to appear everywhere?
Payard’s Mint Syrup
Yield: ~ ½ cup
Ingredients:
- 1 cup loosely pack fresh mint leaves
- ¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon light corn syrup
Preparation:
Fill a medium bowl halfway with ice water and set aside.
Fill a small saucepan halfway with water and bring to a bolil. Blanc the mint leaves for 20 seconds. Remove the leaves a skimmer and immediately plunge them into the ice water.
Once the leaves are cold, pat them dry with paper towels. Coarsely chop the blanched leaves and place them in a blender with the corn syrup. Process until smooth. Transfer the syrup to a squeeze bottle and refrigerate until ready to use.
Source: Payard Desserts by Francois Payard with Tish Boyle
Photo Information Canon T2i, EFS 60 mm Macro Lens, F/7 for 1/100th second at ISO‑100