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CRAZY FOR MINT I spent the last days of July in upstate New York, teaching a cooking workshop at the Omega Institute, a sort of creative summer camp for grown-ups. It was a beautiful place, verdant, leafy, blooming - and hot! I was reminded of the midwestern summers of my childhood, when I would escape into the basement with a book. That steamy east coast weather is tough. By July you're done in, and August still looms like a trial. Working in a pleasant clapboard cabin turned demonstration kitchen, we spent the week making even more heat, as our little air conditioner toiled faithfully to reduce it. I had sent ahead a shopping list, and among the waiting supplies I found a huge bag of fresh mint - a buggyload of mint. Mint, of course, is the bamboo of the herb garden - the question is not how to grow it, but how to stop it - so it's not a surprise to see it harvested by the armload. We cooked dozens of different foods that week, and put them together in menus, but that mint bcame a theme of our workshop. The more we used it, the more we wanted to add it everything. It emerged as the perfect summer flavor, alive and cooling even when it was hot, mixed with green serrano chiles. The first day, in an afternoon dedicated to low-fat, high-flavor spa food, we made a salad with a mix of sweet and peppery greens, slivers of asparagus, adzuki beans, plumped raisins, and lots of fresh herbs, including whole mint leaves. Mint in a salad came as a revelation to many in the group, who had never encountered it outside the realm of sweets. It was a wonderful surprise in the mouth. The same lively quality could be added to simpler salads by making a fresh-herb vinaigrette with citrus and chopped mint leaves. In our Indian menu, we used mint twice - once in the cooling raita made of yogurt, cucumber, walnuts and raisins, and again in my favorite chutney: fresh cilantro and mint with serrano chiles. Wow! It's a simple blender chutney, made in minutes, and close to mealtime. The fresh, cool spiciness of the green herbs and the heat of the chiles just tap dance across the palate. We were putting that mint chutney on everything. A more substantial version of the fresh chutney would be one of the Spanish mojos. These sauces, everpresent on tables in the Canary Islands, are something like Italian pesto, but with a definite Spanish attitude. Penelope Casas has wonderful recipes for them in "Delicioso!", her book about regional Spanish cooking. I adapted her recipe for a cilantro mojo, adding some hot chile and a lot of mint. This mojo verde is made in a food processor, so it's very easy. Garlic, fresh cilantro, parsley and mint, some bell pepper and a sliver of hot pepper, and a bit of toasted baguette are all pulsed to a paste. Then olive oil and vinegar are added. It's meant to be a condiment, but I confess I could eat it with a spoon, and have done. It's garlicky, tangy, bright - and not too spicy. The mojo verde can be served with roasted potatoes, or stirred into cold rice along with some steamed vegetables for a terrific rice salad. I had it with a Spanish tortilla made with potatoes, onions and fire-roasted red peppers. It was swell. You could also pile it on a plate with a wedge of white cheese, a chunk of crusty bread and a sliced tomato, and have the summer lunch of your dreams. This is the kind of thing that turns plain food into something memorable. In our mania for mint, we did not neglect sweet dishes. We made two cold fruit soups. One was a green melon soup with a spoonful of mint cream dropped onto each bowl as a garnish. The cream was very lightly sweetened, whipped to a semi-soft stage, and mixed with a gnerous amount of our favorite herb, minced fine. Aside from tasting great, the cream looked gorgeous floating in the pale grean puree. The other chilled soup was a mixture of cantaloupe, peaches and yogurt, sweetened with a little honey, balanced with fresh lemon juice, and enlivened with chopped mint. The mint was stronger and the soup even more delicious when we tried it again the next day. Before long, we were improvising daily mint dishes. We had some leftover pears, so we made a quick, light sugar syrup and infused it with orange peel and mint leaves. We dropped our peeled, sliced pears into it, making sure they were submerged, and chilled them for a few hours. This compote was the ideal summer dessert, as refreshing as any ice cream or sorbet and much lighter. On the last day, we made a summer fruit crisp, throwing together every fruit we had left - peaches, nectarines, a few plums, and cherries. It was a beautiful thing when it came out of the oven, running with pink and purple juices - crusty and crumbly on top. Then someone had the brainstorm to add a spoonful of leftover mint cream as a garnish - perfect! I never calculated how much mint we used that week, but it was plenty - and just enough. My advice is, buy a large bunch at the farmer's market, take it into your kitchen, and wake yourself up from the torpor of the dog days. Better yet, plant some in dull corner of your garden, watch it take over, and harvest it by the armful. The recipes for Green Chile and Mint Chutney, Yogurt with Cucumber, Mint, Raisins and Nuts, Cold Melon Soup with Mint Cream, Cold Peach and Nectarine Soup, and Spa Salad can all be found in The New Vegetarian Epicure. The recipes for Mojo Verde with Mint and Tortilla Espaola with Charred Peppers are in this month's "New Recipes".
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