Garden Mint Sauce

The boy is sweetly very traditional. We’re having Spring lamb and he likes mint sauce with it. Buying a jar is easy but this is special. I can’t specify measurements exactly – it all kind of depends.

A large handful of fresh mint

Malt vinegar to cover

1 or 2 spring onions

1tbsp caster sugar

Mint grows like topsy in the garden. Ours is in a container to stop it getting out of control. As the boy knows what mint looks like he’s sent out to cut enough of it to go with the lamb.

This is very easy but you need to allow resting time. I use a wand blender that comes with a beaker. Roughly chop the mint leaves and spring onion and then cover with the malt vinegar and add the sugar.

Blend. It will end up frothy due to all the air you have introduced, which is why it needs at least an hour to rest. Taste after it has rested – it should be sharp but adjust the sugar or vinegar to suit. The boy likes it with a little more sugar than I do.

I always serve this in a cut glass stemmed cup that my grandma always served her mint sauce in. I guess it has held mint sauce since the 1920s. It’s seen a world war, the birth of rock and roll, the hippy movement, punk, the new romantics, hip hop and now us. The CD player in the kitchen is blasting out Owen Paul’s My Favourite Waste of Time (from the perfect summer of 1986). The recipe hasn’t changed much. Grandma made it looser but that made the vinegar mix with the gravy. I prefer it to hold its own and blend again with more mint if I think the vinegar is separating.

Resting it is everything. Make it first thing – while you’re having coffee and the morning papers. It will seem alarmingly thin at first, but will thicken into a perfect sludge over time.

I think a mild green chilli would be a great addition but the boy is having none of it. He’s probably right.