Fun With Mint

The best part of growing food is eating it, so this week we are enjoying our first harvest with recipes that call for mint. Here's what we came up with:

Sunday: Zucchini Pancakes
When we have lots of zucchini in the summer, we'll often have these as the main course. We got this zucchini at a local farm, though, along with sirloin that (previously) grazed in a pasture that's about 2 1/2 miles from our house. We were hungry from all that work!

Kirk won't give me an exact recipe because he says it didn't turn out right--he thinks that salting the zucchini and squeezing out the water would help make it crispier. Everyone else thought it was fine.

So in general, grate a zucchini, a carrot, and a small onion. Add some chopped mint (a little goes a long way), 1 egg, 1/4 c. flour. Stir it all up in a mixing bowl and add salt and pepper to taste. Fry it by dropping a spoonful of mixture into a pan of hot olive oil. It takes about 4–5 minutes, and they need to be flipped. They're done when they're brown and crisp on the outside. Garnish with sour cream.

That recipe probably isn't much help, but maybe if you complain in the comments I can get him to commit to some real instructions.

Wednesday: Mediterranean Stuffed Eggplant

This recipe is from The New Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen. This is our go-to for vegetarian recipes, and I can't recommend it more strongly for inspiration on what to do with great summer produce. In the book, improvisation is encouraged, so it's a great resource. You should totally buy it.

I can't in good conscience reprint her recipe, but in general it's brown rice with feta, mint, and pine nuts cooked inside a hollowed out, roasted half of an eggplant. The kids weren't thrilled, but we thought it was great.

Thursday: Roasted Lamb Pitas with Yogurt Mint Sauce

Ingredients:  for marinade                                      
                    1/4 c. olive oil                                  
                    4 cloves garlic, crushed                    
                    2 Tbs. mint, finely chopped            
                    salt and pepper to taste                    
                 
                   for sauce                                                         
                   1 c. plain yogurt
                   1/2 cucumber, seeded and diced
                   juice of 1/2 lemon
                   1 clove of garlic, crushed
                   1 Tbs. mint, finely chopped
                   salt and pepper to taste                                     
                 
                    1-2 lamb chops                                                 
                    1 red and 1 green bell pepper
                    1 red onion
                    1-2 cups romaine lettuce, chopped
                    1 tomato, chopped
                    1 cucumber, seeded and sliced
                    pita bread (we like whole wheat)

Kirk marinated the lamb in a mixture of the olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and mint.  He doesn't really measure, so you could experiment with the amounts (this was a guess).

Grill the lamb, peppers, and onions until they look good to you and then slice them for your hot plate.

While that's cooking, slice the lettuce, cukes, and tomatoes for your cold plate.

Also while things are cooking, mix up the sauce ingredients.

Let everyone (read: picky-ish children) pick their own items to fill their pitas. Even the kids liked all the parts of this, though, and agreed after this week that mint was better in food than in toothpaste.