COOKERY - COUNTRYSIDE FORAGING |
Pea and watermint crostini
Mike Short shares his passion for food and foraging in the countryside
A
s useful as garden mint is, unless you confine its roots, it can become a real handful and it will run through your garden like any other rampant weed. Fortunately, it has a wild relative that’s every bit as good in the kitchen, especially if you like a peppermint kick to your dishes and drinks. Watermint (Mentha aquatica) is our most common wild mint, and its unmistakeable aroma makes it difficult to muddle with other riparian plants. Its roots form dense mats and it thrives in the shallow margins of clean streams and rivers, and it’s just as happy growing on marshland and in damp meadows.
This perennial plant grows bolt upright in the spring and then all summer long until it produces its soft round lilac flowers. Its reddish stems are square and its leaves dark green tinged with bronze, and they’re ever-so slightly downy. Aim to gather the youngest looking leaves – they’re more fragrant – and snip the tough stems with scissors, otherwise it’s easy to pull the whole plant up. I prefer harvesting watermint from meadows rather than streams as there’s less chance of the plant harbouring some nasty water-borne parasite.
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Although watermint can be used as a general substitute for garden mint, be aware that it has a punchier peppermint taste. It’s wonderful smashed and muddled with sugar syrups to make boozy cocktails or chopped into fiery chilli pepper salsas to create a scintillating ‘fire and ice’ sensation in the mouth. In this dish, I pair the mint with sweet summer peas to make a topping for an Italian-style crostini. Young broad beans work just as well as peas.
Ingredients (for 12 crostini) 1 cup of young watermint leaves stripped from the stem 1 cup of fresh garden peas 3/4 cup of finely grated parmesan cheese Extra virgin olive oil Sea salt and ground black pepper 3 cloves of garlic
1 stick of sourdough bread or a French baguette
Method 1. Thoroughly wash the mint leaves. Set a dozen or so aside for garnish, and chop the rest finely. 2. Put the peas and chopped mint into a food processor and add a good glug of olive oil. Blitz until the peas and mint combine. You’re aiming for a rustic
Mike Short is our senior fi eld ecologist specialis- ing in mammal research. He is passionate about harvesting wild food, and here shares his enthusi- asm for tasty ingredients found in the great British countryside.
roughly chopped look rather than pea puree. 3. Scrape the mixture into a bowl; add the grated parmesan cheese and stir. Season with salt and pepper and balance with a squeeze of lemon juice and stir again. 4. Diagonally slice the bread about 15mm thick and toast on both sides. Rub one side of the toast with a peeled clove of garlic and drizzle with olive oil. 5. Pile the garlicky side with the pea and mint mixture and garnish with a watermint leaf. If you’re a glutton for good extra virgin olive oil like me, give the crostini another drizzle and then serve.
Watermint facts When watermint (Mentha aquatica) is crossed with spearmint (Mentha spicata) it produces the hybrid peppermint (Mentha x piperita) which is used to fl avour confectionary, chewing gum and toothpaste. Watermint is a carmina- tive and its ingestion at the end of a meal helps prevent the formation of gas in the gastrointes- tinal tract. The nectar-rich fl owers of watermint are highly attractive to bees and butterfl ies.
GAMEWISE • SUMMER 2017 | 47
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