Mint Sauce

There's a moment, just before a roast lamb comes out of the oven, when the kitchen has done most of its work and there's nothing left to do but wait. That's when I make the mint sauce. Not earlier. The mint loses its edge if it sits too long, and the whole point of this sauce is the brightness, the sharp green shock of it against the rich, fatty meat.

It's barely a recipe. Mint, sugar, vinegar, a pinch of salt. You could probably make it with your eyes closed if you'd done it enough times, and most cooks of a certain generation could. But the proportions matter, and the freshness matters, and the timing matters. Every Easter and most Sundays in spring, this sauce appears on our table in the same small jug, and the jug is older than I'd like to admit.

The garden mint comes back every year without being asked. It runs along the wall behind the rosemary, taking over whatever space the other herbs aren't using, and by April there's more of it than I know what to do with. This sauce is the answer. A handful, chopped fine, drowned in vinegar and sugar, alongside a leg of lamb that's been resting under foil. Right food, right evening.

I wrote it down in the notebook once and the entry was three lines long. It didn't need more.