Recipes with mint

Mint is not one plant but a family, and two of them dominate the world's kitchens. Spearmint, the mint of Mediterranean gardens and Maghrebi tea, carries a round, almost sweet scent. Levantine nanah, broader-leaved, is milder still and is eaten in quantity, by the handful — something no peppermint would tolerate: heavy with menthol, it chills the mouth and suits sugar far better than a savoury plate.

On one side, the kitchens that treat it as a salad herb, present in bulk and never cooked: Lebanese tabbouleh uses nearly as much of it as parsley, Iranian shirazi salad chops it in with cucumber and tomato, and Guatemalan chirmol folds it raw into grilled tomatoes. On the other, those that take only a few leaves, as a counterpoint: Turkish mercimek çorbası warms it in the butter poured over the soup, and Moroccan orange and cinnamon salad lays two or three leaves across the segments.

It blackens as soon as it is cut ahead of time, so chop it at the last moment, just before serving. To store it, wrap the stems in a damp cloth in the fridge; it will hold for close to a week that way, where a bare bunch wilts in two days. Vietnamese fresh spring rolls and Peruvian mushroom cau cau want the leaves whole and unbruised.