Mint Sauce Pearls To Accompany Lamb

Traditional mint sauce is a simple mix of chopped mint leaves, sugar and malt vinegar.

Julienne: “Due to the vinegar and my desire to keep the integrity of the chopped mint flavour, I decided to make mint caviar / pearls and sweet vinegar caviar then combine to two for the mint sauce. As algiate is not soluble at a pH below 3.7 I had to use two methods. The mint caviar is made with the addition of alginate and the vinegar uses Agar Agar.

Weigh out 250g of water (low calcium H2O works best).

Pour into blender.

Add a good hand full of mint leaves.

Whizz.

Weigh out 2g of sodium alginate.

Add the sodium algiate to the blender and whizz.

Strain. Then let the mix stand to allow the bubbles to rise then remove this froth and decant the remainder into a bottle or syringe.

Weigh 500g of water.

Add 2.5g of calcium chloride.

Stir.

Drop the pearls into the calcium chloride mix then after about 1 minute strain and rinse well in fresh water.

Put some olive oil in a bowl then chill well in the freezer for about 2 hours.

In a small saucepan mix 100g of sherry vinegar and 150g of corn syrup.

To this add 2g of Agar Agar

Then heat gently to combine.

Whizz then cool.  Decant into a bottle.

Drop liquid into the now cold oil.

Strain the pearls and rinse well with water.

Mix the mint and vinegar pearls together.

Serve with lamb.