Kitchen Curious: Need a late-summer pick-me-up? It’s mint to the rescue

Butter Beans with Butter, Mint, and Lime from “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen.” Copyright © 2013 by Matt Lee and Ted Lee. Photographs copyright © 2013 by Squire Fox. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Butter Beans with Butter, Mint, and Lime from “The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen.” Copyright © 2013 by Matt Lee and Ted Lee. Photographs copyright © 2013 by Squire Fox. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.

Georgia soil has a way of putting people in their place. I thought I had a green thumb, but the state’s red clay says otherwise.

Tomatoes, watermelon, squash … none of it is happy in my vegetable garden. The only plant that’s truly thriving is mint. And there are only so many juleps one should drink in a day.

In search of recipes that call for more than a few sprigs, I found two that call for a sizable amount of the fragrant herb and that shout summer.

Mint is an easy way to dress up a simple side of butter beans, as Matt and Ted Lee, aka the Lee Bros., explain in their cookbook "The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen." Stick to the book with this one, or veer off-course with a grating of cotija cheese.

The king of home cooking, Mark Bittman, offers a cilantro-mint chutney recipe in his newest cookbook, "How to Grill Everything." Popping with flavor and eye appeal, the recipe calls for a half-cup of mint, but if the green stuff has completely overtaken your garden, Bittman comes to the rescue with this option: make it an all-mint condiment. He proposes serving it with grilled meats, poultry, fish or flatbreads. I'll add tortilla chips to that rec list. The recipe has a salsa verde quality to it — just be ready for more herb than veg.

<<Check out the full recipe on mobile here

<<Check out the full recipe on mobile here

RELATED:

Read more stories like this by liking Atlanta Restaurant Scene on Facebook, following @ATLDiningNews on Twitter and @ajcdining on Instagram.