Roman Mint or Basil

The Italian's are so fixed on their own food regions "as theirs is of course the best one in Italy" in fact there are 20 very different regions. To the average non Italian sometimes it is too subtle a difference to even notice, but never say that to a Italian!
Andrea our chef at Fontane della Papa is from the food region called Lazio and is about 400sq/km around Rome, so he uses Roman Mint when he makes his version of bruschetta.
They had a friend drop in from Tuscany the food region just above Lazio and she says no no no it has to be with basil and went about to pick out every little piece of the roman mint, as to her is was just so wrong! Fussy or should I say she just acted a bit like a 3 year old when something touched something else on her plate !! well that Italians for you.

Roman mint is a small leaf scrappy looking mint that grows wild in and around the fields of Fontane della Pupa.

 

 

 

 I loved the different flavour from basil that it added to the bruschetta.

Roman mint to me is a bit of a cross between the sharpness of spearmint and with the warming of peppermint, not a tooth pasty mint ... but a basil/mint. So I will be trying to get something simular back home.