[cooking] Cooking with Ramps

It's been all ramps, all week. 

I made a pizza:

Ground beef, browned in a pan, drained and then sauteed a bit more with sliced ramps, to wilt the greens. I shaped the dough, used ramp pesto instead of tomato sauce, added mozzarella cheese, sliced bell pepper, then the beef/ramps. Baked on a pizza stone for 10 min.

Cheddar and ramp scones:

I used the 'cheddar and scallion' recipe from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion cookbook and substituted minced ramps for scallions.

Last night, ramp pesto tarte soleil:

Okay, not the prettiest thing in the world but so tasty. I used Smitten Kitchen's Tarte Soleil recipe. Mine is rather small; I used a homemade single pie crust that I had in the fridge, divided in half for the top and bottom. And I think my sun has 16 rays instead of 32 written in the recipe. Next time I'll make it prettier- this would be a nice recipe to make for the Summer Solstice.

I also mixed up some ramp cream cheese, which has been making the most amazing bagels (I add lox and home grown alfalfa sprouts).

These all look like pretty carb-tastic recipes. We've had band practice at the house twice this week and thankfully they had the scones and tarte. 

Still have a pile of ramps in the fridge- will hopefully process them all this weekend.

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I'm on the lookout for quick and easy knitting projects. Mostly my evenings have been sewing in ends on tiny granny squares for a cat afghan. So boring but I think the finished afghan will be so cute. Just have to figure out how I'll join all the squares.

The Hanover Garden Club Plant sale is this Saturday, 9am to noon. After the snow earlier this week, sheesh, I'm hardly thinking about gardening at all. But I'll go and see what's there. At this time last year, I had already visited several plants sales over Mother's Day weekend.

[vermont] Foraging for Ramps

My annual ramp foraging was made insanely easy this year. My uncle was camping nearby for the weekend- he stopped by with his new ATV on Saturday around noon and asked if I wanted a ride. I said I wouldn't say no to a ride up the hill to pick ramps. I grabbed my basket and off we went. I felt so incredibly lazy for not hiking up but it's so steep and I'm also sorrynotsorry.

Up at the top- he had no idea what ramps were and I was like, "Wait until you see. Everything is brown but once we get to the patch- it's a sea of emerald green." 

This is just a small area where we picked- the ramp patch extends so far.

My uncle helped me pick and we were done quickly. 

And then I got a ride back down. It totally spoiled me and I'm pretty sure I'm going to call him up next year and from now on and ask for a ride.

Another reason I'm not sorry is because it takes about three hours to clean them all. Normally I'd pick on a Saturday, keep the dirty ramps in the garage overnight and wash them on Sunday. It's takes many changes of water and time to strip the slimy outside skin off the bulb, then bundle them all up pretty. I saved so much time from the ride up/down that I cleaned them all as soon as I got home.

So beautiful! Bundles have already gone to my uncle (his reward for the ride and helping me pick!), my mom, sister, mother in law, sister in law... More will go to Wool band member at the next house practice.

During the washing up, I set aside the "seconds"- the lone leaves, broken bulbs, runty-sized ramps. These I keep for me:

Which I'll turn into pesto and compound butter. I'm thinking about pickling bulbs, dehydrating leaves. I have a block of cream cheese I'll mix some into (I can't wait- I'm buying bagels just for this). And a quick chimichurri last night to go with London broil steak:

It's a decidedly Vermont chimichurri- because of the ramps and I used cider vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. It's so good with steak.

Lots of cooking to do this week to process it all but then I can keep a lot of it in my freezer and cupboards to enjoy until next Spring.

[cooking] Ramping down

I picked the last ramps of the season with my sister on Sunday. The leaves are a little tougher and starting to get streaked with yellow. I've given lots of ramps away and worked on different ways of preserving them for months of enjoyment.

Ramp compound butter:

I set out two sticks of butter to soften. In a small food processor, I minced 5 whole ramps (bulbs and leaves) with the juice of half of a lemon. Then mixed it all together, rolled into logs and put into the freezer. Then I'll just cut rounds when I need them. Although I can clearly see a a day in the future when I simply take out a whole log to thaw and use it to make awesome garlic bread. This stuff smeared on toasted bread = heaven. 

Ramp pesto:

Last year I made pesto with just ramps. It was a little too pungent, so this year I used 60% ramps, 40% parsley. Tastes so much better. I added toasted walnuts, parm cheese, olive oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice. I like to freeze it in an ice cube tray because I'm the only one in the house that eats pesto, so it's easy for me to take out a cube and use it for my pasta.

And the coup de grace: Picked Ramps:

I used this recipe from Steamy Kitchen, which is based on a Momofuku recipe.

All the ingredients were already in my cupboard (sugar, salt, rice wine vinegar, Korean crushed red pepper flakes) apart from the Shichimi Togarashi. I hit up both local asian food stores, asking for Japanese 7 Spice. I got a blank stare back and a question, "Chinese 5 Spice?" I went to try my luck at the Co-op. 

"You mean Chinese 5 Spice?" 

No. Japanese 7 Spice. (All this made me want to go around asking for fake spices- Korean 12 Spice... Chilean 1 Spice... Egyptian 45 Spice...)

Anyway, I sadly trudged to the spice section and forced my hand to take a jar of the McCormick Pickling Spice blend. Sad. I didn't really want to turn my ramps into dill pickles but if that's my lot in life, then... I guess... 

But wait. I went back to the same Co-op employee and asked if they carried soju. I drank a lot of soju in Korea years ago and I've been looking for it ever since- and I felt a sudden, intense desire to drink away my disappointment. The guy was probably wondering if I was simply there to ask him for obscure things that no one's ever heard of before. He said no to the soju BUT he had looked up Japanese 7 Spice on a store computer (which convinced me that he was, indeed, fact-checking the validity of my request) and found what 7 spices it was made of. And they had all those spices in bulk. He pulled them all for me and said I can just pour however much I wanted.

O. Muh. G. That's awesome. I needed hardly any of the spices, so it only came to something ridiculous like $1 to get it all. Seriously, I felt silly buying 4 cents of white sesame seeds, 5 cents of black sesame seeds, 14 cents of seaweed, etc. But. I just got a tablespoon or two of each.

Back at home, I used my mortar and pestle to grind them all together.

I only used a couple tablespoons for the brine, so I'm storing the leftover 7 Spice in a jar.

The brine was easy to make and I put the ramps into a couple jars in the fridge. I might make some more and give a jar to my mom for mother's day. Because nothing says "I love and appreciate you, mom" like stinky, spicy, pickled, pungent ramps. ... Right? 

[cooking] Rampapalooza

Monday afternoon I hiked up an old trail behind my house, hoping to find ramps that my neighbor told me about last year. I found it!

It wasn't a solid field of ramps, like I've seen in some pictures online, but patches here and there. I saw a patch... took a couple steps... saw another patch... took a few more steps... saw more ramps... 

It was actually much easier to pick this way- I could squat, dig, pop out the bulbs I wanted and move to the next patch without stepping on any plants. Because I'm taking the bulb, there is a danger of over-harvesting and preventing new growth, so if there was a root with 5 plants growing up, I would take 2 and move to the next.

These bulbs were very easy to pop out. I stripped the dirtiest exterior skin off, to reveal a pretty white bulb:

This made clean-up much easier when I got them all back to the kitchen. After much washing and cleaning, I had:

Some bulbs are quite large- nearly the size of a quarter in width- but most averaged dime-size in width. I'm giving most of these to friends and co-workers. If the weather's nice this weekend, I think I'll head back up the hill and pick a few more.

My plans for the ramps are:

Ramp butter with the greens

Ramp pesto with the greens

Pickled ramps with the bulbs

Flatbread with whole ramps