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| Ramps patch |
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| Young ramps shoots |
Both Robert and I have a background in commercial foodservice, it's where we met. I have not worked in a restaurant for 6 years now, but I love to read food blogs and food-based websites for inspiration, information, recipes, and to hear about trends. Last year I remember reading several articles on how foraging was the new trend, even better than farmer's markets and CSAs. During this time of year, on many websites, the talk is all about ramps (Allium tricoccum). From forager bloggers planting ramps to Rachel Ray twittering to Serious Eats with recipes, ramps have quite a showing every spring. Even we have featured ramps on our blog here, and have a ramps letterbox.
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| Ramps bulbs |
The cold spring has delayed our hunt, but they are starting to peek up at several sites we visit. Robert has been photographing them for 2 years now, but still has to get a photo of the short lived flowers in early summer. The weather looks like it will be wet and warmer this week, so we expect to gear up for gathering this weekend. We will thinly slice most of the greens into a chiffonade, and pack them into plastic containers for the freezer. Robert already infused some ramps leaves in oil. He also loves to make ramps pesto for the freezer, and we will dehydrate some greens for tea and cooking. I love to put the chopped leaves in flaky biscuits, and I ran across a fantastic recipe for Chinese-style scallion pancakes that I am going to make with the chopped stems in place of scallions. I also find they work well in brothy soups, stirred into mashed potatoes, and anywhere you can use onions in a recipe.
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| Ramps seeds |
3 comments:
I am always on the lookout for ramps, but have yet to find them here!
I just found some yesterday while inspecting a land for possible open space acquisition :). I've found them before, too, but the patches are small and I don't want to harvest them.
In the spring, we ususally only harvest the green leaves for freezing, and the bulb will live. Only when we want the bulb do we dig them up, which does kill the plant. We never take more than 10% of a patch anyway, that is why we keep our eyes on several patches in the area.
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