Ramps Recipe - Ramps Bagels

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are an easy item for many foragers to start with. In the spring, areas of wet forest are blanketed with the green leaves that grow mostly in pairs. The leaves are lanceolate, 8-12 inches long, flat and wide. The leaves are smooth and have almost a rubbery feel, and lack veins. When bruised, they emit a distinct garlic smell. Many communities in Appalchia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania hold festivals in the spring to celebrate the ramps, featuring this foraged food in local specialties. The leaves are gathered and chopped up to add to dishes, imparting a oniony/garlicky flavor. Ramps can be found at farmer's markets and in fancy restaurants. We gather them to use immediately, and then clean and chop more leaves to freeze for use all year. We add the chopped leaves to soups and biscuits, and pretty much anything that you would add garlic or onion to, like scrambled eggs, potatoes, dips, and beans.

In autumn, it is the bulbs that are dug up and used like onion bulbs. It may be a bit harder to find the bulbs, since all that is visible is the dried flower stalk, usually still bearing black seeds in clusters of three in an umbel. Push aside the leaf litter and you will see the tips of the bulbs. Sometimes there are clusters of bulbs to dig up.

I had beeen making plain bagels since I came across a recipe on Serious Eats. It seemed like a logical and delicious step to make them flavored with freshly chopped ramps greens for the spring. We eat them with plain and vegetable cream cheese.

Ramps Bagels          makes about 12 bagels

19.25 oz. King Arthur bread flour
2 1/2 tsp yeast
2 T white sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 c. finely chopped ramps greens
12 oz. hot water (120°)
2 T demerara sugar
1 egg, beaten with 1 T water

1. In a food processor with the dough blade, pulse together the flour, yeast, white sugar, salt and chopped ramps greens.

2. Add the hot water slowly through the chute, and contnue processing until the dough is elastic, about 30 seconds.

3. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl, cover and let it rise for 1 hour.

4. Divide the dough into 12 portions, about 2 oz. each.

5. Prepare a water bath by mixing 16 c. of water with the demerara sugar and bring it to a rolling boil in a large pot. Heat the oven to 500° F.

6. Shape the portioned dough into 7" snakes, pinch the ends together to form bagels. Alternatively, form balls with the portioned dough and poke a hole in the middle. Widen the hole with a few fingers. Allow the shaped bagels to rest on sheetpans sprinkled with cornmeal for 10 minutes.

7. Boil up to 3 bagels at a time in the water bath, cooking for 30 seconds on each side. Tranfer the boiled bagels back to the sheetpan and brush with the eggwash.

8. Bake the bagels for 15 mintues, flip them over on the sheetpan, reduce the heat to 350°F and cook them 10 minutes longer.

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Cold Dessert Soup

This recipe is based on a Hungarian recipe for a chilled sour cherry soup. The soup is smooth, served cold as a dessert. The color is a lovely shade of spring green, and the soup would look wonderful garnished with some violets. This was a real taste surprise.

Chilled Japanese Knotweed Dessert Soup     makes about 6 servings

4 c. chopped Japanese Knotweed, leaves removed
4 c. water
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
10 T raw or demerara sugar
1/2 c. sour cream

1. Combine the Japanese knotweed, water and the cinnamon in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes, covered. Remove the knotweed from the heat.

2. Whisk the sugar into the saucepan, mixing until the sugar is dissolved.

3. Purée the knotweed mixture in a blender. Pass the purée through a fine sieve or through several layers of cheesecloth to create a smooth texture and remove any large pieces.

4. Whisk the sour cream into the hot soup. Chill and serve.

Garlic Mustard Flower Stalks Taste Great!

Garlic mustard stalks

In the spring, the second year growth of the garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) really takes off. First a few clusters of basal rosettes appear, meaning a bunch of leaves growing on stems from the ground. Then very soon afterwards, a flower stalk will shoot up. It is topped by a cluster of unopened flowers that look like a small broccoli flowerette, and there are a few triangular leaves growing on the stalk. Before the stalk gets too tall, about 5-8 inches high, we pick them in bunches and cook them as a wonderful green side vegetable with dinner, dressed with butter and salt.

We ordered a great reference book by John Kallas, in Oregon, called Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate. He has lots of information about leafy greens in the wild, but we disagree with him regarding the bitterness of garlic mustard. In our experiences here in southeast Connecticut, the flower stalks are not bitter at all, and we give them a gentle 3 minute boil to wilt the leaves and stem. The triangular leaves that grow on the flower stalk later in the season, even when the seed pods are present, taste much better to us than the kidney-shaped leaves that grow from the basal rosette all year long. We make a pesto from the tough basal leaves, where the peppery taste is stronger. We even like the green seed pods lightly boiled and served with butter and salt.

We have also managed to make a great mustard condiment from the hard, black seeds. The taste is very fiery, like a horseradish, while the color is a dark brown like dijon. Robert ground them in a coffee mill, and mixed the ground seeds with vinegar, salt, water and honey to make a strong mustard.

Garlic mustard seed Mustard

Foraging Report 4/24/2011 and Ramps Rant

Cleaned nettles

The 3 Foragers spent Friday, Earth Day 2011, driving around a few small towns here in southeast Connecticut looking for some of nature's bounty. We stopped in Columbia and picked 2, 5-gallon buckets of stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) to dry for tea and cooked most of it to keep in the freezer for use later in the year. Robert also started a 5 gallon bucket of nettle beer.

Evening Primrose roots

Robert dug up a bunch of evening primrose roots (Oenothera biennis), and we scrubbed and boiled them. I don't think they taste great on their own, they have a slightly acrid aftertaste, but I am thinking they would cook up well in a soup, or sautéed like homefries. He grabbed young roots, so they were not too stringy or tough.

Garlic mustard flower stalks

Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is sending it's flower stalks up at a fast rate. We snap off the stalks at about 5 inches and just boil them for a few minutes to wilt them, then toss them with some butter and salt for an awesome green side dish with dinner.

Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) is also growing fast, and we have tried a cold soup that was surprisingly good, and I have a jelly recipe in the works.

Ramps leaves

We also went ramps (Allium tricoccum) picking at 2 large patches. While driving and hiking between Norwich and Glastonbury, we passed at least 15 patches that we had not noticed before. I read that New York Times article this week about ramps and their supposed decimation due to overpopularity and overharvest to feed foodies in NYC. I think it is a pile of alarmist rubbish, and I am personally insulted that someone would accuse the 3 of us of overharvesting ramps, and proceed to tell us how we should be doing it. Some guy digging up 20,000 pounds of plants with roots attached versus the 3 of us gathering the greens only in the spring is not even comparable. I thought I had stated several times that in the spring, we only pick the green leaves, and don't even come close to gathering 10% of a patch. You would be hard pressed to even see where we took some leaves, we gather so little. It is during the spring that the bulbs are using their energy to grow leaves and make new bulbs, so the onion bulbs are small, not worth digging. In the late autumn we dig the bulbs, and then only what the 3 of us will use and eat. We made more pesto, some onion-beer soup, potato salad, and ramps bagels with Friday's harvest.

Ramps Recipe - Ramps Pesto



Ramps Pesto

This pesto is quite tasty and pungent. Robert like to spread it thickly on a slice of bread, I like it over hot pasta. The ramps greens can be quickly blanched and shocked in ice water before processing to soften the garlic burn, but we find it is fine used raw. We then freeze 4 oz. portions in small plastic cups to use all year.

This recipe is available in our book, available Spring 2016.

http://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/book/?GCOI=60239108626260&

Ramps Recipe - Chinese Style Pancakes

Ramps pancakes with dipping sauce

I ran across a similar recipe on one of my favorite food-based websites originally for Chinese style scallion pancakes. I simply substituted chopped ramps stalks and greens for the scallions. Robert says they taste like MORE. This is as good as wild food can be. The method might sound like a lot of work, but trust me, it took me longer to type up the instructions that it takes to roll and fry the pancakes.

Roll out dough, coat with sesame oil

Roll up dough

Twist up the rolled dough into a snail, pinch end

Squish it flat, then roll it out again

Add another coat of sesame oil

Sprinkle on the thinly sliced ramps leaves

Roll it up again, twist into another snail, pinch the end, then squish it flat again

Roll the pancake out a final time

Fry it up in a cast iron pan until browned on both sides

Ramps Pancakes--Chinese Style    makes 4 pancakes, about 6 servings

2 c. all purpose flour
1 c. boiling water
toasted sesame oil
2 c. chopped ramps stalks and greens

1. Place flour into a food processor. With processor running, pour in 3/4 c. boiling water. Process 15 seconds, until a ball forms around the blade. You may need to add up to 1/4 c. more water to form the dough.
2. Transfer the dough to a bowl to rest 30 minutess at room temperature, or overnight in the refrigerator.
3. Divide the dough into 4 portions and on a lightly floured surface, roll one into a circle about 8" in diameter. Brush a thin coat of sesame oil over the dough circle, and roll up the circle like a jelly roll.
4. Twist the roll into a snail shape, and flatten the snail with the palm of your hand. Roll it out again into another 8" circle and brush again with sesame oil. Spread 1/2 c. chopped ramps over the surface of the pancake. Roll again like a jelly roll, and again into a snail. Flatten the snail the final time, and roll into a 7" round circle.
5. Repeat for the remaining dough to end up with 4 flat pancakes.
6. Heat some oil in a sauté pan until very hot. Place one pancake in the hot oil. Swirl the pan around and cook the pancake about 2 minutes, keeping the pancake moving so that it will not stick. Flip over with tongs, and cook the other side an additional 2 minutes, until both sides are blistered and golden brown. Cool the pancake on paper towels to absorb extra oil. Cut each pancake into 6 wedges. Repeat with remaining 3 pancakes. Serve with soy-based dipping sauce and/or sour cream.

Dipping Sauce

2 T soy sauce
2 T rice wine vinegar
1 T finely chopped ramps greens
1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger
2 tsp. sugar

1. Mix all ingredients together, let sauce sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

Japanese Knotweed Recipe - Knotweed Tapioca



Japanese knotweed tapioca

Japanese knotweed
stalk and leaves

Japanese knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum or Fallopia japonica) is often labelled as an aggressive alien invader since it is difficult to eradicate once established. It prefers disturbed areas, roadsides, banks of streams, and edges of dirt roads and fields. One way people try to remove knotweed is with herbicides and poison, so avoid limp, brown stalks with dead leaves near roadways and trails. A good place to search for some is along the trail at the Thompson Dam in Connecticut, where we also have two Japanese Knotweed letterboxes (and a bonus!) hidden.

Japanese
knotweed wine

Knotweed grows in dense patches, up to 6 feet high by summer's end. It is the shoots we look for in early spring, picked before they are 12" tall, otherwise they become stringy and woody. The stalks are jointed and hollow, and the leaves are a rounded triangle shape, with a straight base. The plant produces sprays of white flowers late in summer, and winged seeds that spread on the wind easily. Knotweed is a perennial, so a patch will always return to the same place every year. The taste of the green flesh is a cross between rhubarb and a green apple, tart and lip puckering. Gillian loves to chomp on these right on the trail, raw.

Harvested shoots

The flavor and texture is so similar to rhubarb, we use it in recipes like chopped rhubarb. We have made coffee cakes, shortbread bars, tea breads and pie with Japanese knotweed. We also made a small batch of wine last year, which came out very dry, with a vegetal finish. I have a rhubarb cookbook that I skim for ideas, and this tapioca turned out very nicely, gobbled up by Gillian and Robert. Click here for a short video of Russ Cohen talking about Japanese knotweed. We have some more recipes for Knotweed Jelly, Cold Knotweed Soup, Knotweed Wine, and Knotweed Dessert Bars.

Japanese Knotweed Tapioca Pudding

3 T. quick cooking tapioca

1 c. sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 c. water

2 c. chopped Japanese knotweed stalks

1. Place all ingredients in a saucepan and let sit 5 minutes.

2. Bring to a boil and cook 2 minutes over medium heat, stirring constantly.

3. Chill. Serve with a squirt of lemon or lime juice.