Ramps and Reverse Foraging

My recent Serious Eats feature (which yay, I’m so excited about) is an inside look at ramp dinners, but my initial interest in ramps came about from the attraction of finding and getting them. Looking for ramps in the woods in the spring is a bit of a treasure hunt in nature. A person heading out foraging and coming back empty-handed at least got outside for a while and saw many non-ramp examples of wildlife, and that was pleasing to me.

I think that’s part of why ramps have become so trendy the past decade; even if you don’t get the full-on foraging experience from buying them at a fancy farmers’ market, just having them on your plate connects you to the larger romance of their story.

But this year I learned more about how our love for ramps is harming them. Nature can’t keep up with the demand, and ramps—while hearty—are very slow to grow.

Ramps were my introduction to foraging, but I like to get out and scrabble around for all kinds of greens, fruits, forest herbs, and mushrooms. Oftentimes I am not very successful, but the success is ultimately about reconnecting with my role in the immediate ecosystem where I happen to be at the time. Still, the lure of going into the woods is not nearly as potent without the potential reward of encountering something delicious to eat.

So I decided to be a little bit more proactive in making sure my actions help preserve the forest habitat I love so much—without it, there is no foraging. I think of it as reverse foraging. It may be just a drop in the bucket in the face of everything our modern lives do to alter the landscape we live on, but I think intentions go a long way for one’s spiritual well-being.

• Planting ramp bulbs in areas in decimated ramp patches, or, better yet, collecting ramp seeds in the early fall and planting them in the woods (which is actually very easy).

• Pulling up invasive garlic mustard and properly disposing of it so it does not spread. This one in particular is like beating back waves, because garlic mustard is very tenacious. But I saw some growing in my favorite ramp patch, and I was like, “that’s it, man! This is WAR!” Also, pulling up garlic mustard can be cathartic if you are in a foul mood.

• Following the basic principles of courtesy by not foraging for more than the land can easily recover from.

• Getting friends excited about the wonders of what grows right where you live. Even if someone is not going to go out and collect shagbark hickory nuts, just knowing they exist increases the value humans place on those trees, and, by extension, the biodiversity of their surroundings.

There’s a school of thought that the changes humans make to our natural systems is, in its own way, natural (e.g. invasive species accidentally coming over to new landmasses on ships, or people intentionally introducing new species). I get this—there were no apples in North America prior to the arrival of the Europeans, and goddamn do I love apples—but I think it’s fine to make judgments on a case-by-case basis, rather than cop out and say “fuck it, we’re screwed, but I’ll be dead by the time it matters.” Just today I was thinking there could be a year when I have grandkids and I’d tell them, “I remember when there were bats in North America,” or “There used to be these wild onions in the woods called ramps, and I liked to dig them up and cook them.” What a dreary future to have in store. I don’t want us to get there without a fight.

The Taste of Violets

Despite the momentary cold snap, violets are popping up everywhere now. Last year at this time it settled into me as a slow-burning mania, and I decided I just had to make violet syrup. Read my essay here on Full Grown People to find out what happened (hint: it's probably not what you think happened).

I did discover a few things about violets.

• It takes baskets and baskets of violets to get anything close to enough for culinary applications with any kind of character.
• Some violets have more flavor and aroma than others.
• My front yard violets are bland, and whatever violets went into the violet extract my friend Nikki brought back from France and added to her violet buttercream are not bland.
• Adding lemon zest to violet sugar to punch up its flavor will make the violet sugar turn a muted fuchsia instead. It's the chemical reaction between the anthocyanins in the violets and the acid in the lemon zest (lemon zest isn't that acidic, but it's acidic enough, apparently) that dulls the color.
• My days of cooking with violets are probably finished. I think I got it out of my system. Picking violets is fun, but as far as edible rewards and foragables, I much prefer mushrooms, greens, and fruit.

That's the finished, faded violet sugar on the scones. It still tasted sweet.

You Can Follow Me on Instagram Now

Just in case you were waiting, the wait is over now. I started an Instagram account. If you like pictures of desserts in progress, foraged fruit, or musty old records, you are in luck, my friend! Follow me here (@sausagetarian). 

The above photo is the orange tree across the street from my friend Adam's house in Los Angeles. His neighbor said it's okay to plunder the bounty of these sexy orange trees, and that's exactly what I did. Not all of the oranges were fabulous, but the ones that were just blew my mind--so juicy and sweet. I lived in California for seven years, and I never got over the fact that citrus trees just grow here and there like it's no big deal. 

Transitions

It’s the first day of November. Walking the five blocks with my daughter to drop her off at her elementary school, we passed by two persimmon trees. Last week they were both in the throes of dropping ripe fruit, but now they are nearly bare. Every single day I had to fight off the urge to gather as many persimmons as possible, mainly because I didn’t have time to deal with them at home. Persimmons are not something you can sit on, literally and figuratively.

Last month I was facing the same dilemma with the last of the season’s pawpaws. It was a very good year for pawpaws here. I processed and froze maybe ten quarts of pulp, and who knows how many pounds of pawpaws I drug home. It was a tiny fraction of what I could have gathered hypothetically, but there are only so many hours in the day.

A sign that pawpaw season is on the outs. If you see a pawpaw like this one, for god's sake don't eat it. That rusty-looking orange tinge is oxidized and bruised flesh. This puppy is over the hill.

There are other tantalizing casualties of autumn: gingko nuts, crabapples. I can’t ever get as many as I would like. What I really want is for time to freeze, but that would be ultimately unbearable. The only thing that’s permanent is a state of transition. The cycles of time spin onward.

Career-wise, transition is also a permanent state for me. I’ve been gigging it as long as I’ve been in the food writing game, always cobbling together different jobs to piece together an income. For nearly a year, I’ve been editing the food section of the pop culture website Paste Magazine. The bulk of my food writing in the past ten months has gone there and not to this site, which is okay because I’m not heavy into blogging.

I also got deeper into the whole foraging thing, and it’s all been within walking distance of my house. Bringing unusual things home to eat is fun, but it’s going out there to look for them in the first place that helps me keep my sanity. There’s something about dragging five types of acorns home in my pockets that gives me a sense of purpose missing from being on the computer all day long, even if the only thing we do with the acorns is make them into goofy crafts. Humans can eat acorns—they were a staple food for many Native American tribes of California—but we’ve not made it that far yet. Rendering acorns into edible foodstuffs is work, more work than pulping our seedy native persimmons, even. I think I just like knowing this stuff is out there and I can groove on it for a little while before it’s gone.

The gigs are the same way, really. I get one and know it won’t be around forever, so I enjoy it while it lasts and keep my eyes alert for the next opportunity to replace it once it’s over. The pawpaws go away and the persimmons are waiting in the wings.

A lovely Diospyros virginiana.

A hope of mine was to share a persimmon fruitcake recipe—I made three versions of it, but it’s still not quite there. These are the small and wily North American persimmons, by the way, not the big and knobby Fuyus or Hachiyas, though you can generally substitute Hachiya pulp for the sweeter and grittier pulp of Diospyros virginiana.

So instead, I’m going to leave you with a wish that you’ll go outside—a park, your backyard, a trail, anywhere—and look around and think about the way everything is today. What does it smell like, is it cloudy or not, are there leaves on the trees. Are there trees at all. I’m always seeing these lists like “20 National Parks to See Before You Die”, and it breaks my heart a little, because there’s a whole world around you every day that wants to be noticed, and it’s a little different every time, offering patterns and cycles and surprises all at once.

Crabapples from the house next door to one of my favorite persimmon spots. Back in September I made these into jelly with a little habanero pepper for kick.

Pawpaws Behind the Shopping Center

Look closely. Do you see them? The pawpaws are back. This native North American fruit grows in deciduous forests all through the eastern United States, even though hardly anyone knows about them. From those who do, I hear a lot of “oh, I remember that pawpaw song.” It’s a goofy old folk song. Myself, I don’t remember it, but it goes like this:

Pick up a pawpaw and put it in your pocket…

Right now I will tell you not to put a ripe pawpaw in your pocket. Also, most of the pawpaws you find on the ground are bruised and just a hair or two past ripe. There’s something cloying and bad-funky about them. A perfectly ripe pawpaw will fall off the tree, but you probably can’t be there to catch it when it does. The next best thing is to harvest the pawpaws that separate from the branch with no resistance. They yield to your nudge.

The pawpaws in the bag surprised me. I went to scout out a nearby spot rumored to have lots of fruits, and the rumor was true. Those suckers were ready, and when a pawpaw is ready, it will not wait. You have to pick it right then. So I did.

This is my pawpaw anniversary. I’d never tasted one until this time last year. It was purely an accident, just me walking in the woods and running across this goofy fruit a few friends had told me about. I wound up succumbing to a manic pawpaw state. It’s not just about fruit. It's about total immersion in one moment. Gathering pawpaws, I don’t think about what music to listen to or what I should make for dinner or the people I need to send follow-up emails. I just think about getting more pawpaws. Pawpaws are around for a few short weeks, and then they are gone. After that, most of the leaves have fallen from the trees, and it’s cold and the skies are grey and the grass turns brown and everything’s a giant bummer until late March. I feel like pawpaws are summer’s last hurrah.

Pawpaws are homely little fruits with a distinctive tropical flavor. A longtime sucker for misfits, I fell for them hard. Last year I decided I should write a pawpaw cookbook, which lends this pawpaw season an even greater sense of urgency. At times, I’ve wondered why I’m so compelled to write a pawpaw cookbook, when other, more normal people write cookbooks about gluten-free brownies or Paleo salads. And then I realize I’m the normal one.

These pawpaws came from the woods behind a shopping center I’ve always hated. There's a grocery store and a DMV and a laundromat, and past those a compact network of hiking and biking trails. The trees back there are crawling with pawpaws. At first you don’t notice them, but once you do, you spy them everywhere. It’s like earning a set of pawpaw goggles. I got all scratched up from rummaging through multiflora rose and poison ivy to get to the pawpaws. It’s prudent to wear pants, not shorts. Next time, I will. And the time after that. Having the fruit is only half the point. Getting it is the real treat.

Gather Ye Ramps While Ye May

Like nearly all highly coveted foods, ramps have a crevice of calendar days when they appear in titillating abundance. Their delicate green fronds rise from the leafy detritus of primeval forest floors, signaling spring. And thus the mania begins. Every year, those wise in the ways of ramps take to the woods, seeking their precious, restorative quarry.

A ramp is as slender as the most refined pinkie. It shyly pokes its head from the ground from late March to April. They grow in fertile, shady woodlands all over the eastern United States and southeast Canada, though I think of them as particularly Appalachian. It’s possible to cultivate ramps, but they are finicky. The majority of the ramps harvested every year are foraged. These alluring wild mountain leeks have grown for centuries, so if you are rolling your eyes and thinking how very 2011 it is to extol the many culinary and spiritual virtues of ramps, you may be dismissed. Only those pure in heart can enter the magical portal to this pungent Brigadoon. It’s been a hell of a winter. Go gather ye ramps while ye may.

That the heartbeats of an entire group of humans—young and old, hillbilly and hipster—can quicken so at the mention of an untamed vegetable that shares a prosaic name with a simple machine perplexes many. My husband, for one. He does not object to ramps; in fact, he will gladly eat them. What he does not get is the mighty ruckus people like me raise over a feral edible plant. The concept of combing the hillsides in search of elusive alliums and then investing dirty hours on hands and knees extricating their slender roots from the chilled spring soil holds little appeal to him. And since the treasure hunt is half of the point, he’s only experiencing a shadow of the ramp when he ingests it.

Appalachians pride themselves on their self-reliance. To glorify the ramp is exquisitely Appalachian. To glorify the ramp is to recognize the generally unnoticed wonder that quietly rises up from deep, dark, ancient hollers where living mindlessly is not advisable.

So ramps are not just a food or a fever of spring. They are an emblem and a practice and an edible manifestation of a tribe. You don’t need to live in a shack in the woods to belong to that tribe. All you have to do is get why there’s a tribe in the first place.

And yet the flavor of a ramp offers enough stinky-breath allure to pay off the emotional hype surrounding it. Ramps are scallion-esque, but not oniony. Their emerald fronds are herbal, but not chive-y. There’s some garlicky assertiveness in the white root, but it’s not as sharp. That’s what’s foxy to a chef about a ramp. It’s an aromatic and a cooking green all in one, familiar in concept but and exotic in spirit.

The Appalachian tradition hinges upon having access to heaps and heaps of ramps. Heaps, literally. This amount is known colloquially as “a big mess of ramps,” or even more colloquially as “a messaramps”. A messaramps shrinks dramatically when exposed to heat, and the result is somewhat like very pungent cooked spinach: green, but zingy with that good stink.

These cooked ramps are often served alongside cornbread and beans at church fundraising ramp dinners, where many hands make faster work of the digging, sorting, cleaning, and cooking. A common way to prepare the ramps is to first blanch them; it’s fast, and it’s said to tame these little buggers. I prefer to chop the white root ends into segments about a centimeter long and saute these gently in a big skillet filmed with olive oil. After a few minutes of this, when the roots are good and aromatic (they won’t become translucent as chopped, cooked onions do), roughly chop the greens and throw them in. They will wilt yieldingly. Season this with salt and a few light grinds of pepper; now you can enliven a frittata, risotto, pizza, sandwich, omelet, quiche, home fries, et cetera.

A raw ramp is an entirely different beast from its mellower cooked sibling. Raw ramps emit vapors that intoxicate some and polarize all. If you have only a dozen or so precious ramps to in your hot little hands, I recommend using them as crazy-intense herbs. Make ramp aöli, or mince them and gently knead them into a hamburger patty with a dash or two of Worcestershire sauce (and then serve it with ramp aöli). Or chop up your scant little bundle of ramps, flash it in a little olive oil, and cook eggs sunny-side-up right on the rampy nest.

The only way to go wrong with ramps is to disrespect them. When you find a patch in the woods, don’t go decimating the whole thing like a heathen. Dig up a few ramps here and a few ramps there, allowing the patch to maintain its numbers from season to season. And it’s best to leave some of the root end in the ground, if possible, to facilitate next year’s growth. I sense that the trendiness of ramps in urban markets peaked last year, but there’s still a need to preserve, not deplete, the wild rampshed.

Should you not be privy to the secreted lands where ramps thrive, take heart. Certainly there’s something else equivalent in your life. If not in flavor, in essence. Ramps present themselves to those who choose to be aware of what surrounds them. You can’t enter Brigadoon by looking for it directly, but you can’t enter it without wandering, either.

Mash up a big, rich pot of potato-ey ramp champ to enjoy some rib-sticking spring fodder. 

This post originally appeared on Food Riot, where I am a contributor.

Ramp Champ

Champ is an Irish dish of creamy mashed potatoes and scallions. Colcannon is an Irish dish of mashed potatoes and cabbage or kale. What follows features ramps in the scallion role, with cabbage invited along, too—I like how the sweetness of the cooked cabbage sidles up next to the mellowed-out cooked ramps. We don’t call this Ramp Colcannon because Ramp Champ is obviously the better name (it's also our pub trivia team’s default moniker). A little grating of lemon zest is nice, as is fresh dill, but don’t go too crazy, like I did, or they will overpower the ramps. Yes, correct, overpower the ramps. For a vegan version, use tons of olive oil and either non-dairy milk or a generous splash of reserved potato-cooking water.

You may serve ramp champ as-is, or with a fried egg on top. The night that we dug up these ramps, we griddled fatty, flavorful burgers seasoned with minced raw ramps. I think the only way to outdo that combo is to fry an egg and serve all three together: patty, egg, and ramp champ. 

Makes about six servings

• 1-1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled, cut into 2-inch chunks
• As many ramps as you like or have—about 30 would be ideal—cleaned, roots trimmed
• One to four tablespoons butter or extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• ½ medium green cabbage, cut into shreds about a centimeter in diameter
• 1-2 cups of milk, sour cream, or half-and-half
• 1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh thyme, dill, or parsley, optional
• ¼ teaspoon finely grated zest, optional
• Lots of salt and freshly ground black pepper

Put the potatoes in a large pot and cover them with cold water. Add lots of salt, cover, and bring them to a boil over high heat. Immediately uncover the pot and lower the heat to a simmer. When a fork easily pierces a potato chunk, drain the potatoes and mash them up (I like them chunky, with an irregular texture). Put the lid on there to keep them warm.

Meanwhile, cut the white root ends of the ramps into segments about a centimeter long. Roughly chop the leaves of the ramps and set them aside.

Melt a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat and add the ramp roots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until they are aromatic and softened, about two to three minutes. Then add the chopped leaves and cook, stirring, until they are wilted. Season the ramps with salt and a little freshly ground black pepper. Scrape them into a bowl, wipe out the skillet if necessary, and return it to the heat. Melt another tablespoon of butter, add the cabbage, and cook until it’s soft and sweet, about ten minutes (it’s okay of the cabbage browns a little).

With a big wooden spoon, stir the cooked ramps and cabbage into the mashed potatoes. Add the remaining butter (if you like, and you should; ramp champ is at its best when it’s good and rich) along with the cooked ramps and cabbage and enough milk or half and half to make it smooth but not loose. Season the heck out of your ramp champ with more salt and black pepper. If you’re feeling edgy, add a little chopped fresh herbs or lemon zest, but don’t overdo it, or you’ll negate the ramps, and the ramps are the point.