The Ramps Report 2016

Those of us who have been tuned in to the world of local and seasonal eating for a while probably have a complex, somewhat complicated relationship with ramps.  Those “wild leeks” of springtime that have perfumed loamy woodlands and Appalachian kitchens for generations in relative obscurity leapt into the culinary limelight 20 or so years ago, and have been hogging center stage ever since.  I recall seeing them mentioned more and more often in reviews of New York restaurants in the late 1990s, then noticing them for sale (at what seemed like an exorbitant price) in Twin Cities food co-ops, and then came the big Ah-ha! moment when, walking the banks of a favorite trout stream, I was brought up short by a powerful garlic-chivey smell and looked around to find that I was standing in a veritable field of ramps, their crushed leaves under my wading boots sending up what was, to me, an incredibly appetizing aroma.

Thus began my journey along what one might call the stages of grief/stations of the cross for ramp lovers in the foodie 21st century.  Fascination and infatuation at first meeting, then falling big time for this humble but compelling new crush; then the skepticism, eye-rolling at the sudden bandwagoning crowds, the farmers market shoppers clamoring, the fancy chefs pandering; disillusionment—was I a fool to fall so fast, so hard, for a love that had turned fickle and trendy?; then acceptance: hey, it’s a stinking wild onion, it’s delicious, and when you pick it yourself, it’s free, and ridiculously abundant when you know where to look—get over it. 

I’ve reached acceptance now, indeed, a state of near ramps nirvana, if you don’t mind my mixing gastro-religious metaphors in reference to a common woodland weed.  I went fishing with my friend Tom during Minnesota’s opening weekend for the regular (i.e., kill ‘em & grill ‘em, hook ‘em & cook ‘em) trout season a week ago Sunday, and while the fishing was pretty good, the foraging was even better.  The warm start to spring meant that the ramps were already well up and sizable.  We each took home a sack, and I’ve been cooking with them nearly every day since.

Opening weekend trout stream rice bowl with ramps, cress, and of course, trout, brown.

While I’ve come up with a number of ramp-specific recipes over the years, now I tend to treat them like any other allium (that is, onion or lily family member, ramps being allium tricoccum), as a versatile aromatic.  So I’ve sautéed them to build a nice base for ramen stock, thrown a handful into a quesadilla, strewn slivers atop a pizza, sweated with other aromatics to flavor a pilaf—you get the idea.

Yesterday I did a little pickling, putting up one pint of ramp bulbs per this versatile method, setting a quart to ferment in a simple salt-water brine.  Looking through my blog index I find that I might have more recipes involving ramps than just about any other ingredient.  As far as that gnarly, evolving relationship with ramps goes, I guess I’m fully committed.

Charred Ramp and Watercress Soup

I used Madeleine Kamman’s cabbage cream soup as a template.  Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as a starter

2 ounces salt pork or pancetta, in 1/3” dice (or 2 tablespoons cooking oil)

10 good ramps, well cleaned

1 small potato, about 4 ounces, peeled, cut in small dice, and rinsed, and well drained

4 cups loosely packed watercress (about 4 ounces), leaves and stems, well rinsed (especially if it’s wild cress) and roughly chopped

3 cups chicken stock

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Optional garnish: croutons, good yogurt, cream, or thinned sour cream

Separate the ramp greens from the stem-bulb sections and set aside.  Slice the stem-bulb sections crosswise into 1/4-inch pieces.

If using salt pork/pancetta, render the pork cubes gently over medium-low heat until they have given up much of their fat and started to brown.  Remove the cubes from the pan and set aside.  Pour off—but save!—the fat, and return 2 tablespoons to the pan.

If you don’t have salt pork or pancetta, heat 2 tablespoons oil.

Turn the heat to medium-high and add the chopped ramps, then the potato.  Cook, stirring frequently, until the potato begins to brown and the ramp pieces take on color—indeed, we are looking for some of the ramp bits to become quite dark, even black.  Just don’t burn the crap out of it so it all turns ashy and bitter.

Getting good color.

When the potato is golden, the ramps nicely colored/charred, add the chicken stock, then the cress, a couple good pinches of salt, and a few grinds of pepper.  Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook at a gentle bubble for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Chiffonade (cut in thin ribbons) the ramp greens, and add half of them to the soup at the end of the 10-minute simmer.  Let the soup cool for a few minutes, then purée, using either an immersion blender, a regular blender, or, with great care and caution, a food processor.

The soup can be made to this point up to several days ahead.  Just before serving, reheat the soup and serve garnished with the recrisped salt pork/pancetta cubes, croutons from good, honest bread, perhaps a swirl of yogurt (I’m fond of goat yogurt), and the remaining ramp leaf chiffonade, or as you please.

Text and photos copyright 2016 by Brett Laidlaw

Zesty, Rootsy Winter Pickles

With fresh local vegetables becoming more and more widely available to us year-round, even here in the Frozen North, there’s no reason that pickling season has to end with the first frost.  Co-ops and winter farmers markets are burgeoning these days with locally grown vegetables in great variety.  Yes, they’re mostly roots, but what an abundance and variety of roots, from black, watermelon, beauty heart, and daikon radishes, to turnips in several colors, rutabagas, beets red and golden, celery root, sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips.   

What’s great about this is:  Fresh, locally grown produce, in the middle of frikkin’ winter!  What’s less awesome is:  They’re all pretty much radishes and turnips!

Personally, I like radishes and turnips, but a steady diet of them through the long cold months becomes pretty monotonous.  A little pickling is a good way to change up the flavors and textures of these hearty, assertive roots.  And for winter pickling, I tend to lean to the East.  So here are two easy Asian pickles to make in small batches and enjoy alongside a bowl of ramen, a rice bowl meal, or as part of a regular Chinese meal, or just to nosh on at will. 

The first, Sichuan Pao Cai (Pickled Vegetables) is something I’ve made off and on for a long time, and something I would often order at the little restaurants in the alleys outside the university gates when I taught English at Sichuan University in Chengdu, waaayyy back in 1989-90.  A little dish of pao cai would be served bathed in chile oil (hong you) and a dash of soy sauce.  The pickles in Chengdu were always pink, I’m not sure why.  Recently I came across a fabulous recipe for a chile oil scented with wonderful aromatics.  I’m now addicted to it, and here’s the recipe, from Elaine Luo's excellent China Sichuan Food website--you'll find the red oil (hong you) recipe in the larger wonton recipe.

The other is a super quick pickle of thinly sliced radish (but you could sub/add turnip or carrot or what have you) in a simple mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and sugar, with a little ginger and garlic for added depth.  To me, the sweet/sour/salty flavor combination of sugar/vinegar/soy is crazy delicious.  I could drink it like broth, but it would do weird things to the inside of my mouth, I fear, so I enjoy it in moderation and in pickles. 

This can be whipped up at the last minute, or made a day or two ahead.  It loses some freshness if left to sit too long, but it’s not going to go bad.  I often make up a small quantity to liven up rice bowl dinners.  With small radishes I tend to slice them very thin on the Benriner, while with larger radishes like a big daikon, I might shred instead.

Sichuan Pao Cai (Pickled Vegetables)

Makes one quart

You can use pretty much any firm vegetables in this pickle.  In winter it’s going to be mainly roots—red beets are the only one I would probably avoid; they would take over the pickle, both in color and taste, and also, they’re just not very Chinese.  In summer you could use green beans, cucumbers, peeled, diced broccoli stems, the thick white center rib of napa cabbage or bok choi.  My veg mixture for this batch was black radish, daikon, rutabaga, kohlrabi, cabbage core, and another radish, the one that’s pink inside, I don’t know the name, a friend had picked it up for me.  

This recipe is adapted from Mrs Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook, a key book in my cooking history.

4 cups firm vegetables in ½-inch dice, about a pound

6 – ¼-inch slices ginger root

2 or more dried red chiles—I used 2, as these particular chiles are VERY HOT!!!

½ teaspoon whole hua jiao (Sichuan peppercorns)

1 ½ cups water

1 tablespoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 tablespoon rice wine or dry sherry

1 tablespoon cider or rice wine vinegar

Combine everything except the diced vegetables in a small saucepan, and heat just to dissolve the salt and sugar.  In a quart jar, layer ginger slices, chiles, and vegetables.  Pour in the brine, put a lid on it, and allow to ferment at cool room temperature for 3 or 4 days. You’ll see the brine start to become cloudy, and bubbles will rise from the depths when you open the jar.  When they are fermented to your taste, refrigerate.  The pickles will keep indefinitely.

Soy-Pickled Radish Slices

A mild radish, such as daikon or watermelon, is best in this pickle, which can be used almost right away, or refrigerated to mellow for a few days.  I used my Benriner Japanese mandoline to slice the radishes, but you can also slice them very thin with a sharp knife.

About 2/3 cup thinly sliced small radishes, or shredded larger ones

1 teaspoon finely shredded ginger root

1 small clove garlic, crushed, optional

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon water

4 teaspoons cider or rice wine vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

Combine the radish slices, ginger, and garlic, and place them in a small jar—half-pint will do.  Combine the rest of the ingredients, stirring well to dissolve the sugar.  Pour this mixture into the jar with the radishes, put the lid on, give it a little shake.  Let stand at least 30 minutes before serving, or refrigerate for later use.  Will keep at least a week.

Fun with Fermentation 2014

I'm putting this up for those who attended my fermented vegetables session at the Hay River Transition Initiative's 2014 Green and Traditional Skills Day, or anyone else who's interested.

Here are some of my posts dealing with the topic:

Crock-fermented vegetables

Kimchi

Mixed vegetable ferment in a gallon jar

Sauerkraut in jars

Choucroute garnie


And here are the key books in my fermentation library:

The Art of Fermentation, Sandor Katz

Wild Fermentation, Sandor Katz

Wild Fermentation is more practical and recipe-oriented; The Art of Fermentation is encyclopedic.  I reach for Wild Fermentation far more often.

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning, the Farmers and Gardeners of the Terre Vivante Collective

Fascinating traditional preservation techniques from the French countryside.

The Joy of Pickling, Linda Ziedrich

My go-to book for all sorts of pickles, relishes, chutneys, etc., fermented and otherwise.

That should keep you busy for a while. Go forth and ferment!

A Bit of a Pickle

Just a bit, nothing too strenuous.  This is how I like to can, a couple pints, half-pints here and there, and by the end of the summer I usually have a good assortment.  Pickles are amusements; they should be as enjoyable to make as they are to eat (that's right, like Jiffy Pop).  I did two half-pints of ramp bulbs today, and a pint each of asparagus and rhubarb.  The ramps will be garnish for Ramp-A-Tinis (a wild Gibson), and will be chopped to make pickled ramp ranch (originally a David Chang  concept, which I adapted into a rhubarb ramp ranch inspired by Tory Miller's Madison restaurant Graze; I offer this in full disclosure, as I've been spouting off about bloggers adapting recipes on another site recently)  .

But let's get on with it, or I'll spend more time describing the pickles than it took to make them.  The asparagus is also an excellent cocktail garnish (vodka martini, bloody mary), and will certainly be welcome on a Thanksgiving relish tray.  The rhubarb--who knows.  I had a bit of brine leftover, we have this giant rhubarb patch, it seemed worth a try.

The brine:

2 cups water
1 cup cider or rice wine vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
Scant 2 tablespoons salt
3 whole cloves
2 small dried red chilies, seeds removed (or leave them in if you like it really hot)
1 teaspoon black peppercorns

Combine all in a non-reactive saucepan and bring to a boil.  My method tends to vary, but what I did today was to add the ramp bulbs as the brine came to a boil, and blanch them for a couple of minutes.  Then I turned the heat off, added the asparagus, and left it for just a minute.  Prior to the blanching I had trimmed the pieces so they would fit their respective jars, half pint size for the ramps, pint for the asparagus.

For the rhubarb, I set the cut-to-length pieces flat side down and halved them the long way, to allow the brine quicker and fuller access.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Don't let pickling intimidate you, it needn't be daunting.  I don't bother to process these kinds of pickles, usually; I just pop them in the fridge and check back in a week or two to see how they're coming along.  Small batch pickling is, literally, no sweat.

Text and photos copyright 2012 by Brett Laidlaw

Tasty Buds

I'm going to make a bold prediction:  milkweed will be the new ramps, the hot wild food that will grab the attention of chefs and home cooks alike.  And may I say, should this come to pass, it will be long overdue.  Whether you love, loathe, or linger in indifference toward ramps, it's hard to dispute the fact that they have become a bit overexposed, have held an exceedingly long reign over our springtime culinary imagination.  I think this may be because, as wild foods go, ramps are particularly reliable, abundant, and affordable.  Not everyone will shell out the $30-plus a pound for wild mushrooms, but a bunch of ramps at $2.50 per gives a lot of flavor for the dollar. 

Restaurant chefs know exactly when they'll be able to get ramps, and the cachet this wild springtime food gives to local-seasonal menus is a bargain for them, as well.

Milkweed is equally abundant as ramps--maybe moreso--it has a longer season, and it's edible in several forms, from shoots, to buds, flowers, smallish pods, and the immature silk that Sam Thayer calls "milkweed cheese."  It is, indeed, thanks to Thayer that I, and many others, have come to know and appreciate the culinary qualities of this long misunderstood plant.  It was thought for a long time, and by many so-called experts (including the venerable Euell Gibbons), that milkweed was inherently bitter, and that any form of it therefore required cooking in several changes of water simply to make it palatable.  In a thorough and utterly convincing essay (the first of his work that I encountered), Thayer laid that notion to rest.  I won't bother to paraphrase further what you can read for yourself right here.

So far the milkweed parts I've worked with have been the flower buds and small pods.  Our Wisconsin land must be rife with the shoots in spring, since it's rife with mature plants right now (our Saint Paul front yard has a nice crop, too), but I haven't managed to catch them at that stage.  What I've mainly done with both buds and pods, other than just munch on them, desultorily, during walks around our land, is to pickle them.  That's how I spent most of my day today.

I gathered maybe a quart of the bud heads (I doubt that's botanically accurate, but it will do), giving each a little shake as I picked it to dislodge any insects--many insects like milkweed, not just monarch butterflies.  My fingertips became sticky with the latex that gives milkweed its name, but I was able to rinse it off easily when I was done; I believe that Thayer reports a somewhat caustic effect from longer exposure of skin to the latex.  Once I got the buds home, I rinsed them thoroughly, then chilled them in the refrigerator overnight.  That actually seemed to have firmed them when I came back to them.  This afternoon I used a paring knife to cut the buds off the flower head, a pleasant little chore accomplished while watching "The People's Court."  I didn't bother about the little tails that remained attached to the buds; they're edible, as well, and likely will largely disappear after pickling.

I applied three different methods to preserving them. First, I took about three-quarters of a cup of buds and mixed them with nearly a tablespoon of coarse salt--fleur de sel, in my case. I bottled them and will refrigerate them. I imagine these may ferment somewhat and develop a bit of pungency with time. I hope so. Another cup I immersed in the sweet and sour and salt brine described here--I used the larger, "purpler" ones for this; these ready-to-open buds had a slightly sweet and floral taste that I thought might come through in that brine. The rest, a scant cup, I will prepare in the "cornichon method" also described in that post.

The flavor of unseasoned milkweed is nowhere near as assertive as that of ramps--but then, outside the allium world, what is?  It's mild, green, a bit like lightly steamed green beans, I'd say.  The buds have a nice crisp "pop" when you bite into them, the small pods, as well.  Up to an inch or so in size the pods remain tender enough to steam or stir-fry.  The uses of the silk, that "cheese," I have yet to explore.

I've been calling these pickled buds milkweed "capers," but I think I'll drop that term.  Nonetheless, you can use them in most of the places you'd use something like a caper--in salad dressings, to flavor an egg salad or deviled eggs, sprinkled over grilled or fried meat or fish.  I'm going to mix some into mayonnaise tonight, along with some chopped pickled ramps, to make a wild tartar sauce to serve with fried whitefish.

I would never advise anyone to use this blog, or any simple descriptive or photographic source, as a field guide to wild edibles--always consult a good field guide or two or four, or a trusted friend who knows about these things.  That caution registered, milkweed is among the easiest of wild foods to identify.  The buds will be on the plants for another week or two.  As you can see from the photos here, some have already bloomed.  It's not the sort of thing one wants to subsist on, but milkweed provides many opportunities through the spring and summer to get a delightful, safe taste of wild foods.

Milkweed:  It's the new ramps.  You read it here first.

Text and photos copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Am I Blue?/Treasure from the Larder

To end the week simply and cheesily: A lovely wedge of Ader Kase Reserve from Seymour Dairy Products over in eastern Wisconsin, Outagamie County. Salty, tangy, rich and creamy. Nice cheese. Accompanying, pickled crab and ramp chutney, a snap to make if you have the pickles.

Here's how you do the ramps.

And here the crabs.

We'll be back in the woods harvesting ramps again in no time. The crabs will be a bit longer. Pruning is on tap for this weekend; tapping is on tap, too, as it's maple syrup time.

Sappily yours,

Brett


Pickled Crab & Ramp Chutney
Makes one half-cup

Treasure from the larder. Excellent with a wedge of blue cheese at meal's end, as consort to a grilled cheese sandwich, or alongside pork any way.

5 or 6 pickled ramp bulbs, rinsed, cut in half the long way, sliced 1/4-inch thick (1/4 cup)
1 tablespoon canola or sunflower oil
4 or 5 pickled crabapples, cored and chopped, 1/2 cup
Pinch salt
2 tablespoons liquid from the pickled crabapples
2 teaspoons liquid from the pickled ramps

Cook the ramps very gently, without browning, until they start to soften, four to five minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients, and simmer very gently, uncovered, stirring frequently, until the chutney thickens, three to five minutes. Remove to a small bowl, cool, cover, and refrigerate. Best if it sits for a few hours before serving.


Text and photo copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Escabeche, A Pretty Little Pickle

We're safely past the midpoint of February, and the big thaw continues. I'm hoping to be able to pluck the first wild watercress of the year this weekend, and getting some seeds started--for leeks, head lettuces, cabbage--may be optimistic, but not out of the question.

The root cellar continues to provide carrots, squash, potatoes, parsnips, leeks; from the freezer, tomatoes, wild mushrooms, corn; the fruits of my fermentations still give us sauerkraut, red kale/kimchi/seaweed, and sour beets. It's all good, and a good variety, when you look at it. Nothing could tempt me to indulge in asparagus or green beans, from the grocery store. For one thing, it wouldn't be an indulgence--those spring and summer veg in winter always taste weird to me. (I'll confess a weakness for guacamole, though; the avocadoes have been really good lately.)

What I start to miss this time of year is the freshness, the brightness of vegetables straight from the garden or market. The braising pot is my dear friend, but now and then my teeth need a workout, my palate needs a jolt.

Enter the escabeche: I'm sure I use the term quite loosely. It's generally applied, I think, to fried fish added to a vinegary marinade, then cooled. Or it may mean the marinade, per se. Which may include vegetables, or not. For me it's a quick hot pickle, eaten immediately, though it will keep. (Something about the word itself makes me think of fast: Vite, vite! Pronto! Escabeche!) It is particulary good with fish, like this trout with springtime escabeche of ramps and asparagus.

And then the other night we were preparing to broil a couple of Lake Superior herring fillets that would be served with a mildy hot chili oil vinaigrette (I'm cravin' a lot of spice these days), and I wanted something fresh and crunchy and tart.

Down to the basement for a carrot and a parsnip. Cuisinart makes a rare appearance: into the tube, slicer attachment installed, a carrot, a small parsnip (both peeled), a large clove of garlic, a small red onion.

Dump all that into a small saucepan, add about three tablespoons of olive oil, half that of cider vinegar, and some chili--I'd been soaking some lovely chilies kept from the market last summer, Red Rocket, I believe, so I added one of those, chopped. You could crumble in any dried red chili, heat to suit, or add a teaspoon of sambal. A grind of black pepper, good pinch of sea salt.

I just brought that up to a boil, turned off the heat, covered the pot, let it sit until we were ready to eat. It was just the thing against the soft and flavorful fish napped in my piri-piri style sauce (I made that recipe with olive oil, using half the amount of oil called for).

The pickle will keep a few days, and it was good with a chicken sandwich. The vegetables can be whatever's on hand--celery or celery root, fennel (a fave), green beans sliced, and I imagine an apple wouldn't be bad in this, at all. The piri-piri sauce will keep a while, as well--it was originally made to dress the grilled chicken that wound up in the sandwich....

Keep 'er rollin'.




Text and photo copyright 2011 by Brett Laidlaw

Delicious, Wisconsin

On the excellent Heavy Table website last week, editor James Norton took the author of a recently published cookbook to task for what he saw as a serious misrepresentation of the history of cheesemaking in Wisconsin. He carried the argument beyond mere factual error, ascribing the off-hand dismissal of a long history of artisan cheese in the state to the condescending attitude of the coasts toward the middle of the country in general:

Artisan cheese is haute cuisine, an art that is most naturally associated with Italy and France. These are places that the California and New York gastronomic communities look up to.

California and New York look down upon the Midwest on general principle (and not totally without reason, if you’ve ever dined poorly in a large Midwestern suburb). Midwesterners who move to California or New York are often the worst offenders on this front — no one wants to be seen as an apologist for something uncool.

Therefore: World-class fine food cannot come from the nation’s heartland. Burgers, fries, smoked fish, and other folk food; fine. Raw materials for California and New York chefs, fine. But world-class cheese? No; that would be a disruption of the natural social order.

There was a lot about that article, the response of the cookbook's author, the comments on Heavy Table, that got me thinking. My first reaction was almost one of shock, to think that folks elsewhere would look down upon the amazing food resources that we have access to here in "flyover-land." I must have assumed that since I, and many others, have been extolling the virtues of our local, seasonal delights for so long, with such enthusiasm, our impassioned hymns of praise must have been heard the world over(!).


Personally, I eat so well, every day, relying almost entirely on our local bounty, that I would tend to respond to any coastal slight with a satisfied little burp and a smile, acknowledging that, yes, you there in New York, in California, you've far more Michelin stars to gaze upon than us bumpkins, it's a shame we suffer so, and I'd wish them well, and then get back to my meal.



And then there was the whole question, the distinction Jim Norton raises, of "haute cuisine" versus "folk food," and his assertion that artisan cheese belongs to the former category. And now, I'd have to agree that artisan cheese is surely looked upon as exalted foodstuffs, it has the price tag to prove it, but at heart I think it's one of the folkiest foods you can find. I mean, take some milk, make it curdle, stick it in a cave to get nice and moldy...? Does it get any more peasant than that?

I think it points up, once again, a profound and meaningful paradox that runs through the whole history of cuisine both haute and basse, which is: Many of the most sought-after, priciest, most rarified ingredients in the world of "high cooking" come from the lowest of places, and have traditionally been fare not for princes, but for peasants. Wild mushrooms that spring from the forest duff, those cheeses moldering in dank country caves, wild game and fish and shellfish--these are often abundant and common in the places where they arise, and only take on the patina of luxury in the context of the gourmet table. Any culinary cook would drool at the chance to cook with ruffed grouse and pheasant and fresh venison, but in the hunters' kitchens lots of fine game birds get the cream of mushroom soup treatment, and tons upon tons of venison wind up as terriyaki jerky sticks....


I guess it's really a question of perspective, as to one person the scent of a black truffle is the world's sexiest, most exquisite perfume, while to the next it evokes nothing so much as a pair of sweaty socks left in the gym bag over winter break. It's a shame to see the whole fascinating history of Wisconsin cheese tossed-off in one ill-considered headnote; on the other hand, I really could not care less about what anyone else thinks about this region, our food, our goofy accents, or even our Jell-O salads. I know we've got it good, and as to the question of high cuisine and low, in my own life and cooking I don't see the paradox I described above--I don't even recognize the distinction.



I'm as happy with a great piece of smoked fish as with a finely wrought dish at a gourmet restaurant (my home-smoked herring turned out really well, by the way). On the cheese plate we set out for a Bide-A-Wee brunch in honor of our friend Pete visiting from Montana, we had a sort of fancy cheese ( Marieke gouda*), a lovely but not pricey, nonetheless "brand-name" one (Black River Blue), and a no-name aged white cheddar that we often buy from our friend Renee Bartz at Bolen Vale. All were excellent, but the cheddar was especially good, to me. I think Pete really liked the blue.


And on the pickle plate, while chanterelles are generally considered a delicacy, milkweed is generally considered...a weed, go figure. And ramps, while they now enjoy a vaunted culinary reputation, are almost a symbol of Appalachian peasant food. A green bean is generally considered a green bean, and that one was a salt-brined fermented version thereof.



Used to be the aristocracy ate white bread while the hoi polloi bitterly gnashed away at their grainy loaves, but what goes around does come around, and now it's a sign of culinary sophistication to enjoy whole grain sourdough breads. What was traditional is new, the low becomes high. I'd have to say, when push comes to shove and my back is up against the wall to make the judgment call:

It's all good.



And pretty much everything on that table came from Wisconsin--by which I do not mean to slight Minnesota, don't want to start another fight! Great Hope butter from Minnesota, and Whole Grain Milling, Natural Way Mills flour in those "peasant loaves." Pickled green beans, Minnesota grown, right here on Princeton Avenue. I love it when everyone gets along, so deliciously.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw


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* When I originally posted this I said it was Roth Kase "gruyère"; that was incorrect. But that's another excellent Wisconsin cheese.

A Report Upon the State of My Pickle, August 2010

I was intimidated by pickling and canning for a long time. Two things generally put me off on the whole process: First was the impression that it requires rigorous adherence to a systematic, scientific method to ensure proper results, lest in consuming said results, you die. Since I am not particularly good at reading directions or following instructions, it seemed much better to leave it to Gedney's.

The second discouraging facet of home canning has always been the fact that the glut of food begging to be pickled and canned arrives mid-summer, in the dog days' heat and humidity of late July and August, and who wants to be stuck in a sauna-like kitchen peering into steaming cauldrons when it's 90 with a dewpoint of 75? Pas moi, bien sur.

So I avoided delving into this arcane, sweaty, potentially deadly realm for years, but I was always jealous of those who had mastered it, who held the keys to this alchemy, who could endure the physical rigors of that sweat-lodge vision quest, who could make beautiful things out of the humblest materials, a lousy cucumber, salt, spoiled cider or wine. Those people were better than I, I was certain--smarter, stronger, more enlightened, more moral and pure.

And, they got dilly beans to snack on with their beer.

I finally overcame my reluctance to pickle around 15 years ago, I guess, spurred by an over-abundance of suyo long cucumbers from the garden. Ordinary overgrown cukes I have no trouble consigning to the compost bin. A well-formed suyo long cucumber, though, is such a magnificent thing--dark green, beautifully curved, bristly, ridged, sometimes growing to nearly a foot-and-a-half long--I couldn't bear to toss them or see them rot in the crisper. I gave a lot away, but I still had too many. I opened up the stained red-checked cover of the Better Homes and Gardens and found a recipe for bread & butters. It didn't seem too complicated. I made up a batch that filled a couple of quart jars. There was no steaming cauldron involved. I just stuck the jars in the fridge, and they kept all year, until the cucumbers were overwhelming the garden again. Now, was that so hard?

That experience set me down the path of small-batch canning, an approach much more like cooking than it is like the Industial-Scale Food Preservation that "home canning" had always implied for me. I have a few stand-bys--the bread & butters, French cornichons, sour dills--but each year I like to try a few new things.

Of course, it's generally the fruits or vegetables that you have the most of that you wind up looking for ways to preserve. For me, this year, that has meant taking a pickle to some wild foods that I hadn't preserved this way before: ramps, fiddleheads, chanterelles, milkweed pods.

I started with the ramps, wrote about it here. That Momofuku-inspired brine has become my go-to recipe for quick pickles. I did a jar of ostrich fern fiddleheads and ramps with that same brine, and I used it on the milkweed pods you see here in the little pottery dish:


Those pods are about an inch long, maybe a little longer, some of them. I blanched them in salted water for a couple of minutes before immersing them in the brine, and they've cured nicely in the last three or four weeks. They have a really interesting texture--nice sort of popping crunch to them--and the flavor is very like green beans.

Here's that brine again:

2 cups water
1 cup apple cider vinegar (or rice wine vinegar)
3/4 cup sugar
scant 2 Tbsp salt
2 small dried red chilies, seeds removed (or leave them in if you want more heat)--optional
1 tsp black peppercorns, also optional

And of course you could add other flavors, garlic, herbs, etc.

In the jar at top left in that picture, those are tiny milkweed pods that I turned into "Bide-A-Wee capers," preserving them the same way I do cornichons: toss with a good amount of salt and let sit overnight; rinse next day and place in a jar with a few peppercorns, some tarragon, a clove of garlic; boil vinegar enough to cover (I'm always using cider vinegar now, since we have so much home-made); the following two days, pour the vinegar into a small saucepan, bring to a boil, pour back over the pods. After that refrigerate and use as you would use capers. I can't wait to make a beurre noisette with some of those milkweed capers, to spoon over a grilled trout. I haven't been fishing much at all this summer, with the heat, and the streams often blown out from heavy rains.

With my excess chanterelles I made a soy sauce pickle based on a Momofuku recipe (just tasted those, and they're great); and a vinegar-blanched and packed in oil with garlic, chili, and herbs; and a jar of chanterelles in the manner of Polish pickled mushrooms. The last two preparations were from Linda Ziedrich's excellent The Joy of Pickling .

In the picture at the very top, that's my favorite pickle of the summer--cukes and crabs in the brine as above, without the peppercorns, with a little fresh Bulgarian carrot chili in place of the dried chili. This is a wonderfully simple, extremely refreshing pickle. The cucumber and the apple seem to sort of swap flavors after a few days in the brine--the apples have a bit of a watermelon rind taste to them, the cuke chunks become tart-sweet and a little fruity. Really good. I'm on my second batch. These should be eaten within a week or so of making them.

To make them, you just quarter and core a few crabapples or other small, firm, tart apples; cut a few pickling cukes into 1 1/2- to 2-inch lengths, and quarter those--and if they're very seedy trim off some of the seeds; make the brine as above, pour over the apple and cuke pieces packed into a jar with some chili, if you like. Refrigerate for a day before eating, and consume within a week. While the weather stays summery, that shouldn't be a problem.

After four days in the country I came back to Saint Paul to find my cucumbers in a state of riot. I just picked a heaping salad spinner full, to go with the half-a-crisper that's been awaiting company and a coolish day to get pickled. So this afternoon I'll be revisiting the classics I mentioned above--the bread & butters, cornichons, and Russian sour dills. Also on my radar: fermenting some kale, beets, and good old sauerkraut in anticipation of winter soups and choucroutes.

I hope you're getting your pickle on nicely this summer, and I'd love to hear about your favorite preserving recipes, too--pickles, canned goods, fermented stuff, jellies, or jams, whatever.

Cheers, and happy pickling to you.



Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Wrapping Up the Ramps

We're coming to the end of the ramps season. I won't promise not to mention them again till next spring, but I'm eager to move on to asparagus, salads, and more summery things. It's probably true that ramps are a little over-hyped, and, in the stores, a little overpriced. For a wild foods enthusiast, though, they are also a genuine reason to celebrate--the first of the year's seasonal wild foods, delicious, abundant, versatile. I'll jump on that bandwagon.

In an "average" year we would probably be picking ramps into early June, but an extremely warm April got the ramps up and going, and now that the plants are sending up flower stalks the greens start to die back. You can still dig up the bulbs through the summer and fall, if you know how to find them, but I feel they're definitely best as a ritual of spring.

I unearthed a nice sackful of ramps last week for a last blast rampage. The greens weren't much good, but the bulbs were nice and plump. My main project for the season's last ramps was to try pickling a couple pounds of them. I should know by now that small-batch pickling is as easy as making a pot of soup, but still for some reason I find the prospect daunting. In fact, for these ramps pickled more or less following David (Momofuku) Chang's recipe, the hardest part was cleaning and trimming the ramps. This brine is lovely; it's a near-perfect balance of sweet, sour, and salt. Chang's recipe calls for rice wine vinegar, but to give it that Bide-A-Wee twist I used some of our own apple cider vinegar. Good quality unpasteurized cider vinegar is available in bulk at many co-ops.



2 cups water
1 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 cup sugar
scant 2 Tbsp salt
2 small dried red chilies, seeds removed (or leave them in if you want more heat)
1 tsp black peppercorns

Cleaned ramp bulbs with a couple inches of the stem left on

I had a pound and a half of cleaned ramp bulbs, which filled two tightly packed pints with quite a bit of brine left over. Two pounds of ramps would make three pints without being compulsive about packing efficiency. Leftover brine can be used to pickle something else.

Combine all the ingredients in a non-reactive saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for a minute or two. Line up the ramps prettily in the jar. Make sure each jar gets a bit of chili and a few peppercorns. Pour brine over the ramps to cover. Refrigerate.

Having never made these before, I'm not sure how long it will take for the ramps to become fully pickled. A couple of weeks at least, I'm sure. Refrigerated, they should keep for a few months.

I didn't wait to use mine. The very night I made them they went into two preparations. The first was a dangerously appealing "ramp-a-tini," a couple ounces of gin, capful of dry vermouth, twist of lemon, and around a teaspoon of the pickled ramps brine. Finish off with a garnish of a pickled ramp.



I sipped one of those while we put together a simple but delicious dinner of grilled pork steaks served over baby garden greens tossed with a creamy pickled ramp dressing.* To wit:

2 Tbsp heavy cream
2 Tbsp sour cream
1 Tbsp pickled ramp brine
1 1/2 tsp apple cider vinegar
2 pickled ramp bulbs, chopped fairly fine
2 tsp oil (something neutral like canola or sunflower)
salt and pepper to taste

Just mix it all together well and toss it with some hearty young greens. Our salad bowl this night contained frisée, red kale, baby turnip and red mustard greens, arugula, some lettuce. You don't want to do this very delicate lettuces. Here's what ours looked like:



Topped with your simply grilled pork steak, it should look like this:



And finally, the formula for the maple-ramp glaze I mentioned last post. In a small saucepan combine:

1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup chopped ramps--you can use the whole thing, whites and greens, if the greens are still nice; and, I haven't made it with pickled ramps, but I don't see why that wouldn't be good

Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Use it to glaze grilled chicken or pork toward the end of the cooking time. For the chicken pictured below, I added about a teaspoon of chili paste (sambal) to the glaze.

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* This dressing was also inspired by a Momofuku recipe, for a buttermilk ranch dressing with pickled ramps, but the first time I made it I just used raw ramps. To make it that way, omit the brine, of course, and increase the vinegar to 2 teaspoons rather than 1 1/2; also add a couple of good pinches of sugar, or to taste.


Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw

Amour de Pommes (2009 Food Highlights)

Time for another Trout Caviar Sweepstakes: I've got an extra copy of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma to give away. Also up for grabs, The Angry Trout Café Notebook, the story of that popular Grand Marais restaurant with profiles of the fishermen and -women, farmers, and foragers who provide their raw materials; with recipes for many of their best-known dishes. And finally, a copy of Jacques Pepin's memoir, The Apprentice (this one's a paperback and a little dinged up). Share a notable local food experience from last year in the comments section, and we'll make a random drawing of the entrants at the end of this month.

You may note, just off to right side of the page here, a new section that shows Trout Caviar's "followers." Click on the "Follow" button to become one. You probably know better than I do what that actually means. In my mind, it means you've joined the Trout Caviar Righteous Eaters' Army*--a prestigious distinction, indeed!

Happy New Year, everyone. May your gardens grow abundantly, your farmers' markets thrive, your foragers' baskets overflow with bounty, this year and throughout the new decade.

I've been slow getting on to the 2009 Food Highlights. The new decade sort of took me by surprise, I guess. But it was a remarkable year in food for us, and I want to note a few of the more memorable experiences from last year over the next couple of weeks.

Last year was our first full year with Bide-A-Wee, and we spent a lot more time in that cheesy state just east of the Saint Croix and Mississippi Rivers. We added the term "tree crops" to our vocabulary, and then we added our own tree crops to our pantry and table.

We tapped maple trees for syrup for the first time last spring. That was tree crop number one. That was really good fun, and it was amazing to see how much sap a tree could produce on a good day, and to taste it straight from the tree--cold, clear, slightly sweet, a touch woody. Absolutely delicious, a spring tonic. And it was a challenge to figure out how to reduce that sap by a factor of 40 to turn it into syrup. Lot of boiling. More boiling. Boil it some more. We'll get us some better equipment for the task this year. We got a decent amount of syrup, but it wasn't a great year for sugaring--it turned too warm too soon, breaking the freeze and thaw cycle that really gets the sap flowing. We also tapped some of our birches, for you can make birch syrup too (it takes even more boiling!), but we never got enough sap to even begin.


Through the spring and summer we harvested many kinds of wild fruit, some of which we’d never tasted before—nannyberries, highbush cranberries, haws. We picked all the blackberries we wanted for a good five weeks, a remarkable run. Wild plums, black cherries, elderberries, wild grapes—it was indeed a very fruitful year.


But really, 2009 was the year of the apple at Bide-A-Wee. We didn’t know it at the time, but last spring provided perfect pollinating conditions for fruit trees of all kinds. We were kind of disappointed when the blossoms didn’t last as long as the previous year, but now I think that they blew away early because, once the flower had been pollinated, the blossoms weren’t needed anymore. And then we watched as the trees started to fruit, and were amazed at the difference from the previous year.

Many apple trees have a biennial habit; 2008 had provided a fairly meager crop, but in 2009 almost all of our trees were “on”, and how. We started picking apples in August, and I foraged the last basket at the end of November. I was surprised at how much frost the apples were able to withstand. Several times temperatures dropped into the ‘teens overnight, and in the morning the frost-covered fruit appeared frozen solid. But as long as the temperature rose above freezing in the course of the day, the apples recovered with no lasting damage.


Nor was a coating of snow a problem. An October surprise turned the valley white. Annabel strikes a call-of-the-wildish pose:


There was no way we could pick even a small fraction of the apples that bowed the branches of the trees by early autumn. We’ve been doing “triage pruning” for two winters, just getting a start on rehabilitating some of these several dozen long-neglected trees, but many of them are still untouched. Picking apples is difficult on the steep, brambly hills where most of our trees grow. Some trees were completely inaccessible within thickets of blackberry canes. Some trees made repulsively scabby apples. A few trees, heavily laden with beautiful fruit during one of our weekend visits, had suddenly dropped almost all their apples by the next weekend.


In spite of that we had a bountiful harvest, and we’ve been exploring all the many aspects of the apple, a remarkably versatile food crop. We’ve made apple jam and jelly, apple sauce and butter, apple cider and syrup, apple relish, ketchup, and pickles. We’ve eaten apples at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and all times in between. We braise meats in apple cider, and sauté apples to serve with meat and fowl, fish and game. We grate apples into pancakes and breads. We have apple cider fermenting in carboys and bottles, and I’m experimenting with apple cider vinegar, too. We use dried apples to pep up granola, to sprinkle over salads, or just for snacks. Since we discovered that Annabel and Lily gobble dried apple slices enthusiastically, I haven’t bothered to bake dog biscuits. Apple salad, apple salsa, apple "kimchi", what the hell?

We invested in a cider press, the Happy Valley Ranch "Homesteader." Thoroughly old-fashioned technology, still quite effective. The press produces apple juice, or sweet cider. That juice we ferment to "hard," alcoholic cider, reduce by boiling to make versatile apple syrup (more tart than sweet; better in salad dressings than over pancakes), or freeze for drinking fresh through the winter. We haven’t bought orange juice in more than a year, start the day with a glass of apple cider, just like Thomas Jefferson did.


Of all the various uses to which we have put the versatile pome, I can recommend a few with particular enthusiasm.

--Braising in cider: There are classic preparations using cider in cooking, a lot of them from the French regions of Normandy and Brittany, where apple trees grow more readily than grapevines. In these dishes the cider, sweet or hard, serves the same purpose as the wine in a coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon, etc., a flavorful, tenderizing (because acidic) liquid that mellows in the cooking and the mixing with the meat juices and melting fat to create…man, really, really tasty food. Game birds, chicken, and pork are particularly suited to this kind of cooking. When it’s cooked for a long time, the fruitiness and tartness of the cider recede into the background. The end flavor is distinctive, but not necessarily apple-y. That's country-style pork ribs braised in cider, with apples and chestnuts, above. Here’s a chicken dish with cider and cabbage, and here’s grouse in cider cream. But you can adapt a lot of recipes that call for wine, stock, or even beer as a braising liquid, subbing cider in their place. Give it a try.

--Pickled crab apples. I’ve been absolutely tickled with these pickles, which are pictured at the top of the post. Whole crab apples cooked in a wonderfully fragrant-spiced sweet and sour syrup. Serve these with roast pork or game, chop them to add to dressing for a winter cabbage salad, garnish a cheese plate with them. I tinkered a bit with a recipe from Linda Ziedrich’s excellent The Joy of Pickling, adding some star anise, black peppercorns, and a good deal of fresh ginger slices, to the original recipe’s cinnamon, cloves and allspice:

Pickled Crab Apples
Makes two pints

1 ½ pounds crab apples, stems on
One 2-inch stick cinnamon
1 tsp allspice berries
½ tsp whole cloves
1 whole star anise
6 slices fresh ginger, 1/8-inch thick
½ tsp black peppercorns
1 cup sugar
¾ cup water
1 cup cider vinegar

In a large, non-reactive (stainless or enameled) sauce pan, combine the water, sugar, vinegar, and spices. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Pierce each apple in a couple of spots with a metal or bamboo skewer (this is supposed to keep the apples from exploding, though a lot of mine cracked anyway; no matter).

Add the apples to the syrup and bring the syrup to a simmer over medium-low heat. Simmer the apples until they start to look translucent, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the pot from the heat, cover, and let stand overnight.

Next day, use a slotted spoon to transfer the apples to sterilized canning jars--one quart or two pint jars. Strain the syrup to remove the spices, then return the syrup to the sauce pan. Bring it to a boil, then pour the hot syrup over the apples in the jars to cover. Seal with sterilized two-part lids. Process in a hot water bath for ten minutes (or just whack the lids on and refrigerate; they will keep indefinitely in the fridge).

Save any leftover syrup in a jar in the fridge. It’s great used in dressing for beet or cabbage salads. Likewise, use the liquid from the canned apples this same way.


--India relish: I acquired three new cookbooks this past fall—used, but new to me: Hollyhocks & Radishes, Joy of Cooking**, and…a compilation of recipes from The Country Journal magazine, can’t recall the exact title. Weirdly, each one practically fell open to a recipe for “India relish” the first time I picked it up. I had never heard of India relish; India relish calls for a lot of apples; I was intrigued, nay, compelled to try it. It’s great—delightful on a hot dog, a cheese sandwich. Last weekend at Bide-A-Wee we had a lunch of grilled ham (Grass Run Farm, purchased at Seward Co-op) and cheese (Roth Kase "gruyère”) on homemade natural leaven brioche with India relish. Yay, lunch!

I’m not going to give the recipe because, well, it’s in pretty much every old-timey cookbook out there, apparently. In Joy (the old one, mine was printed in 1964)it’s called Indian relish, and it’s on page 785. This is one for next fall, as it also calls for green tomatoes. So if you have a garden, and access to an apple tree, it’s basically free. I always cut back the sugar in traditional recipes like this by 20 or 25 percent. (Also in Joy I’ve just come across a recipe for sweet and sour baked beets and apples, page 264. I have beets and apples! I’m gonna try it.)

So there you go, that’s my exultation of the apple. I think we tend to take the apple for granted, consign it to the obligatory role of the piece of fruit in the lunch bag, or the plop of apple sauce beside the pork chop. But in fact it is an extremely important food crop, and a cook’s delight in the range of its uses. And then, of course, there’s all that cider bubbling in the basement. Will report when we open the first bottle.

Duck confit with crabs and cabbage.

Cider sipper Mary.

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*--I was originally calling this the TC Toxic Zombie Cult, because I've noticed that zombies and cults seem to be really hot these days, and the "toxic" part just made it super extra edgy, which people also go for. But it was suggested to me that the whole concept didn't really fit the Trout Caviar zeitgeist, and upon further reflection, I had to agree. But if you'd like to be part of the TC Toxic Zombie Cult, I could probably still manage to make up some membership cards.

**--That is the correct title, Joy of Cooking, no "the" to be seen. Never noticed that before....

Text and photos copyright 2010 by Brett Laidlaw