Soup You Can Eat With a Fork

Here is the internal monologue that created this recipe:

“Look! There are ramps at the greenmarket! I should buy a lot of them!”

“What goes with ramps? Well, I made that potato-ramp gratin once that was really good. I’m not in the mood for a gratin, but I like potatoes. A pound or so should be enough, right?”

“Mmm, that chorizo they’re grilling at Flying Pigs smells awesome. Ooh, I wonder what Russian sausage is? Let’s find out.”

“And you know what I haven’t had in a while? Oyster mushrooms.”

(Cut to kitchen, several hours later.)

“I have some cranberry beans lying around don’t I? And look, there’s a can of tomatoes, too. This is starting to sound kind of like cassoulet. Only not, because I don’t have any duck. But I have duck fat in the freezer! Oh, I see where this is going.”

(Cut to a couple more hours later.)

Is it a soup? Is it a stew? Were the mushrooms a step too far? 

On the mushrooms, the answer was probably yes, so I’m leaving them out of the recipe below. Alternately, if you want to veggify this, use mushrooms instead of the sausage, and olive oil instead of duck fat.

Also, I didn’t get quite as carried away as I might have with the ramps, so I supplemented with half a yellow onion. It worked great, but so would a third bunch of ramps.

And for the sausage, use whatever kind you like. The Russian variety I found had a sweet spiciness to it, and that worked pretty well with the sort of smokiness of the ramps, but almost anything would be good. (I would not recommend chorizo.)

Cassoulet-Inspired Stew

serves 6-8

1 lb. sausage

2 Tbsp. duck fat

1 lb. Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces

3 small bunches ramps, bulbs & leaves separated, all cut into pieces

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 lb. pinto beans, soaked & rinsed (unless they are relatively fresh, like from Cayuga or Rancho Gordo as opposed to the bulk food aisle)

1 14-oz. can chopped tomatoes

salt

Cut up the sausages into thick slices. Heat up a soup pot over medium heat and cook the slices for a minute or two on each side, until they are browned and mostly cooked through. Remove to a plate.

Put the duck fat in the pot, and when it’s melted, add the potatoes. Stir occasionally for 5 minutes or so, and when they start to brown, add the bulb ends of the ramps and cook another few minutes. Add the chopped garlic, and stir.

When the garlic is fragrant, add the beans, tomatoes, ramp leaves, some salt, and enough water to cover everything by a couple of inches. Bring to a simmer and let cook over very low heat until the beans and potatoes are tender (probably about 45-60 minutes, depending on your beans). Taste for salt. 

The Shortness of the Season

Sugar snaps do not last long in my kitchen. In fact, the one week of the season we get them from Stoneledge, many of them don’t even survive the trip from the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House up 1st Avenue to my apartment. I need sustenance for that 7-block walk, after all–these veggies can get heavy…

But this time, somehow they lasted through the trip home, and even until the next night. (I had no idea what the best practices are for storing sugar snaps, because it’s never been an issue before.) And then it was dinnertime.

My inspiration here was a review in the New Yorker of a pizza place out in Bushwick. It is too hot to turn my oven up to pizza temperatures, but there was a mention of a side dish of slightly charred sugar snaps with pickled ramps and fermented garlic. Reading it on the subway that morning, I said to myself, “Hey, I have sugar snaps and pickled ramps in my fridge.” No fermented garlic, but scapes in abundance, which isn’t really the same thing except that it is something garlicky that is not, in fact, garlic. 

I chopped up the scapes roughly and sauteed them in a little olive oil.

Chopped the peas roughly, too (very roughly), and added them for just long enough to turn that bright green of peas that are barely the other side of raw.

Then I thought some thyme would be good, and lucky for me, it is a very hardy plant that survived my 10-day absence while I was in Europe. (The mint was not so lucky; the basil is still recovering.)

Finally, toss the whole mess with the last of my pickled ramps (recipe courtesy of Amanda Hesser at food52) Ramps usually come earlier in the season than sugar snaps, so it was especially lucky that I hadn’t finished this batch weeks and weeks ago. The leaves had gone into a frittata with asparagus, but the bottoms were destined to be soaked in brine. That recipe calls for ginger, fennel seed, thyme, and dried chile pepper, and it is delicious, and goes wonderfully with peas.

Toss together, check the seasoning, and dig in. My peas weren’t exactly charred, but I wasn’t inclined to cook them for long enough to get that result. There were no complaints about the finished product.

Sugar Snaps with Pickled Ramps

serves 3, maybe 4 if you excel at moderation

1 lb sugar snaps, trimmed

3 garlic scapes

8-10 pickled ramps

3-4 sprigs fresh thyme

olive oil

salt & pepper as needed

Chop the peas and garlic scapes coarsely. No need to make perfectly even pieces, but all roughly bite sized. Pull the thyme from the stems.

Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add olive oil, and the scapes, and a little salt. Cook for a few minutes, until they start to soften a little, and then add the peas and the thyme. Cook briefly, just until the peas turn bright green and are no longer obviously raw.

Remove from the heat. Pull the ramps out of the brine & chop them up in the same manner. Toss everything together, check the seasoning, and serve as is, or let it cool to room temperature.

Labor of Love

Last weekend–or two weekends ago, by now–was the first night of Cook Club. As I mentioned in a previous post, M., L., P., and I have started this club, and I was the first to host.  And I just have to say, I have never prepared a meal quite like that before, and I’m not likely to do it again anytime soon.  Even when it’s my turn to host again, I don’t think 6+ courses for 8 people is going to happen.  After Sunday, I needed about 2 days to recover before my brain came back online.

But the truth is that I loved every moment of it, from the trips to the greenmarket, to waiting while the fishmonger gutted & scaled my red snapper, testing the cheese, wrapping each asparagus spear–it was an utter joy.  A labor of love, as the expression goes.  In part, it was love for my friends, my delightful dinner companions, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit that it was more for the love of food, the kitchen, the cooking process.  Or maybe it’s really the intersection, playing hostess, because that’s where I get to enjoy my food with my dear friends.  And nothing makes me happier than that.

I’ve done an overview of the menu already, but here are the highlights, in living color (not a terribly thorough documentation, I’m afraid, since we all got a little too caught up in the eating to remember to photograph the dessert course…).

Olives with almonds, blood oranges, dried red peppers, and thyme (Tyler Florence’s recipe), ready to go in the oven:

The table set with hors d’oeuvres (the olives, plus Smitten Kitchen’s cheese straws, and grilled asparagus wrapped in prosciutto or truffled cheese with pear mostarda):

 

Cucumber avocado soup with lime:

Ready to serve the soup course:

Spinach salad with pine nuts, golden raisins, and blood orange vinaigrette:

One of the two red snappers I cooked:

Same, after being stuffed with blood oranges, shallots, and herbs, crusted with salt & egg white and baked for a half hour or so:

And this is what was inside when we cracked open the crust:

Me, trying to portion out the tasty filets without butchering the fish too badly:

And here you can see not only both fish (one still crusted) but the potato ramp gratin in the background:

(There are loads more photos of the whole fish process at my flickr feed, courtesy of M., who served as my staff photographer for most of the night.)

And this, sadly, is the only evidence of the rhubarb tart.  The vanilla pink peppercorn ice cream went too quickly to show up on camera at all.

I think, though, that it is likely I will make the ice cream again.  The tart was good, for sure, but there is only so much time left in the rhubarb season, and if I’m going to make something else, I’ll want to try another recipe.

And so, almost 5 hours later, we declared Cook Club a success, and called our first meeting to a close.
And C. was a darling and broke the rules by doing almost all the dishes for me.  We’ve figured out the date for the next round (last weekend of June), and I for one can’t wait.  Playing hostess is the best, but being a guest can be pretty damn awesome, too.

The Season of the Ramp

Here is something I firmly believe:

The shorter the growing season of a vegetable, the better it tastes. Automatically.

Case in point: ramps. Like rhubarb, strawberries, asparagus, and sugar snaps, ramps are only available (in the New York region) for a few brief weeks every year. And so when I see them, I buy them up by the armful and worry later about what I’m going to do with them. I’m not sure I really, genuinely like ramps better than I like any other member of the lily family (which is already a pretty high standard–garlic and shallots and onions and leeks are some of my favorite things) (and incidentally if anyone can find the recipe for Five Lily Soup that was published in Gourmet many years ago, I’ll make you dinner). But they are delicious in any case. And much like how money won is twice as sweet as money earned, vegetables that you won’t be able to find in three weeks taste better than ones you can buy any time of year. Ok, so that’s not going to win points for eloquence, but trust me. I’m right on this one.

And so I found myself wandering through Whole Foods looking for something that might turn a few bunches of ramps into, you know, dinner. What I found was a package of rigatoni, and some dried fava beans. I did the Paupered Chef’s 90 Minute No-Soak method on the favas, which really took more like 120 minutes because favas are like that. Ideally I would have used fresh favas but I don’t think they’re at the greenmarket yet, and also I am not really fond of sitting around shelling beans for hours on end. Anyway.

Then I got to work. Ramps are not generally as dirty as leeks, but they do still require a good soak.

And then you have to trim off the roots from each and every tiny little stalk. And ideally don’t slice your thumb while you’re doing that.

Chop ’em all up and toss ’em in a hot pan with some olive oil and salt. (Do I make anything without olive oil and salt? Not if I can help it. The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck puts olive oil and sea salt on cups of vanilla and it’s awesome.)

Then once the ramps are more or less cooked, add in the favas, just until they’re heated through.

Mix it all up with the pasta (oh, yeah–meanwhile, cook some pasta) and top it with the fresh grated hard cheese of your choice and some extra virgin olive oil.

Rigatoni with Leeks and Favas

1 lb rigatoni
12 oz fava beans (3-4 cups cooked)
2 bunches ramps (roughly 3/4 lb)
olive oil
grated parmesan
salt & pepper

Cook the beans according to your favorite method, then drain & rinse
Cook the pasta in a big pot of very salty water.
Clean the ramps and cut them into 1-2 inch pieces. Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a pan over medium heat and add the ramps with a little salt. Saute for 5 minutes or so, until they are nearly cooked, then add the favas. Stir and keep cooking just until the beans are heated through.
Drain the pasta and toss with the ramps & favas. Grate a lot of parmesan on top and drizzle on some good quality olive oil. Season with salt and pepper as necessary.