Every spring the arrival of ramps is anticipated by chefs just like the red carpet arrival at the Oscars is by the paparazzi.  It is awaited with baited breath by the chefs whose menus use the delicacy in a variety of creative preparations.  Over two decades ago Rick Bishop of Mountain Sweet Berry Farms introduced the delicacy to eager chefs who frequented his stand at the Union Square Green Market.  Two decades later the impact is immense as his stand now boasts the proof.  Business cards of the restaurants that purchase his ramps and the dishes that highlight the delicacy.  The board reads like a Who’s Who of the city’s top restaurants: one of  Food and Wine’s Best New Chefs 2011 George Mendes prepares skate wing with “spring garniture,” first of the season ramps, morel mushrooms, and “beurre noisette” at Aldea;  Thomas Keller’s Per Se serves ramp-top “pierogi” butter poached oregon morels, new crop potatoes, fava beans and green garlic with madeira cream; Alex Guarnaschelli boasts sardines with homemade ricotta and charred ramps at Butter otherwise you can dine on ramp ravioli at The Modern, or ramp risotto at SD26  to name a few.  Marco Canora, Next Iron Chef Finalist, even celebrated the arrival on April 12^th with a ramp dinner at his restaurant, Hearth.

 

If you’ve never heard of them — let alone eaten them — ramps are mountain vegetables, grown most often in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia and North Carolina. They’re a member of the onion family, like leeks, and like so many favorite foods they come around just once a year. Luckily, that time is now, as the season’s first leeks tend to make their way from the mountains to the markets in March and continue to do so throughout April and into May.

Because you don’t have much time to try this delicious piece of green, a quick primer is probably in order. Here’s what you need to know:

• What ramps look like: In the wild, ramps grow from bulbs, like tulips do, and eventually get up to 12 inches tall and 2 inches wide. Like green onions, they have an onion-like bulb of white — about a half inch around — at the bottom, from which sprouts a bunch of leafy greens. The leaves themselves are flat and feather-shaped, with a rash of slender, maroon-colored stalk connecting the white on the bottom to the green on the top.

• How ramps taste: The easiest way to identify a ramp isn’t to see it. It’s to smell it. Ramps smell like a combination of onion and garlic, only much stronger — so strong that kids were once rumored to eat them so that their teachers would send them home from school in order to escape the lingering odor on the children’s breath. Although raw ramps are pungent, cooked ramps are much milder; they smell more like garlic, but taste more like onions — but earthier.

• How ramps are prepared: You can use ramps as a substitute for any recipe that calls for onions, garlic, leeks or scallions. You can use them cooked or raw, in soups or in casseroles. In their native Appalachia, however, they’re most commonly fried along with potatoes in bacon grease, or scrambled with eggs for breakfast. The possibilities are endless.

There’s a lot more one could learn about ramps, but the clock’s ticking quickly away on all things spring. Besides, your palate’s the best teacher there is. So quit clicking and start cooking, before the summer sun melts the ramps away for another year!