Ramp City

Bucking food trends by succumbing to food trends.

If these ideas are intriguing to you, maybe you wish to subscribe to my newsletter.

Other writing

The Best Knife Set After Years of Testing Knives at Bon Appétit
A Giant in Wisconsin Brewing at Edible Madison
You just bought a bundle of ramps at the farmers’ market: now what? at Tone Madison

Small Bites is dead, long live Small Bites

Two years ago, I had a bone to pick. With what—I'm not so sure. I was lucky that Tone Madison liked my pitch for a monthly food column, and Small Bites was born. Every month, I'd get somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words to write about whatever was on my mind. I thought it would be easy; I was wrong. I love cooking, I love going out to dinner, but more than anything, I love eating. Remembering to think about cooking or going out was a distraction—that was time I could have spent eating. When ramps hit the farmer's market early, I had a conundrum.

I wanted to write about ramps, but I also wanted people to shut up about ramps.

Ramps are notoriously difficult to grow, meaning that they're a prime target for foraging. They're also early spring risers, existing as a symbol of the changing season as much as someone's plate. That means they're a great search term to grab easy traffic, but if you look up ramp recipes, so many of them try to hide the ramps away as part of a condiment. Ramp butter, ramp pesto—these are the places where bold flavors go to die. Tamped down by fat and lightly brushed on some crostini, the ramps themselves offer a hot breath of allium gently landing on your tongue.

I wanted ramps to stand out and be the star of the show, so I developed a basic ramp pizza recipe. You can find that above. And it's good! I stand by it. But I also don't make as much pizza anymore because I'm lazy. And if I'm being honest, ramps are harsh. Imagine all the punch of raw garlic with a flavor profile closer to green onions. Then imagine munching on just that as the base of your meal. Brutal.

I can admit it, I was wrong to be so dismissive of food trends. There's value in riding the wave. Ramps are strong and sometimes work better as a complementary flavor.

So this year, I wanted to try something new. Inspired by palak paneer, I made a green cream sauce for pasta, which I served with asparagus and then topped with butter-fried morels. Tone Madison is no more—an outlet with that much editorial freedom was priceless, and also, therefore, unmonetizable in a sustainale way. Tone sought to be a true reflective voice of the community, giving writers a chance to tell readers what they should know and should be thinking about rather than reader search queries telling writers what they should write about. There are many incredible new worker owned co-op online publications kicking off these days, and I feel like Tone was just too early in its model. Maybe something new will spring up from its ashes, but for now, at least the archives are still present.

Tone Madison is dead, long live Tone Madison.

And now, here's a recipe.

Spinach and Ramp Pasta with Asparagus

I'm not a big fan of pesto served hot. The basil oxidizes into a sickly pale green, the pine nuts lose their texture, and you mostly taste garlic at the end of the day day. I love it instead in cold pasta salads or smeared on grilled bread as a condiment. When I want a green sauce for my pasta, I look to palak paneer. The base of palak paneer is wilted and blended spinach, which serves as a great vehicle for a variety of spices and aromatics. Similarly, the spinach here softens the ramps' sharpness and stretches their flavor out across a broader sauce.

The technique is simple: wilt your ramp greens and spinach before blending, then cook the mixture in olive oil until it melts into itself, season, add cheese, and add cream. The result is a verdant sauce that clings to pasta like a pesto while still retaining its bright green flavors. The ramps come through strong without being overpowering, and the cheese and cream round out the dish with some richness, sweetness, and saltiness. The asparagus adds more spring to the plate with slightly earthy, nutty flavors, and cutting it to match your pasta's size and shape makes it easy to eat.

This isn't a precise recipe, so I hope you can still follow. When I cooked it last, I used two bunches of ramps, nearly a whole large clamshell of spinach, a large bundle of asparagus, and just a splash of cream. Chances are you'll need more spinach than you think and less cream.

Ingredients

Long-shaped tube pasta, like penne or casarecce
Asparagus
Spinach
Ramps
Pecorino Romano
Garlic
Heavy cream

Instructions

Boil water for pasta, and cook according to package cook times so it's done around the same time as your sauce is done. More on that later.
Separate the leafy green part of your ramps from the white bulbs. Place the white bulbs into a blender or food processor.
Put the ramp greens in a pan with more spinach than you think you need. Add enough water to cover the bottom of the pan, turn on the burner until the water starts to simmer, and add a lid. Let the green steam until the spinach has fully wilted.
Put the wilted greens into the food processor or blender, and start blending with the white parts of the ramps. If needed, add some of the cooking water to thin it out so everything blends into a green paste.
Cut asparagus spears into lengths about equal to your pasta shape. Wipe the pan out, then heat a hefty glug of olive oil and add some smashed garlic cloves. After the garlic starts to brown, add the asparagus and cook for just a few mintues. Sprinkle some salt over the asparagus to season it.
Remove the asparagus and garlic and set aside. You can discard the garlic here if you'd like. Add the green mixture to the hot pan and cook until the mixture breaks down into a silky sauce and most of the residual water has evaporated. Season with salt and pepper.
Shave some pecorino romano into the green mixture, and splash some pasta water over the top to help it melt into the sauce. Once it's fully melted, add a small amount of cream until the sauce lightens in color but isn't too creamy.
Add the asparagus back in, then toss the cooked pasta into the sauce. Add pasta water as needed to achieve the desired consistency.
Serve with extra shaved pecorino romano over the top, and add other accouterments if you'd like (like butter-fried morel mushrooms).

Read

Ravenous

Former Eater staffers started a new worker-owned co-op newsletter about food, and it's great. Expect funny short blogs, thoughtful longer pieces, and an examination of food and food culture with a whipsmart perspective that embraces a broader specturm than the average publication. Subscribe today!

Watch

The Boys on Amazon Prime

I used to watch The Boys because it was fun and kinda bawdy. But now I think I just watch it because it's a... good show? Characters have stakes and emotional arcs, stories are sufficiently soapy, the way a superhero story should be, and their commitment to character deaths makes each episode feel weightier than it would otherwise. Anyone could die at any time, which adds just enough drama to hold your attention.

Listen

"Do It Again," by Steely Dan

Steely Dan got weirder and angrier as they grew older, but it takes an appreciation of their later catalog to better understand their debut album. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker skewered New York hipster culture through jazzier versions of AM Gold in a biting and self-aware way that not many popular acts could get away with. "Do It Again" is somehow the thing and a parody of the thing at the same time.

Consume