No, I’m not better than making homemade ranch dressing with ramp leaves. Dried ramp leaves are one of the best wild ingredients to preserve for your pantry in the off season, and there’s probably not a better poster child for them than in some good ol’ramp leaf ranch. Now, I’ve made ranch-type sauces out of…
Wild Herbs and Spices
Dried Black Trumpet-Ramp Butter
I’ve never met a wild mushroom butter I didn’t like, and the few variations on the simple theme (especially the fresh porcini butter) are some of the most trusty and popular recipes on this website. For the most part, you can substitute different mushrooms in the basic recipe, but this one I developed especially to…
Pickled Angelica
Pickled, tender Angelica stems are a good introduction to working with the plant, and I’m surprised I didn’t try it sooner after all the years I’ve worked with it. Angelica (my local species should be A. atropurpurea) is fascinating, and delicious in the right place, but was frustrating as it doesn’t obey some of the…
Angelica Blossoms (Zavirne)
“These angelicas grow wild near abandoned ruins and damp places. In February the Salentines go feverishly in search of them. This is the moment when the incipient flower-heads are still enclosed in their sheaths right up against the greenish-purple stem. You cut these sheaths with a knife”. –Patience Grey, Honey From a Weed. I love…
Pork Salo, with Ramp Leaf Rub
Salo is a great piece of pork charcuterie that I found out about from one of the members of Hank Shaws great Facebook Group Hunt Gather Cook when I asked for some ideas for interesting pork cuts to take out of 2 pandemic pigs I butchered. I love cultural specialties and the rabbit holes that…
Dried Ramp Leaf Seasoning / Rub
When I can see ramp leaves starting to turn yellow in sunny areas, I know it’s time to grab some leaves to dehydrate for cooking during the year as an all-purpose replacement to garlic and onion powder (both of which I find too strong for my liking anyway). Dried ramp leaves are more gently than…
Classic Spruce Tip Syrup
I have to preface this by apologizing. I’m sorry for not getting this up sooner. I’ve been writing this website for years, and although I have a spruce tip syrup that tastes like spruce, it’s not the most powerful one you can make–it’s a hybrid, a shortcut. That older recipe of mine was back from…
Spruce Tip Panna Cotta
Spruce tip panna cotta is a great alternative to make if you don’t have an ice cream maker for my signature spruce tip ice cream recipe. Panna cotta is great for a lot of reasons: it’s relatively cheap, easy enough for a blind-folded child to make, and refreshing for those warm summer or late spring…
Ramp Leaf-Goat Cheese Dumplings
Where the hell did all this cream cheese come from?! Maybe someone forgot to check something off the list they ordered, maybe someone hit a wrong button, maybe the driver was new and he had no idea that the regular par was cut in half for the week–I’ve seen it all. After the person doing…
Garlic Mustard Ricotta
Garlic mustard ricotta is a piece of nostalgia for me. Saying I don’t love garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is an understatement—I eat the plant occasionally out of spite for its invasiveness. It’s that the recipe reminds me of when I was the chef of Lucias, and so ignorantly, naively hopeful for the future of me,…
Artichokes with Ramp Leaf Butter
Artichokes with melted ramp butter? No, no that won’t suck at all. I’ve been getting a good amount of questions about how to use ramp leaf butter after it’s made. To me, there’s so many options that the possibilities seem endless, but I get that it can help to have some very specific examples. One…
Garlic Mustard Shoots with Ramp Butter
Oh garlic mustard. Let me count the ways I hate thee. Seriously, I hate this plant, it’s nothing less than a scourge on the woodlands and sugarbushes in my area, so when I eat it, it’s usually seasoned with plenty of spite. Sure, I know plenty of people that like to eat it, “eat the…
Dried Ramp Leaf Venison Jerky
I make sure to dehydrate plenty of ramp leaves when I can during the spring so I can use them in whatever I want during the year–if you have access to them, there just isn’t a reason not to. They’re mild, less aggressive than something like garlic powder, but still have enough kick to flavor…