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Heirloom Tomato Salad with Pickled Chanterelles and Ramp Leaf Oil

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Heirloom tomato salad with ramp oil and pickled chanterellesI never thought something as simple as making a salad could remind me of why I cook in the first place.

I cook for a living, but before I made money doing it, I just lived to cook. Making things in the kitchen was my creative outlet, and made people around me happy.

Ever since I was a teenager, one of my favorite activities has been being around friends or loved ones and digging through their fridges to see what needs to get cooked for dinner. I make food without any recipes and pretty much slap it together in an hour or so. For me it’s a way of living in the moment, and enjoying not having to worry about if something isn’t perfect for paying guests at the restaurant. Unfortunately I don’t get to cook like that often, but I do occasionally.

Some of the best food you’ll ever eat is made “a la minute” like that, so I’ve been trying to occasionally set aside the culinary literature and menu development, and remember to just cook once and a while. Chef Eric Ripert has an entire book focused on this type of cooking, appropriately called “A Return To Cooking”– it’s a favorite in my collection.

Heirloom tomato salad with ramp oil and pickled chanterelles

The last time I just stopped everything and just made something was when an old friend of mine came into the restaurant for her birthday. The friend happened to be my high-school girlfriend. Like most teenage relationships, it ended pretty rough, but we’ve managed to keep in touch and occasionally grab a drink or send each other old pictures we come across.

I wanted to make her something not on the menu, so I looked around for things I thought were special, and then I remembered a dinner I made her that she loved-a risotto with fresh tomatoes. We had a bunch of nice heirlooms that had just come into the restaurant, so I made a salad with them.

I picked out a few tomatoes with interesting shapes, some ramp oil, pickled chanterelles, greens and basil. There were no complicated sauces, reductions or techniques, just a knife and a pinch of salt and pepper. It felt really good to just live in the moment and make something again.

So, if you’re a chef, line cook, prep cook, caterer, home cook, or don’t identify with any of those titles at all, remember to cook without recipes once in a while, improvisation is good for the soul.

Heirloom tomato salad with ramp oil and pickled chanterelles

Heirloom tomato salad with ramp oil and pickled chanterelles
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Heirloom Tomato Salad with Pickled Chanterelles and Ramp Oil

Ingredients

  • Ramp oil
  • Heirloom tomatoes as many different colors and shapes as possible
  • Pickled chanterelles
  • Small salad greens I used a mix of orach, French cress, and burgundy amaranth
  • Kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper
  • Dash of champagne vinegar
  • Shaved cheese like Grana Padano
  • Fresh basil sliced thinly-you could use whole, leaves too if they're very small

Instructions

  • Look at each tomato individually and try to cut some of them in different ways to show off their uniqueness, you could dice some, slice some thinly, quarter them, etc.
  • Put a few slices of tomato on each plate, then season lightly with salt and pepper. Garnish with some of the basil and the pickled chanterelles, then dress the greens with a bit of the ramp oil, salt, pepper and vinegar and place haphazardly around the tomatoes. Shave a few thin slices of cheese over each salad and serve immediately.

Notes

This is all about the heirloom tomatoes, using out of season tomatoes won't work for this.

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

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Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

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They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
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Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

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2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

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They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

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Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

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Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

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