Ramp Up Your Salads

Ramp up your salad.

This culinary wild leek is making good dishes taste better. It’s what all the top chefs are twittering about.

Because of its short supply and high demand, this flavourful ingredient has sky rocketed in price. It’s hard to forage here in BC because the original strains are more common on the east coast. I have found it here from the west coast but very limited supply.

I will check out some sources as I travel to the northern regions of Vancouver island. I just talked to friend grower who is going through the stages of a long wet winter. Start up is ongoing.

Ramp or it’s true name, “Allium Tricoccum ” is popular in the cuisines of the rural uplands of its native region. It is regarded as an early spring vegetable with a strong garlic-like odor and a pronounced onion flavor. Ramps also have a growing popularity in restaurants throughout North America.

The plant’s flavor, a combination of onions and strong garlic, is adaptable to numerous cooking styles. In central Appalachia where ramps are most commonly fried with potatoes in bacon fat or scrambled with eggs and served with bacon, pinto beans and cornbread. Ramps can also be pickled or used in soups and other foods in place of onions and garlic.

Their high vitamin content and blood-cleansing properties meant that the ramps were highly prized by the aboriginals for their nutritional value as well. The Indians decocted the root to induce vomiting, while others consumed the ramp to treat colds and made a juice from the plant to treat earache . A general tonic of the plant was used by the Iroquois Indians to treat intestinal parasites. Looking for ward to making a few recipes using ramp! In a blender adding a few handfuls of washed wild leeks with some cashews, garlic, salt pepper, olive oil, red wine or tarragon vinegar to make a very tasty pesto dressing for a salad or a pasta sauce. Let’s Eat!