Ramp Soup

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As indicated in our last post, Ramps (Wild Garlic or Bear Leek) are a sure sign of Spring. They are now ready to be picked and will only be around for a few short weeks. So here at the farm, we had to incorporate them into our Tea Room menu. The result is a Cream of Wild Garlic soup served with fresh herb croutons.

Cream of Wild Garlic...you can't get much more "farm to table" or "forest to table" than this

The soup recipe was inspired by a cream of Potato and Leek recipe. The croutons are home made with herbs now readily available at the farm: Thyme, Savoury, Sage and Chervil. For those who have never tried Ramps before, this is a great opportunity to try a rather rare culinary delight.

Ramps grow primarily in the Appalachian regions of North America; the reason Ramps are not as broadly consumed as they might be in Canada is that they are being picked to extinction.  In fact, they are treated as a "protected species" in Quebec. As such, in this area, should you ever find them at a farmers' market, it is extremely important to know your source and trust that these plants have been sustainably harvested. Here at the farm we pick 3% of our patch (basically one out of every 30 plants).

Ramps ready for picking

When picking Ramps, it is a matter of simply digging for the bulbs. It is important to know however that Ramps are really two vegetables in one: the bulb (akin to an onion) and the leaves (a mildly sweet and garlicky green). Technically, you could just pick the greens and the plant should survive. However, most of us do enjoy the bub as well.

Once picked, the Ramp is easy to process. We wash these to get the dirt off of the roots. We then separate the bulb from the leaves. Each can be used differently.

Washing our first pick of Ramps

The plant is rather beautiful. The leaves are broad and bright green, almost resembling a Lily of the Valley (note: the latter is poisonous). They are easy to identify because of their distinctive garlic smell and their purplish stems extending to the plant bulb.

The Ramp: a rather beautiful plant.

The bulbs can be used very much like a Spring Onion. However, our use is in pickling. We've now heard of Ramp Martinis and in the American parts of the Appalachians we've heard of drink mixes incorporating pickled ramp juice.

Most Chefs love to get their hands Ramps. In fact, Chef David Chang of Momofuku fame has published his own pickled Ramp recipe.

In our case, we use our own pickling method based on what we've learned over the past couple of years. First, we cut the bulbs off our plants leaving as much of the purplish stem as possible (they add a certain beauty to the pickle).

Ramp bulbs ready for pickling

Our pickling is based on a sweet brine, using cider vinegar. There are two points to make a note of when pickling these: 1. use Kosher salt (Kosher salt is not iodized so it will not cloud your pickling juice) and, 2. we very briefly blanch our Ramps (this prevents the pickling solution from turning bluish). For spicing, we tend to use warm flavours like Allspice.

The result is a real treat. We are now serving them with our Ploughman's Platter at the Tea Room (while they last) and we are making some available at our Tea Room Market.

Pickled Ramps: canned and ready for sale at the Market

The greens should definitely not be overlooked. We process them by quickly blanching them and then cover them with ice to maintain their bright green colour. They are then frozen for future use.

The greens can be used in many ways: in salads or to make a pesto. However, our favourite application is soups, hence the Cream of Wild Garlic created for the Tea Room.

It is at this time of year that we are also finishing our Birch syrup. It is now completed and packed ready for sale. Like the Maple Syrup, this year's batch is intense in flavour. We must admit however that our overall production of Birch syrup is always a disappointment. We start with so much more sap and generate so few bottles of syrup when compared to Maple.

The Birch syrup is now ready.

Completing our batch of Birch syrup is very important to us since the Tea Room menu also includes what has become a favourite: a warm mushroom salad. The key element to this salad is a mixture of grilled mushrooms finished in a Balsamic/Birch Syrup reduction.

We promised we would also report on the Black Walnut syrup. In this case, it is a total disappointment. We have so little sap from our trees (less than last year's experiment), we will not be able to process enough syrup to have on our market shelves :( We are starting to think that sap flow from certain trees is cyclical (perhaps in the same way these nut trees have peak cycles of production every three years...or perhaps it's based on weather conditions).

We'll end this post with the next indicator of Spring: Asparagus. Last year, we planted some seeds we had collected from a wild Asparagus. This year, the recognizable plants are already showing. Still too small for picking, we're looking forward to a full harvest in the next 2 years.

Another sign of Spring: young Asparagus.