"ramps" news and stories

It's time for food-fair aficionados to loosen their belts or, better yet, don elastic-waist pants. From plentiful strawberries to mudbug stranglers, local festivals are beginning to bloom -- beauty pageants included. As you'll see, most of the featured events are in the South. With the spring harvest, the South gives good reason for belly-stuffing.

West Tennessee Strawberry Festival, May 2-8, Humboldt, Tenn.: Kick off May in the South by munching on strawberries at tractor and horse shows, recipe competitions, two parades as well as races at which you can burn off those sweet calories. There will be fireworks following the official opening ceremonies on May 3. No word on whether there will be any strawberry-shaped pyrotechnics.

Dermott Crawfish Festival, May 14-15, Dermott, Ark.: In its 27th year, this festival pays homage to the delectable freshwater crustacean in its myriad presentations, including the popular boil. If you plan on attending, please remember the proper method of eating crawfish -- "suck the head, pinch the tail" -- and you'll get the most out of the rides, vendors and live entertainment.

American Craft Beer Week, May 17-23, Nationwide: What's a month without a beer festival? This isn't the only beer bash in May, but it is the largest. From sea to shining sea, get your suds on when craft breweries, beer bars and homebrewers raise their collective pints in your honor.

While New York City chefs have taken so many fancy-pants liberties with ramps this season that some critics claim the wild onion's become synonymous with food snobbery, eaters in ramp country have remained remarkably devoted to traditional preparations.

"Locally here, they like it with potatoes," explains Matthew Gottschall, owner of Bob's Hotdogs in Norton, W.Va., just west of Monongahela National Forest.

Gottschall's spent much of the last decade trying to shake his neighbors out of their ramp-and-fried potato rut, feathering his menu with ramp bread, ramp breakfast biscuits and ramp cheeseburgers during the five early spring weeks when mountain ramps are in bloom.

"Here at Bob's, we put them on everything," Gottschall says.

Bob's is locally famous for experimenting freely with ingredients: The stand offers 250 varieties of hot dogs, all of which Gottschall swears are ordered regularly. A few of his favorites include the Coal Miner, topped with locally-grown peppers, and the Elvis, smeared with peanut butter and garnished with fried bananas.

Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:

• Eat those tax troubles away -- there's lots of free or discounted food today!
• Reward your procrastination with a Singapore Sling.
• Learn the way of tea from a Jedi Master.
• An Argentine condiment to rule them all.
• The aforementioned topping would ratchet up this easy steak and asparagus recipe.
• A cooking primer for ramps -- the new bacon.
• Everyone likes a two-timing tart -- with vegetables, that is.

And now, as the Monty Python group would say, for something completely different . . . and, in truth, something wild, we offer up a Wednesday side of ramps. A little bit garlic, a little bit leek, ramps are wild members of the Allium family. If you're lucky enough to find them growing rampantly (sorry!) in a field or being offered at the farmers market, grab them and sauté them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and eat them just like that. Or sauté the bulbs with garlic and sherry and wilt the leaves with lemon and shallots, as blogger garrettkern did, above, and serve them with griddle corn cakes and a swirl of sour cream.

Ramps are delicious in a creamy soup that also includes sweet onions (keeping it in the family). But I think my favorite ramps dish is one from Manhattan restaurant Babbo, which one of its former chefs, Yoshi Yamada, shared with Gourmet readers a couple of years ago. The recipe uses both bulb and leaf, mixes in breadcrumbs, and is a beautiful celebration of spring.

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