A Food and Drinks Post With Perhaps Too Many Fantasy-Celebrity-Boyfriend References

The cute gal I get my beef from* at the farmers market offered me some free ramps last weekend because she said the tops didn't look nice enough for her to sell. They looked fine to me. Especially at that price. Why, I would have paid twice that! I've never tried ramps, but I helped pick them once when I worked at Blooming Hill Organic Farm. I was sure I was going to get all rashed up from the poison ivy that was all around in the woods, but I didn't. So maybe I'm impervious to it. Just like I'm impervious to Chris's pleas to take him back. Chris, Chris, Chris. If I've told you once, I've told you a million times: not until you buy me that beachfront house in Malibu. Then you can have your people call my people. And by "my people," I mean my manager, Emme; my accountant, Rudy; and my new main squeeze, 1980s-era Alec Baldwin, or as I like to call him, 80AB. Because nothing says "you're my man" quite like an alphanumeric abbreviation.

I wasn't sure at first what to make with the ramps. Stash at The Spamwise Chronicles offers several recipes you can use them in. (He also amusingly refers to their aroma as "bear piss mixed with onions.")

I wanted to use some meat I'd gotten from the beef gal in the recipe. I had bought a tenderloin last weekend when I got the ramps, but I plan to eat that relatively unadorned. I had two roughly 1-pound packages of ground beef in the freezer, and it'd been a while since I'd made meat loaf, one of my favorite comfort foods, so I decided to make one with a very high-brow ingredient. (Food & Wine magazine recently ran a feature for which test kitchen geniuses Melissa Rubel and Grace Parisi made both a high-brow and a low-brow dish from the same main ingredient. Which isn't quite the same thing as I did, but it was a fun piece, so I figured I'd link to it.)

Perhaps flashing back to the Tunnel of Fudge box cakes Mom used to make when we were kids, I decided to sauté the ramps in olive oil with some hydroponically grown red and orange bell peppers I'd also gotten from the farmers market and put the mixture in the middle of the loaf. A tunnel of veggies. To season the beef, I used only salt (the ninth quote), pepper, and cardamom, hamburger's sweetly spicy best friend.

I was pleased with how it turned out. The ramps gave the meat loaf a nice kick, and even though they were hidden inside the loaf, their flavor wasn't lost. Here's a photo of some leftover meat loaf I heated up in a cast-iron skillet drizzled with a little water and served alongside some chopped bell pepper and a fried potato cake made of leftover mashed potatoes.

***

The Green Pirate Community Juice truck was back on Saturday, across Prospect Park West from the farmers market. I was going to get The Assault, which is made of beets, celery and a lot of ginger, but I went with my old favorite, Hot Pink Limeade, because the juicemakers had crossed celery off their chalkboard list of available ingredients and I wanted to get an Assault as it was meant to be made. I offered to buy Bob the drink of his choice, but he declined, citing the prevalence of fruits and/or vegetables. He also said my limeade was gross. To which I say, "Grossly delicious!"

***

Yesterday I made some Cream of Asparagus Soup, which I would have sworn I'd blogged about before, but a quick search of my recently added Hawleyblog search widget** reveals that I have not. Maybe I'm confusing myself with this Cream of Broccoli Soup post.

My asparagus soup would scream "Spring!" if it could talk. I used two big bunches (about 100 spears) of asparagus from Kernan Farms and two bunches of spring garlic, which look more like leeks and offer only the tiniest hint of clove formation within their white wrappings. I sautéed the chopped garlic in a couple tablespoons of butter sprinkled with a little salt and then added my trimmed asparagus, which I'd broken into thirds or quarters, and 5 cups of water plus some more salt. Then I added about 3 tablespoons of lemon thyme, because I thought that would add a nice little citrus note to the proceedings. Once the asparagus was thoroughly cooked, I moved the pot to a cool burner and pureed the soup with my immersion blender. Then I stirred in a cup of half and half. I liked the soup, but if I had it to do over again, I'd use less thyme, which overpowered all of the other flavors, and more salt.

***

Today I made Strawberry-Rhubarb Fool, which I referenced here in this early farmers market–related post but hadn't written about otherwise. It's a parfait dessert made with layers of whipped cream and cooked-and-chilled fruit. I think I got the recipe from Cooks Illustrated. I got my strawberries from Kernan Farms and my rhubarb from the beef farmstand people. The usual gal wasn't there, so I couldn't tell her that I'd enjoyed the ramps.

You cook the two kinds of fruit in a boiling mixture of orange juice and sugar to which you've added a pinch of salt.*** You cook it until the rhubarb is soft but hopefully not mushy. After it's completely cooled, you layer the fruit and whipped cream into individual glasses. I once made a big ol' mess of a fool served in a large glass bowl when we had some of Steve's relatives over to the farm, and it was a big hit. This time, I put it in a see-through plastic container. Next time, I should double the recipe for the fruit and make 50 percent more whipped cream. My top layer of fruit was pretty thin.

***

I had lunch at Shake Shack for the first time ever on Wednesday. My 

girl Desirée met me in Madison Square Park. I got a burger with lettuce, tomato, and onion and French fries. And an Arnold Palmer, half lemonade and half iced tea, to drink. I passed on a shake because I didn't want to make a total pig of myself. And I figure that some day during the slow part of our next production cycle, I'll go down to Madison Square Park again and get just a shake for lunch. Because, you know, that's healthy. :-)

The burger was outstanding, and the fries, made from Yukon gold potatoes, were delicious, too. The meat tasted fresh, and the tomato tasted like a tomato instead of a piece of damp, pink polystyrene. I'm getting incredibly hungry now just thinking about that meal. Gah!

***

The evening before I left for Miami Beach last month, Jen treated me to a Wine 101 class at Red White & Bubbly. I really enjoyed it and learned a great deal from the teacher, RW&B co-owner Darrin Siegfried. Such as how to remove a broken cork from a bottle (aim the corkscrew into the cork at an angle and twist until the corkscrew grips and then aligns itself vertically; the busted cork should be easily pullable at that point) and the proper way to chew and breathe over the wine I'm tasting.

Siegfried talked about the history of wine: The earliest known alcoholic beverage was made 6,000 years ago in China. When it was chemically analyzed, it was found to contain hawthorne, a relative of the apple, so it was like cider; honey, so it was like mead; rice, so it was like sake; and grapes, so it was like wine.

He also pointed out the absurdity of the Department of Homeland Security's oversight of wine production through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; all other countries logically regulate winemaking through agriculture departments. Oh, and then Paul showed up, bringing this FADPWPTMFCBR to its logical, hunktastic end.

*No, that's not a euphemism. She's a chickie! She's cheesecake, not beefcake! But she is a cutie. :-) And so is the dude who sometimes accompanies her to the market. I wouldn't mind getting my beef from him, if you know what I mean. And if you don't, I'll draw you a picture. Or '80s Alec Baldwin and I will act it out for you. ;-)

**How many times have I mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal on the blog? I count nine unique ones. Excluding the references to Jake Shears and the Jake G. references from my obsession-enabling commenters.

***Because it's not my recipe, I won't post the complete instructions with measurements here. But I could e-mail it to you if you want it.

Comments

[Stash]

The thing with ramps is that grilled or roasted, the bulbs mellow just like garlic does when exposed to high heat cooking. As for the leaves, I like to fold them in 1-2 minutes before service so that their flavor isn't lost.

[Mark H]

Ramps.........that is a NEW vegetable to me. I will have to search the farmer's market here.... YOU have been busy.... NOW...thanks for the ground beef spice tip. I LOVE Cardamom in desserts and the pods in TEA, but Cardamom in BEEF? BILL - I'll have to report back. We'll try it for sure, and thanks for the tip.