Ramps

The ground is finally breaking. The green stuff is forcing its way through the soil and our taste buds are eagerly awaiting the full-grown splendor.

It will be a short few weeks until we can enjoy rhubarb and asparagus, but a couple of items are ready to captivate our palates as we speak. For starters, if you've spent any time in the woods lately, you may have noticed the smell of wild onion in the air.

Those would be ramps you're sniffing. Otherwise known as wild leeks or wild onions, they are a member of the allium or lily family. They're native to eastern Canada and the U.S., have long green leaves and white bulbs and they taste fresh and mild -- but with a little zing. They're the perfect ingredient with which to kick off the coming months of abundance.

Misha Winterfeld, an 18-year-old student at Rockway Mennonite Collegiate, goes foraging for ramps annually at this time of year. He and a buddy scour the bush of his friend's property near Tavistock; on a good day, they can pick anywhere from 75 to 100 pounds of wild onions.

"They're pretty easy to spot," says Winterfeld. "They're distinctive so they're hard to miss when you find a patch of them. We actually eat them plain when we pick them because they're very sweet. The texture is really crunchy and they're very nice to eat raw when you pick them fresh."

Last year Winterfeld sold some of his ramps to Vincenzo's in Kitchener (which I unwittingly came across when I stopped in one night -- I excitedly bought a couple of bunches to take home and experiment with). He hopes to do the same this year, and also plans to get in touch with some other local foodie shops and restaurants to see if they're interested.

"They go to the end of May, just about," Winterfeld says of the growing season. "Then they start wilting away. i think that they grow wild like that is what kind of makes them a delicacy."

Jackie McMillan, a Kitchener forager, agrees, but warns that strapping on your hiking boots and trapsing through the trails is not necessarily the way to go about getting your hands on fresh ramps.

First there are the environmental concerns -- you'd be robbing a woodlot of its native plants. Then there's that mistaken identity thing.

"They look a bit like lily," McMillan says of ramps, "so that's something to be careful of. There are some lilies that have an oniony flavour but lily isn't particularly good for you. So ramps are not unmistakable."

So unless you live on a big property with access to the woods (and possess some botanical savvy), you might be better to hit up the farmers' markets and hope that someone has done the foraging for you. Chances are good you'll have success.

And if you do, let the creativity -- and the salivation -- begin. Really, any place you'd use scallions or leeks is a suitable place to use ramps. Chopped up in scrambled eggs or buttermilk biscuits, sauteed with pasta or in risotto. Grilled simply and served up with a steak. Like a green onion, you can use the whole shebang, leaves included.

McMillan says wild leeks make a great partner to spring's bitter greens, like dandelion or mustard. "Bitter gets a lot more yummy when you combine it with savoury," she says, adding that she likes to steam the two together.

Pesto is another great option. One recipe I found in Gourmet recommends blanching half a pound of ramps in boiling water for about five seconds, then popping them in the food processor with a quarter cup of olive oil and the zest of a lemon (give or take). Cook up the pasta of your choice, then add about a half-cup of that nice, starchy pasta water to the food processor, toss your sauce with the noodles and finish with some grated parmesan and salt and pepper to taste.

Here's a more official recipe for Wild Leek Pesto. This one comes from Lucy Waverman via an old spring copy of Food & Drink magazine. She served the pesto with with linguini, oven-roasted tomatoes and goat cheese but you could use it anywhere your little heart -- or palate -- desires.

Wild Leek Pesto

2 tbsp hazlenuts

1 cup chopped wild leeks (ramps)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Place hazelnuts in food processor and grind until roughly chopped. Add leeks and olive oil and process until still slightly chunky. Stir in parmesan cheese.

Greenhouse Tomatoes

In a matter of a couple of weeks, the season of freshness -- thank goodness -- will be upon us. Though we go through the same cycle year after year, that first taste of locally grown goodness never ceases to thrill. The wait, like the cold weather itself, always seems endless.

But up at Stuart Horst's farm north of Elmira, just a stone's throw from Floradale, harvest started about six weeks ago. The beefsteak and grape tomatoes he planted in his greenhouse back in late December began to ripen in early March and from there in, Horst, his family, and staff have been busily packaging up and selling their wares to those of us eager for a taste of homegrown freshness.

Shopping at Vincenzo's, one of the region's farmers' markets or at Elmira Foodland, you may have seen the clear, plastic pint-sized containers of grape tomatoes sold under the Elmira's Own label -- these come from Horst's Floralane Produce. He sells about 10 per cent of his grape tomatoes and 25 per cent of his beefsteaks at the farm gate; the rest can be found at the locations above. It's possible you might be eating them when dining out, too -- at Crossroads Restaurant in Elmira or Charbries in Uptown Waterloo, for starters.

What makes Horst's grape tomatoes tastier than those little plastic containers shipped up from Mexico?

"We leave them on the vine until they're riper," Horst, an Old Order Mennonite, explains. "That helps to create a flavour that people like. We don't have to ship them far, so we can let them ripen longer."

Mexican tomatoes are picked before they're ripe, partly because they have so much further to travel before they're sold, and partly so they can be churned out faster because, the sooner they're picked, the sooner the plant can produce more fruit. "You can get more poundage if you grow that way," Horst says.

Ah, but you don't get that sweet flavour.

In the greenhouse industry, output is measured by kilograms per square metre. Last year, Floralane grew 50 kilograms per square metre of beefsteak tomatoes and 20 kilograms per square metre of grape tomatoes. They produced 29,000 pints of grape tomatoes and hope to do the same in 2009.

Horst grows his tomatoes without chemicals. "I'm very excited about our biological program," he says. "I was just in putting more bugs into the greenhouse, wasps and so on to eat up the crop damaging pests. It seems to work well."

New this year are green beans from the greenhouses, too, although, laughs Horst, "I dare not mention them. People are fighting for them already and we don't have near enough. I've got orders on the board filled before they've even grown."

Business at Floralane is ever-expanding. On top of the half-acre tomato greenhouse, there are smaller ones sheltering flowers for the bedding plants and baskets they sell in spring and summer, chickens bearing eggs, and, in warm weather, a shop that sells produce and baked goods (they also plan to sell their own brand of homemade salsa this summer, too).

The family also runs a community supported agriculture (CSA) program that has customers pay upfront in spring for a share of the farm's weekly vegetables right through until the growing season ends.

Growing business means Horst has added to his staff this year; the family suffered a tragedy last December when Horst's business partner, Melvin Martin, was killed while riding his bicycle. "It was a great loss to us here," he says, adding that Martin's widow "still enjoys working in the greenhouse with her four little daughters."

Elmira's Own Tomatoes will be grown and sold right through summer until early December. At that point, they'll replant, let the greenhouse work its magic until March, and the harvest will start all over again.
-30-

Hot Cross Buns

I've never before given any thought to hot cross buns. They've always reminded me a bit of Christmas fruit cake with their raisins, spices and bits of fruit. Meh.

This year, I'm reconsidering for several reasons. First, there is what seems to be the inevitable but gradual giving of second thought to all the edibles you once thought gross when young and foolish (boozy desserts and mincemeat also fall into this category).

Second, there has been the temptation by way of intriguing recipes accompanied by glossy photos -- this month's LCBO mag, Food & Drink, has four takes on the hot cross bun in their current spring issue, including chocolate cranberry and brown butter almond. Blasphemous to the the traditionalists, to be sure, but that's what I'll be prepping to share with the family for Easter Sunday breaky. (I'll be bucking tradition there, too -- HCBs are traditionally served on Good Friday. Ah, well).

These little treats have got quite the fascinating history, too, if you believe all the folklore. Some say they actually originate in the pagan tradition, with the four sections created by the cross referring to the phases of the moon. Others attribute their origins to the Greeks. At some point, the Christians reportedly claimed them as their own, calling the cross a cross, and Elizabeth I is rumoured to have banned them from Protestant England, feeling they were too remniscent of the Catholicism she aimed to quash.

Bakeries around the region are also getting in on the hot cross bun action, as they often do at this time of year. At least three that I frequent -- Golden Hearth and Nougat in Kitchener and Grain Harvest Breadhouse (with locations in both Kitchener and Waterloo) -- will be selling their own versions of the bun this weekend.

Grain Harvest started making hot cross buns the same year their original Waterloo bakery opened in the late 1980s. (Now with three locations and a busy wholesale business that ships baked goods from Windsor to Ottawa, they'll celebrate their 20th anniversary this September).

"They always contain raisins," says Roland Berchtold, one of Grain Harvest's founders, says of his HCBs.

"Some have cut fruit, too. There are many varieties. We put lemon and orange peel in, and either raisins or sultanas. But what really makes them is the cinnamon and clove. That's what binds it all together. And, of course, there's freshness. We're baking every night fresh and that's the absolute key."

Grain Harvest actually starts selling hot cross buns in mid-February and continues to sell them beyond Easter. "As long as people will buy them," says Berchtold. "Usually when the weather starts to get warm, people look to other things."

Should you have a little time on your hands this weekend, or be looking for a last minute traditional treat for your beloveds, here is Berchtold's recipe for hot cross buns -- slightly tweaked.

"My usual recipe starts with something like 45 pounds of flour," he laughs. " So this recipe is very close to what we do but it's in cups and so on."

Grain Harvest's Traditional Hot Cross Buns

Dough

1/4 cup water, room temperature

1/2 cup warm milk

1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg

3-1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup raw sugar

1-1/2 tsp dry active yeast

1 tbsp cinnamon

pinch nutmeg

pinch ground cloves

1/2 tbsp salt

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup chopped mixed candied fruit

Icing

1/2 cup confectioners sugar

2 tbsp water

Mix all dough ingredients except raisins and fruit for five minutes or until smooth dough has formed. Add raisins and fruit. Cover dough and let rest for 15 min.

Cut dough into pieces of desired size (12 to 15 pieces total), shape into balls and place on greased baking sheet. Let rise to double the size.

Bake at 370 for 15 to 17 min. Let cool.

Use icing to decorate, making crosses using a piping bag or a baggie with the corner tip cut off.

Maple Syrup

Many of you may not know that writing is not my full-time gig. During the bulk of my workweek I am quite busy solving the problems and celebrating the successes of kids -- I am, quite fortunately, an elementary school teacher at a rural school near Elmira.

The extra hours of daylight and the rising mercury give all of us an extra spring in our step at this time of the year. Most of us would call that spring fever, but, at my school, it would be better described as maple syrup fever.

For those city slickers who attend the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival, which takes place today, maple syrup fever lasts but a day. But the excitement north of Waterloo dates back to early March, when those daytime temperatures first break the zero mark.

The first student to tell me their family has begun tapping trees signals the beginning of the end of winter. It's a welcome reminder that soon, we'll all be putting away our woolens and trading our winter boots for rubber ones -- the frigid temperatures and whipping wind (and I swear it's always five degrees colder up there than it is in Kitchener) will finally cease. The only surer sign of warmth among our students is the swapping of felt and velveteen caps for straw hats and bonnets.

The straw hats and bonnets bit might tip you off that, indeed, a high percentage of the kids at my school are of Mennonite background, many of them David Martin Mennonite. Though they ride the yellow bus to and from school, their usual method of transportation is the horse and buggy. Many of their families tap their trees in spring and operate sugar shacks.

Post-March Break, the suntans of teachers and kids who've been to sunny climes are usually matched by the brown, freckled faces of boys who've been out helping their dad collect sap (minus the still-pale foreheads, which were covered up by caps).

Then come the taffy cones, which the kids make at home and bring in to sell -- mini ice-cream cones filled with maple taffy. Our Grade 7 and 8 boys are budding entrepreneurs, and announce the forthcoming day's sale over the P.A. system before the afternoon bell. A taffy cone definitely makes for a good morning-recess pick-me-up but you've got to be quick because they inevitably sell out. And here's a sure sign of current economic climes -- this year, they went up in price. After many years of selling for a quarter, they're now 35 cents. Sometimes, there's maple sugar candy (my favourite), too -- three for a dollar.

Wandering through the gym supervising while the students eat lunch, you see maple syrup creeping its way into the metal lunchboxes, too. I quizzed a group of boys the other day on their preferred way of eating syrup. "Maple syrup bun," one Grade 3 fella told me, matter-of-factly. This is really just a bun soaked in syrup. You'll also see buttered bread doused in the stuff, or a little container of syrup with bread for dipping. Last year I had the pleasure of trying to conduct a meeting (among adults) at a table a boy had eaten just that very snack on, and had to interrupt it midway through to fetch a damp sponge because our papers kept sticking together.

Maple syrup creates a blip of excitement that breaks us out of the winter blahs -- especially the boys. Some of my students are kids of few words, but start asking them questions about the sugar shack and they'll suddenly become talkative. More funny are the exchanged looks and giggles they give you when you get curious on them and ask all the basic questions about how syrup is made. You know they're wondering, "Geez, doesn't everybody know this stuff?"

Some of you heading up to Elmira today may encounter my students, capitalizing on everyone's love of the sugary goodness, be it through taffy cones or brimming bottles and jugs for your pancakes and french toast. Tell them I said hello! I'll be at home in the city, avoiding the crowds and waiting until Monday to fill my maple craving with a mid-morning taffy cone. Just another April school day.