Jazzfood wrote:Anniversary dinner @ Anteprima tonite. Best bite of the nite was a ramp ravioli w/sun dried tom sauce.

We’re going Saturday—1st dinner out with the hubs...can’t wait!

A couple missteps but we all should be grading and tipping on a generous curve these days. It was so nice just to hear conversations around us.

Carnivore in Oak Park is offering Ramp Cream. Brad Knaub, the man behind the meat counter, told me that the recipe is simple, with just the ramps, cream, butter, a little white wine, and salt.

What I like about this sauce is that the sharpness of the ramp is tempered by the creaminess of the sauce. With Knaub's stripped down preparation, and only a few ingredients, the flavor of the ramps comes through cleanly, which is the way to go when you’re cooking such a relatively rare wild plant: if you can get your hands on some, you want to be able to taste them.

I've used the sauce as a dip, as a condiment for a stir fry, on toast with an egg, it's fantastic; this weekend, I have a few pounds of King Crab I'm going to serve with the Ramp Cream and I suspect it will be fantastic.

I get excited about ramps every spring, but usually feel a little let down by the ways I've used them. I finally found (for us) a perfect showcase for them in a recent recipe in the NYT from David Tanis. It's a very simple (5 ingredient) Egg & Lemon Soup with Ramps. The clarity of the soup (just good chicken broth, lemon juice, and eggs) made the ramps sing in ways they hadn't for me in other preps. Spring in a bowl -- I couldn't be happier.