Ramps!

Ramps! Wild garlic, plucked from the woods, perhaps in the wilds of Oregon, but hopefully on a sustainable ramp farm. They're only available a few weeks out of the year, and this was the first time I've seen them at Whole Foods (ditto for the cashier, apparently).

The cashier at Whole Foods apparently never heard of ramps. There was no listing in her book. She seemed not to even think I was sane when I repeated "ramps, wild garlic, ramps..." It wasn't in the book. Finally someone found the price, under "baby leeks/ramps".  I paid. I left. I cooked.

Ramps are wonderful, a blend of leek, garlic chives and maybe garlic flavors in tender bulbs and stems. These were sautéed in duck fat, with only a bit of salt and pepper, then simmered briefly in brown stock.

The steak is a New York, pan seared. The pan sauce is a mix of more duck fat, roux, butter and the excess liquid from the ramps. Monté au beurre, seasoned and finished with a bit of heavy cream, because you can never have too many kinds of fat.

We chose a Vigilance Petit Syrah 2009 from Lake County, California, a sustainably grown wine. The three main ingredients - rare steak, ramps, sauce - tangoed with the wine in a virtuoso dance gyrating on the palate. What sauce remained was sponged off the plate with some sourdough rosemary bread.

A salad followed the steak in good French tradition. The lettuce traveled about sixty feet from garden to sink to table. Sustainable indeed, and no way it could have been fresher.

Afterward, a decadent dessert: vanilla ice cream, fresh raspberries and strawberries drizzled with crunchy tempered chocolate.

Definitely fancy, and we'll see if ramps grow here in Sacramento - I planted three likely looking bulbs in case there's a chance of this vegetable taking off here.

So, I can credit my fundamentals class, professional cooking and advanced baking for this dinner. Sauté, sauces, tempered chocolate all were improved or inspired by these classes. The wine I already knew about, so we'll skip that class.

Garlic & Brandy Sausages

 

The best thing about making your own sausages is that you can do what you want, add what you want and create something that you either couldn't find or would cost you five times more than the ingredients.

These were the result of looking at pre-made sausages, checking the price and saying "wait!". About $4.00 worth of pork shoulder, some spices, some herbs (mostly from the garden) and a generous dash of brandy: something good, cheap and unique.

This is what went into them:

• Pork shoulder
• Salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Fresh garlic, fine mince. Be generous.
• Fresh thyme, from the garden
• Fresh sage, also from the garden
• Dried oregano, harvested in the garden last summer and left to dry in the garage
• Pâté spices, also known as four spice: cinnamon, powdered ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Mixed at home because I don't like buying blends - buying individual spices lets you create your own blends as needed for greater flexiblity
• Urfa chili- a dark, almost coffee-like dried chili.
• Roasted cumin seeds, whole. Just a few, so every so often the flavor profile will change.
• Brandy (Cognac or Armagnac would work, too). This was cheaper.
• Dried milk powder - this is a kind of protein binder.
• Pork sausage casings, soaked and rinsed. Don't get the foolish type with plastic thingies inside the casings. Just simple casings packed in salt will do fine.

These could have had more pork fat added, but I decided to keep them lean.

Just grind everything up, fry a patty to taste, adjust the seasonings and stuff some hog casings with the forcemeat. 

Let them dry in the fridge for a day or so, then grill. Don't overcook or they'll be dry, since the extra fat was omitted.

Me, the vampire killer

Funny how things work out. We were walking through the Crocker after lunch when we happened to run into someone Annette met at an art gallery about a year ago. Someone mentioned Hungary, or being Hungarian, or how Hungarian is such a difficult language. I guess she is part Hungarian, in any case. I mentioned that Corti Brothers has Hungarian garlic - and that I was going to try to make some Hungarian flat bread (Langos).

She said to just use sliced rye - the crusty kind - and sprinkle it with salt, pepper, paprika and olive oil - then add sliced onions (or garlic) and enjoy. That's raw onions or garlic. No cooking to mellow it. Feel the burn! Strong stuff indeed.

I just happened to have baked a loaf of this type of bread last night, so I had all the ingredients, more or less. Hungarian garlic, rye bread, olive oil, a mix of Hungarian paprika and Spanish Pimentón agridulce, kosher salt, black pepper. Almost no preparation. Finally, something to eat that's not squash!

Although it doesn't sound like much, this combination of flavors will have you coming back for more. Annette decided to add French butter with sea salt and things got even more interesting (and less healthy, but so it goes).

In the end, we'd each consumed one raw clove of the finest Hungarian garlic. Maybe more. It's fizzing on my tongue as I type, and I can almost hear the Nosferatu packing their bags and calling UPS to ship their coffins back to Transylvania.

Ail!

Three bulbs of garlic. Three varieties. One question: what do they taste like, and how different are they? Our local market, Corti Brothers, trotted out their garlic collection for 2011 with over a dozen varieties of the stinking bulb from which we selected three.

The method: one clove separated from its mother bulb, sliced, placed in a labeled saucer. Raw. Then, sauteed briefly until they showed just a hint of color.

Xi'an,China. 
Raw: Initial taste hot, then a bit grassy moving on to a mellow finish.
Cooked: A nice garlic hit without being too assertive, its heat mellowed a lot with cooking. These would be great for garlic chips, if they were bigger. With a bit of salt, these were pleasant to munch straight.

Tzentendere, Hungary.
softneck, silverskin

Raw: Initially hot, a bit more so than the Xi'an but still not overpowering. A similar grassiness to the middle flavor, tapering to a mellow finish.
Cooked: Another candidate for garlic chips, although a bit more powerful than the Xi'an. Still, a mellow bulb with perhaps a bit earthier flavor than its Chinese cousin.

Tarne, France
hardneck, Rocambole

Raw: Aie! Ca pique! This one comes on strong with an attack of garlicky heat backed by a bit of a sour note. Once you get over the initial heat, there's a lot of flavor - but that burn will be there all the way into the finish.
Cooked: The heat's still there, although mellowed a bit. The other, mellower garlicky flavors are more pronounced and the heat is tempered, fading slowly into a firm garlic aftertaste. This variety will benefit from long, slow cooking where its strong garlic flavor can develop and its heat tone down.

Our favorites were the Xi'an, followed by the Tzentendere with the Tarne coming in last due to its biting heat.

We both think that the Tarne will probably be great, perhaps even better than the others when cooked due to its rich flavor. It's from southern France, so that's a start. Ratatouille, anyone?

I'll probably try the Tzentendere rubbed raw on some Hungarian style bread with olive oil, the way I had it in a restaurant years ago.

The Xi'an is so mouth friendly even raw that it will probably be paired simply with vegetables where its flavor won't be masked. Maybe garlic fries...