Snacking State-by-State: West Virginia I - How to pickle ramps when there are no ramps to pickle? (Or, "Pickled Garlic and Onions")

I'm the first to admit that I know blesséd little about the food of West Virginia.  This heartily Appalachian state does have some specific foods that you find all over Appalachia, and a few unique ones.  Some seem to fit both categories.  Take ramps, for example.  While you find them all over the eastern United States and Canada, West Virginia seems to have embraced them to the point that when you think of food in the Mountain State, you have to think of ramps.

Official Name: State of West Virginia
State Nickname: The Mountain State
Admission to the US: June 20, 1863 (#35)
Capital: Charleston (largest)
Other Important Cities: Huntington (2nd largest), Parkersburg (3rd largest), Morgantown (4th largest), Wheeling (5th largest)
Region: Appalachia, South, Northeast, Midwest; South Atlantic (US Census)
RAFT Nations: Chestnut; Maple Syrup
Bordered by: Pennsylvania (northeast), Maryland (east), Virginia (southeast), Kentucky (southwest), Ohio (northwest)
Official State Foods and Edible Things: black bear (animal, though these are generally no longer eaten); brook trout (fish), Golden Delicious apple (fruit), honeybee (insect, for the honey) sugar maple (tree, for the sap), timber rattlesnake (reptile, though again, not really eaten)
Some Famous and Typical Foods: typical foods of Appalachia; apple butter; pepperoni rolls; pickled ramps; spoon bread

Ramps are in the onion family, a type of wild onion that grows in the spring.  Traditionally a part of spring recipes of the Upper South and of Québec, so Wikipedia notes, it is also known as wild leek or wild garlic.  Visually, I might describe it as the drag queen of wild onions: all green onion-like at the bottom with a dazzling green flare of garlicky leaves.  And West Virginia simply loves its ramps.  Sticking with the drag analogy for a bit, you find ramp festivals all over the state in the springtime, with ramp aficionados shantaying through a veritable party circuit of ramp kiki after ramp kiki. (Okay I promised myself I would never, ever use the word "kiki" in a sentence - pace, Scissor Sisters).

But as noted before, this wild onion, sadly, sashays away after spring.  Since I'm doing this post deep into the fall, obviously I'm not going to be finding any ramps for the next several months.

So this is a post about pickled onions and garlic instead.

Specifically, pickled onions I bought at the Waverly Farmers' Market, grown in the summer, picked in the fall and fresh waiting for me to immerse in a vinegar-sugar-salt solution.

There are lots of recipes for pickled ramps on the internet, for which I merely swapped out the long out-of-season ramps for the onions.  For good measure, I threw in some garlic, to help make the onions more garlicky, and to have some pickled garlic on hand to boot.  The recipe I used in the end: this recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt [2011] from the Serious Eats website.  I had to swap out red wine vinegar and white vinegar for the white wine vinegar, which I didn't bother to check that I had (I just assumed - remember what happens when you assume things).

The Recipe: Pickled Ramps, er, Onions and Garlic

For these pickled ramps-style pickled onions and garlic, gather the following:

* ramps - or since I didn't have access to ramps at this time of year, green onions (really any onion with small bulbs and green shoots still attached, but cleaned and trimmed; bought at the farmers' market for about $2.  I also added about four cloves of garlic, hopefully to make up for the lack of garlickiness from the lack of ramps)
* white wine vinegar (or since I did not have this, I combined white vinegar and red wine vinegar)
* sugar (had it)
* salt (I used pickling salt that I bought for those pickles from that Kansas post)
* red chile pepper flakes (from a dried chile I had)
* allspice berries (had this)
* bay leaves (had these too)
* whole mustard seeds (either yellow or black will do - had these too)

You should also have some clean jars to stuff them into.

First, clean and trim the onions.

Stuff the onions into your jars.

It doesn't have to be pretty.

Next, boil your vinegar...

...with your sugar, salt, chile flakes, allspice berries, mustard seeds and bay leaves.

Whisk and boil until the sugar and salt have dissolved into the vinegar.

Pour the solution into each jar, immersing the onions.  A canning funnel helps here.

Refrigerate for a few weeks.

These are nicely pungent onions that don't lose their crunch, and garlic that is still very sharp.  I'm already looking forward to spring, when I can get my hands on some actual ramps.  Now, sashay away.

Sources:

Corbin, JoAnn. "Pepperoni Rolls".  Date unknown.  In Bob Heffner, "Pepperoni Roll and Pepperoni Bread Recipes".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.


Heffner, Bob.  "What is a Pepperoni Roll?".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.

Heffner, Bob.  "The History of the Pepperoni Roll".  The Pepperoni Roll Homepage, 2002, 2011.

López-Alt, J. Kenji.  "Pickled Ramps."  Serious Eats, 2011.

Some information also obtained from Wikipedia's "West Virginia" page and other pages, and the Food Timeline State Foods link to "West Virginia".

Onions do NOT take 5 minutes to caramelize.

Forty-five minutes.  That's how long it takes.  Thank you, Tom Scocca of Slate, for pointing this out - and calling so many chefs to the carpet for perpetuating this big fib!

Things found at Fresh Market

The new Fresh Market is open now in Towson.  I stopped in to buy some eggs tonight and found a few things I had never set eyes on before.

The strangest things I saw (and tasted) were okra chips.  For $12 per lb in the bulk section (a plastic ziploc bag will probably run about $2), these are not what you would imagine.  They're just crispy dried okra.  There is a very slight residual sliminess inside - that's okra for you - but apart from that they are crispy and crunchy and fall apart quite easy.  The check out person said they are popular.  They have to be since they're pushing them like crazy.  It's a clean, crisp okra like I have never eaten before.

I also found something called Moxie.  This is a soft drink very popular in New England and unheard of here.  Any of you all New England transplants looking for it can find it at the Fresh Market in Towson.

Flying Green Tomatoes

Yesterday's installment of NPR's Fresh Air featured Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland, which investigates just why our plump and beautiful supermarket tomatoes also taste like soggy styrofoam. In short, they are bred for weight and aesthetics, not for taste, because the farmers get paid by the pound, not by the "Mmmm":

"For the last 50 or more years, tomato breeders have concentrated essentially on one thing and that is yield — they want plants that yield as many or as much as possible," writer Barry Estabrook tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "They also want those fruits to be able to stand up to being harvested, packed, artificially turned orange [with ethylene gas] and then shipped away and still be holding together in the supermarket a week or 10 days later." [NPR 2011]

His opening vignette with Gross discusses how a few of these mutant Florida green tomatoes flew off a truck near his car while he was driving down the road. They almost broke his window. But what he later saw was not damaged tomatoes, but still perfectly formed and firm green tomatoes on their way to have whatever it is Big Ag does with that ethylene gas to them to turn them red extra fast.

Click on the link at the beginning to go to the podcast page.

The peas are shootin' up!

A gardening update: my garden is starting to take real shape. A few things I noticed while I was working in my plot today, some more surprising than others:

• I have a renegade lettuce problem. Oh sure, the romaine I have in the ground is doing nicely, but I have a whole lot of lettuce sprouting up all over my plot. This happened after my lettuce plants bolted last year. At least I liked the lettuce. Now I'll not have to buy lettuce at all this summer.
• My sweet peas and snow peas are coming in even more nicely. I have never grown peas so I was surprised to see how fast they shot up after just a few weeks. I also have some big ass onions and some carrots, cabbages and potatoes shooting up.
  
• Is my corn supposed to be growing already?
  
• As I've said before, I had no idea that mint and oregano would grow so wildly. I'll be constantly pruning this stuff back all year. I hope it doesn't strangle out the parsley I just planted.
• I finally put those peanuts in the ground. These may not sprout for a good while. I'll keep you all posted.
  

Back in the Garden

It's refreshing to finally be back in my garden plot at Clifton Park. I found out today that mint really does grow like a weed. It grows EVERYWHERE, man. A month ago when I saw the dead-looking plant I thought "Oh well, that was nice while it lasted". Now the entire raised bed that I planted it in is covered in the stuff, much more so than the oregano that was growing and pulsating like it was alive. Also got a little sage out and planted some basil (too early perhaps) and dill (just right timewise). That and the guy that manages our little communal garden let me have some of his romaine and kale sproutlings.

There's no smell like roasted chiles for the holidays...

Chiles are forgiving. I found that out yesterday when I tried to resuscitate some partially-dried chile peppers that I had grown in my garden plot at Clifton Park (note to self: check on the herbs and whatnot you still have growing there). I had tried to dry them out in the oven but got exasperated when I had to stop and come back to it another day. I never came back to it, so those half-dried chiles were sitting wilted in a covered dish in my refrigerator for a week or two. They weren't exactly dry anymore. But only one or two had to be thrown out; the rest were doing alright. So I had a go at finishing the process.

This time, like last, I spread the chiles out on a cookie sheet, no oil or anything. This time I took the rest of the chiles I had gathered since then (I also grabbed a few to freeze instead of dry), and spread them out on the same baking sheet. Yes, I knew they wouldn't all dry at the same time. This time, I correctly started drying them: I turned down the oven as low as possible, about 150°F, and placed a dish towel in the door to keep it slightly wedged open. Mr. Freak-Out here had worried at first that the towel might catch fire, but I realized that was highly unlikely. Several hours later, with the lovely smell of homegrown chile peppers permeating the house (seems like New Mexico), some of the first chiles had finally dried out altogether.

This is often a multi-day process, especially if some of your chile peppers are not super-thin. So over the next few days I will continue to dry out these chiles for use throughout the winter and spring.

So much pesto...

I accidentally let some of my basil go to flower in the garden. A little of it was bitter - as what normally happens when basil plants go to flower. I ended up harvesting about half of the basil I had in my garden plot at Clifton Park. I now have a good cup and a half of pesto, and a seemingly endless supply of basil. In fact, not just basil, but also mint (lots of uses for that), oregano (same) and rue (I used it in a recipe once). In addition, I picked a few tomatoes, including some San Marzanos that I grew from seed (I have lots of green San Marzano tomatoes). Also got some chilies, and a squash that another person just up and gave me since he was going out of town. In fact, he also let me have as many squash blossoms as I could gather, since the plant was about at the end of its rope. I hope to use them in some Mexican-style recipes soon enough.

Nigella's Bacon and Tomato Hash

I decided to start using up the many things that are just sitting and biding their time in my fridge, before they start molding over, with some Nigella love. Since I had all the ingredients for her bacon and tomato hash on hand (I saw this recipe yesterday on the Cooking Channel, mind you), I went ahead and made that. It turned out a little like the bacon wot that I made for the Great Grapes cooking contest in June, only wetter. It was also a great way to use up some of the tomatoes I got from my garden but haven't had time to do anything with yet.

Just take a few tablespoons of olive oil, heat, and add four thick slices of bacon cut into square pieces. Cook until kind of crispy. I added some more of that Berbere spice I just have lying around. Anyway, add two sliced cloves of garlic and two big juicy tomatoes. I also threw in a banana pepper or two from my garden just for extra flavor. Cook a few more minutes and serve. I am eating mine with rice and some roasted squash, and a bit of cilantro that went to flower. It's still good. You can eat the flowers, you know.

Veggie Hari-Kiri

I will never be able to eat another vegetable so long as I live. (H/T the Amateur Gourmet via Twitter)

My Very Own Broccoli

Out of all the broccoli that I planted in my plot at Clifton Park - most of the seeds never even sprouted, and of the few that did, most got eaten by bugs - this little head was all I ended up with:


I grew it from a seedling I let start right outside. Three and a half months later, I fix it up. I figured it would probably be the best-tasting broccoli I had ever eaten.


And it was.

The Littlest Potato

I just picked this at my plot in Clifton Park while I was weeding and otherwise tending to my garden. Most of my potatoes will certainly be much larger than this when I finally do dig them up, but still:

Isn't it cute!?!?!?

Taro Update

I stuck a taro root that I got from H Mart into some potting soil & put it on my porch about a month and a half ago. Just in the last week, it's started shooting up.

This was completely non-existent a week ago:

Salad fresh from the garden

With today's trip to both the farmers' market (where I got these delicious strawberries) and my garden plot at Clifton Park (where I got all that gorgeous lettuce and that baby red onion), I decided to save myself $20 to $30 for a meal out tonight, and instead had a relatively free meal in. Okay, so I had to pay to rent the garden plot, and for the lettuce and onions to plant, and for the strawberries. But when all is said and done my one meal tonight probably cost me a few dollars compared to the cost of eating out.

• enough lettuce leaves to fill a medium sized salad bowl (about 20 to 30 large lettuce leaves)
• handful of in season strawberries (oh God, PLEASE not those flavorless "strawberries" from the supermarket), quartered if big, halved if small, & thrown in whole if tiny
  
• one large or two-three small spring onions (mine was one large red spring onion), sliced - use both the tops and bottoms
  
• handful of basil and oregano leaves
• balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste

Mix it up in a bowl and eat.

That was easy enough, wasn't it?

My seeds are sprouting!

One week after starting them. The ones on the left are Roma tomatoes. Look at them all! Next to them is a scraggly little catnip sprout I just saw today, and then a sweet pepper sprout. My chili peppers aren't sprouting yet.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the chili

This from the Associated Press: the Indian military plans to use the bhut jolokia ("ghost chili") - the world's hottest chili pepper - as a weapon. For comparison's sake:

• the jalapeño chili wimps out at a mere 8,000 Scoville units.
  
• Tabasco sauce tops out at an anemic 50,000 Scovilles.
• The mighty habanero, long feared by me and almost anyone else who values his or her mouth, registers at a mere 350,000 at the max (typically only 100,000).
  
• And the bhut jolokia? About 1,000,000 Scovilles. That's anywhere from 3 to 10 times as intense as any habanero you might pick up at your local supermarket.
• Very very few things are hotter than the bhut jolokia, but nothing that you'd deliberately put in your mouth: pepper spray is about 5,000,000 Scovilles - about 5 times as hot as the bhut jolokia. But you're not going to eat that.
  

I just love the photo that's circulating with the AP story, taken in 2007 by Manish Swarup:

Gotta have chilis!

Perhaps this gentleman, identified as farmer Digonta Saikia from Assam state, India, can take the heat. As for me? Um, I'll get back to you on that.

Farmers' Markets of America, Unite!

I just heard on NPR this morning a new series they're doing for their Morning Edition program. They are exploring the farmers' markets of America. Of course, they can't hit all of them. They're just doing a representative sample. The first installment of this series looks at a farmers' market in northeastern Vermont (How much more Yankee-fied can you get?). Here, they're focusing on my old nemesis, the tasty fiddlehead fern which, when prepared incorrectly, could make you very ill.

From the "OMGWTFPOTATO!" Files

J***s French-Fried C****t!


Idaho's got nuthin' on Lebanon. And I know they'd hate to hear that up in Idaho. (Hat tip: Broadsheet)