Ramps, Ramps, Ramps!

I love ramps. There is no logical reason for how much I love ramps, but yet, here we are.

Once a year, I tend to buy a case of ramps during the 15 seconds they’re available and then turn it into so many things. This year, it’s pickles and pestos!

Genovese Ramp Pesto

• 2 quarts of ramp leaves, washed, dried, and loosely wrapped in paper towel

• ~0.32 lbs Parmesean cheese (small bag of grated from your local coop is perfect usually)

• 1 lemon

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1/4 cup pine nuts, freshly toasted in a pan

• 4 cloves garlic

Take off the paper towel wrapper from those ramps and drop all the above save the olive oil and lemon into your food processor. Squeeze the whole lemon in, and get it a-stirring. Once everything is finely chopped, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you get a creamy looking consistency to the pesto. You may use more or less olive oil depending on your preferences.

Casa Del Krogan “House” Ramp Pesto

• 2 quarts of ramp leaves, washed, dried, and loosely wrapped in paper towel

• ~0.32 lbs Pecorino cheese (small bag of grated from your local coop is perfect usually)

• 1 lemon

• 1/2 cup olive oil

• 1 tsp kosher salt

• 1/3 cup cashews, freshly toasted in a pan

Take off the paper towel wrapper from those ramps and drop all the above save the olive oil and lemon into your food processor. Squeeze the whole lemon in, and get it a-stirring. Once everything is finely chopped, slowly drizzle in the olive oil until you get a creamy looking consistency to the pesto. You may use more or less olive oil depending on your preferences. This one will be extra unctuous from the pecorino and extra creamy from the cashews.

2020 Experimental Vietnamese Pesto Flavor Bomb

This one is something new we decided to try out

• 2 quarts of ramp leaves, washed, dried, and loosely wrapped in paper towel

• 1.5 clamshells of mint (the plastic packed prewashed mint at the grocery store) leaves plucked off stem, washed and dried

• 1 cup Thai holy basil leaves plucked off stem, washed and dried

• 1/3 cup peanuts, freshly toasted in pan

• 2 inch hunk of ginger, peeled

• 4 garlic cloves

• 2-3 tablespoons of fish sauce (I used Red Boat)

• 2 limes

• 2 teaspoons white sugar

• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

• 1 teaspoon sambal or Chinese garlic chili paste

With this one, repeat as above, but save 1/2 of the ramp leaves from the first part and reserve them. Once the solids are ground, juice the limes in, add the fish sauce, and give it a blitz. Drop in your sambal and let the heat of the blade warm the mixture for a minute. Add more fish sauce or lime juice to reach pesto consistency. Once you’re there, pop the blender or food processor open and add in your last leaves, and process until everything’s broken up — this last step will help balance out the remaining herbaceousness of the holy basil and mint against the ramp and let the ramp really shine.

We’re serving this last one with rice noodles, sautéed garlic shrimp, hoisin glazed pork belly, scrambled egg, ground peanuts, and some fresh cilantro.

Korean Style Popcorn Chicken (Dakgangjeong, 닭강정)

A few weeks ago, some friends of mine and I took a long weekend to head up to Lutsen, MN to escape from the city.  It was a weekend of fun, lots of drinking, and a buttload of cooking, including a ludicrous amount of Korean food and Soju consumption.

This recipe is from that night.  What I remember of it, anyway.  Did I mention the Soju?  I may still be hungover.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 Package of Chicken Thighs, Boneless and skinless (we're being lazy here)
• 1 Tbsp Mirin (because the Soju wasn't open yet)
• 2 tsp grated fresh ginger
• .5 tsp sea salt
• 2 big pinches black pepper
• Corn starch (or potato would work too if ya got it)
• Frying oil (we used Canola for this)
• .5 cups Ketchup (plain, regular, ketchup.  Heinz in da house)
• 1.5 Tbsp gochujang (Korean fermented chilli paste)
• 4 Tbsp dark brown sugar
• 2 Tbsp white sugar
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 1 clove of minced garlic
• Sesame Seeds for Garnish
• Green Onions for Garnish, sliced
• Dry roasted peanuts, crushed, for Garnish

Take your chicken and hack it into small, bite sized bits and throw it all in a ziplock bag.  Add the rice wine, ginger, salt, and black pepper, seal that bad boy up, and then mix it with your now clean hands through the bag.  Pop it in the fridge for at least 30 min to marinate.

While that stuff is in the fridge, now's a great time to get the sauce going.

Take your ketchup, gochujang, brown sugar, soy sauce, sesame oil, and garlic, and throw that in a pot on the stove.  Heat it up slowly over a medium flame until it just starts to simmer -- the goal here is to get all that sugar to melt and leave you with a smooth sauce when it's all done.  As soon as the texture is smooth, pull that sucker off.  Also, feel free to riff on the quantities if you like a particular flavor more (Want it hotter? Add more gochujang.  Want it sweeter? Add a touch more sugar or honey.  Have people who hate freedom? Dial up that ketchup.)

Next, grab a bowl and drop some of your starch in it, so you can start batch frying this stuff.

I used a cast iron dutch oven, but if you've got a fryolater or deep fryer or even just a deep walled sauce pan you're cool using with it, go to town.  You're going to want enough that you can add a bunch of chicken to and keep the temperature high enough to prevent it from getting soggy (and also not cooking the chicken).  My dutch oven is 6 quarts, and a whole half gallon of fryer oil went into it.

You're gonna want an oil thermometer (different from a meat thermometer, but not necessarily different from a candy thermometer if you're on Amazon and having a lark) and you're going to want to balance your oil temp around 350ºF/175º (also, those are not the same temperature, but close enough for what we're going for here -- by the time the chicken looks done, it will be).

Once your oil hits temp, drop some of your chicken into the starch, give them a toss, and then pop those bad boys on over into it.  At temp, if you can keep it there consistently, you're probably looking at around 3-4 minutes until the chicken is done.  If you're like me, you're going to drop the temp down, and then have people talking to you and you're going to have a cocktail or three, and wind up around the 5 minute mark.  Lucky you, this recipe is still good if you overcook the chicken, but for fuck's sake, try not to.

When all the chicken is out, go ahead and toss your chicken with the sauce, top with some green onions, sesame seeds, and peanuts and serve.  Alternately, if you're like me and tired and a bit buzzed, go with the sesame seeds just as people are sitting down because you forgot all about the other things you brought.  Stainless steel chopsticks optional, but damn classy.