Ramp it up

Vegetarian Times, April, 2004

It's that time again. For the next several weeks, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, adventurous souls will head for the hills and hollows to pick ramps, the Appalachian delicacy known in science as Allium tricoccum, or wild leeks. Spring rites called ramp festivals will follow, in which the pungent wild greens will be fried, cooked up with other foods or left raw--then consumed with great gusto.

Long considered a tonic for the blood, ramps are now eaten for their flavor alone, which the late food enthusiast Euell Gibbons compared to that of a "mild onion ... with a hint of garlic." Ramps are also a great source of vitamin C. Just beware. Ramps have a powerful aftertaste--and an even more powerful odor that lingers on the breath with comic and legendary persistence. Maybe that's why the Menomini tribe called ramps "pikwute sikakushia"--or "skunk plant."