Foodies have pushed ramps to the brink
Baltimore chefs are aiming to increase Maryland’s supply of the garlicky, tasty plant
The bright green leaves of the ramps plant pop up for just a few days in early spring, smelling of garlic and tasting like extra spicy arugula. After the barrenness of winter, they’re a sign of growth to come, a fleeting delicacy. But some people look at a patch of leaves and see a different kind of green — “dollar signs,” said Chris Amendola, the chef and owner of the restaurant Foraged in Station North.
Within the Baltimore-area parks where he forages, Amendola has seen entire patches scooped up overnight. He is careful to not identify where he goes, for fear of attracting foragers who, he said, will “just kind of clear out everything.”
In recent years, ramps, long a cherished food for Native Americans, have become a trendy ingredient in the culinary world. In the spring, they’re a necessary item at many local farm-totable restaurants, including Amendola’s.
Part of their appeal lies in their elusiveness. In a globalized world in which strawberries and tomatoes are available year-round, “it’s kind of nice to have things that you can only have a certain
place at a certain time,” said Helena del Pesco, a Baltimore chef who also cooks with ramps.
But all that popularity has become a detriment to the wild plants, which take around five years to mature.
Amendola is part of a small but growing effort to restore Maryland’s wild ramp population and raise awareness
“The idea that people can just go out and harvest as many as they want … is just not very sustainable. I like to treat ramps as if they were truffles ... they’re really valuable.” — Sunshine Brosi, a former associate professor of ethnobiology at Frostburg State University in Western Maryland
about sustainable harvesting practices. The chef has transplanted wild ramps to various spots around Maryland, including his own property in Baltimore County, where he is cultivating an “edible forest” that includes mushrooms.
Recently, he gave away 35 plants to customers to grow where they see fit. He hopes that they forget about them and let them flourish.
“My ultimate goal is to make Maryland [home to] a plethora of ramps again,” Amendola said. “I’d hate to see this plant go away.”
Hearing about Amendola’s efforts to transplant ramps this spring inspired del Pesco. The founder of the Larder, an Old Goucher eatery that is now closed, del Pesco said the concept appealed to her inner “plant nerd.”
“I love trying things out,” she said. “Part of the fun is the experiment of it.”
When a friend invited her to dig up some ramps on her property in Pennsylvania, del Pesco decided to take a few for a piece of land owned by her husband’s family in Maryland.
The transplanted patch in Maryland looks “super happy,” she said. But she plans to leave it alone for now.
“It takes 5-7 years for them to be ready to harvest,” she said. “If people harvest too many when they’re too young, that patch won’t come back.”
Ramps in history
Called “wa-sti” in the native language, ramps are a “very important part of being Cherokee,” said Freeman Owle, an elder in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. While his ancestors have eaten ramps for thousands of years, in Owle’s hometown of Cherokee, North Carolina, “they’re sort of hard to find anymore.”
Traditionally, the Cherokee people have snipped the ramps’ leaves while leaving the bulb intact, said Owle, who encourages others to do the same.
“They could disappear if people use them without respect,” he said.
Whether to uproot ramps by the bulbs or to just snip the leaves is a question that starkly divides ramp lovers.
Amendola thinks that taking only the leaves does more harm than uprooting the whole plant, since the picked-at plants won’t flower.
It may seem counterintuitive, but thinning out a dense patch of ramps can actually make way for even more ramps to grow, said del Pesco, who like Amendola, prefers to dig up the plant by the bulb. When foraging, she is careful to “leave no trace as much as possible.”
Sunshine Brosi, a former associate professor of ethnobiology at Frostburg State University in Western Maryland, discourages people from harvesting ramps on public property, which she said already faces “a lot of pressure” from people hiking and doing other activities.
“I think it’s always best to grow your own instead of to go out and harvest, especially from a protected public land,” Brosi said.
Growing in wet, wooded areas, ramps soak up the light of the sun before the leaves of trees start to form. These areas may be vulnerable to invasive species, which take hold when ramps have been overharvested.
Amateur foragers also have been known to mistake skunk cabbage and lily of the valley for ramps, Brosi said. The latter is poisonous if eaten.
Amendola said he gets “lots of texts” from people with photos of skunk cabbage that they have misidentified as ramps.
“I’m like, ‘No, don’t eat that,’ ” Amendola said.
Less is more
While she was at Frostburg, Brosi said, she became concerned about ramps festivals like those held in parts of Maryland and West Virginia. Such events can require huge amounts of ramps.
“The idea that people can just go out and harvest as many as they want … is just not very sustainable,” said Brosi, who now works at Utah State University.
That’s not to say Brosi is against eating ramps altogether.
“I like to treat ramps as if they were truffles,” she said. Similar to the luxury fungi, “they’re really valuable.”
At Foraged, Amendola only uses ramps sparingly, as an accompaniment, not a main dish. Guests can order fried oysters with ramp aioli, as well as a duck breast served with ramp gremolata, a sauce made with green ramp leaves taking the place of the usual parsley.
“They have such a strong flavor,” he said, “you don’t you don’t really need to use a whole lot.”
Del Pesco said she often uses ramps to make a compound butter as well as a type of ramp kimchi. The leaves “ferment really nicely,” she said.
In Baltimore, ramps are sold through the online farmer’s market Chesapeake Farm to Table. Del Pesco said that green garlic is also a good substitute.
In West Virginia, a typical preparation of ramps sees them served up with pinto beans, cornbread, ham and fried potatoes, while Owle said that many Cherokee people eat them with fried potatoes and scrambled eggs. But they’re cooked first to tame the flavor and aroma.
“If you don’t boil them,” Owle said, “you’re not able to get out in public afterward.”