Not three hours after Martha published the news yesterday that we had taken delivery of a winter-blues-banishing box of limes and Meyer lemons from the good people at FruitShare, we received an email from one of their marketing people thanking us for the post. Lest you think something untoward has taken place behind your innocent blog-reading back, dear blog-reader, let me assure you that we bought our fruit share fair and square. Martha didn’t receive any kind of solicitation or compensation for posting about it — at least not that she has told me about!

In addition to some nice words about the blog — flattery is the surest route to any blogger’s heart — our fruity correspondent included some recipes, and, in a change from most food marketing, the recipes actually looked pretty good. I was particularly drawn to the Meyer lemon pesto, since I am a fan of off-beat pestos. After work, with neither plans nor ingredient shopping trips made for dinner, I found myself making Meyer lemon pesto sooner than expected.

Martha was glad I did; she loved the bright lemon flavor. I personally found it a little bitter from the pith, but it did get me thinking of warmer climates.

This recipe is basically the same as the one I received in the email, except I substituted parsley for basil and sunflower seeds for pine nuts — all in the interest of avoiding a trip to the store.

Meyer Lemon Pesto

• One Meyer lemon, cut into pieces and seeded
• ½ cup parsley leaves
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 2 T toasted sunflower seeds
• ¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated
• 3 T olive oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Process first four ingredients in food processor until ground. Transfer to a small bowl; stir in cheese and oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

We ate it over fresh fettuccine; it would be a great accompaniment to a white-fleshed fish, as well.

Last night was one of those “too lazy to go to the store, guess I’ll make fresh pasta” nights. When this involves breaking out the pasta machine and its requisite rollers and cutters the idea that I am saving any work by avoiding the store is patently ridiculous; with a more free-form shape like corzetti, shaped with a quick pinch and press of the fingers, the labor savings are only highly dubious.

Corzetti, according to the Encyclopedia of Pasta, are a Ligurian pasta shape made from wheat flour, eggs and water. Traditional corzetti, corzetti stampato, require the use of special wooden molds that press the pasta into a disc shape with decorations, like a coin of pasta. For those of us not so fortunate as to own a Ligurian pasta stamp, there are corzetti tiae co-e die — corzetti rolled with the fingers. To form this shape, one pinches off chickpea-sized balls of dough and presses them down to the board with both index fingers to form a rough figure eight. This process works best with a partner — one person to pinch off the dough and the other to press it — I daresay this would be a good opportunity to involve a child, should you have one readily available.

I’d like to throw in a quick plug here for my preferred method for making fresh pasta dough using the food processor, which I learned from Cook’s Illustrated. It is so easy: two cups of flour in the processor pulsed to distribute evenly, add three eggs and process until a dough starts to form. Add water by the tablespoon until the grains of dough join together in a ball. Knead a couple of times on the counter, let rest 30 minutes and you’re ready to start shaping your pasta. Yes, it will make your Italian grandmother cry, but fresh pasta on a weeknight is worth it.

Assuming nobody wants to offend their Italian grandmother further, some discussion of the proper sauce for corzetti is in order. Oretta Zanini de Vita suggests corzetti are sauced “traditionally with a tomatoless sauce flavored with marjoram, or with the classic Ligurian pesto, but also with different local sauces.” Pesto was the reason I found this shape in the first place — I’ve had a tub of it sitting in the fridge since high basil season practically screaming for a quick weeknight dinner.

Lightly sauced and accompanied by bread and salad, corzetti make a satisfying meal: the roughness of the hand-shaping lends an interesting variety as well as a toothsome quality to the dish.

Ah, springtime. Its combination of tender green vegetables and temperatures often still cold enough to allow keeping the oven at 500ºF for a few hours make it almost the perfect time to cook pizza. Almost, were it not for the fact that tomatoes are still months away. But tomatoes — while crucial to many pies — do not necessarily a pizza make.

For example, there’s the asparagus pizza from Jim Lahey’s Co. (with detailed directions from Serious Eats). No tomatoes: just olive oil, shaved asparagus, parmesan and tomme de savoie cheese. The predominant flavor is that of the cheese — not quite as funky as it smells, rich and sharp. The asparagus, while not overpowering, is unmistakable as an accent at the end of each bite. And by shaving the asparagus thin using a vegetable peeler, you avoid a common pitfall of asparagus pizzas when the teeth do not bite cleanly through a spear and the asparagus and any number of pizza toppings come sliding toward your face. Shaved asparagus bites off clean.

And how could I let a springtime post go by without including ramps? I used the ramp pesto I made a few weeks ago in place of traditional pesto genovese in one of my all-time favorite (and tomato-less) pizza combinations: pesto with mozzarella and goat cheese. Although it gets mellowed a bit during its stay in the oven, the flavor of the ramp pesto is intense. The goat cheese provides relief with its creaminess. Whole ramps on pizza can behave the same way that asparagus does; grinding them into pesto prevents any undue topping slippage.

I’m not such a seasonal purist that I refuse to eat canned tomatoes; on the night I made these pies I made four others involving tomato sauce. But such tasty — and unique — vegetables that are available for such a short time in the spring really deserve to be highlighted on their own. There will be plenty of time for tomato celebration in August.

It’s springtime again, which means the Internet is running rampant with reports of ramps. Amidst all the gushing over this early allium, I read probably the best assessment of ramps ever written:

Most “spring” menus are cruel teases. The good stuff we really want, like local peas and asparagus, doesn’t turn up for at least another month. So impatient chefs smother us in ramps, the garlicky, leek-like wild onions that come out of the ground in March. They’re supposed to presage the glorious bounty to come. Instead, they remind us of winter’s bottomless pit of turnips and rutabaga. I’d rather eat wild grass on the High Line.

(The Gripes of Wrath by Steve Cuozzo. Thanks to Shefzilla for the link.)

In spite of a certain shared cynicism with Cuozzo, when I saw The Wedge had ramps from Harmony Valley Farm in Wisconsin, I more or less dropped what I was doing to head over and claim a bunch. After all, what kind of blogger would I be if I didn’t jump on the occasional bandwagon?

There are many possibilities for cooking up this wild stinkweed; risotto seems obvious for some reason, and they are a popular target for pickling. But I wanted to taste my ramps in all their oniony, burny goodness, so I wanted to kep them raw. How about pesto?

The beauty of ramp pesto is its simplicity; the ramps have the onion family more than covered, so no need to add garlic. I used:

• 1 bunch of ramps
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, toasted (or use whatever nuts are on hand)
• Sea Salt
• Black Pepper
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• ~1/3 cup olive oil
• ~1/2 cup finely grated parmesan cheese

The first step is to wash your  ramps, since ramps come from the dirt and dirt is gross. After that, the ramps should go into a mortar, at which point you use a pestle to grind a fear of God into them. Adding a little sea salt gives traction. Once the ramps are sufficiently broken down to allow space in your mortar for the nuts, add those and keep grinding. Eventually, your graceful, slender ramps will be reduced to a funky green paste.

With the ingredients ground to your satisfaction, you can stir in the lemon juice and enough olive oil to loosen the consistency up from paste to sauce level. Then add in the cheese and adjust the seasoning. Presto: pesto!

The flavor of ramps is hard to describe; they are close enough to garlic to satisfy my strong garlic appetite (and probably alienate any garlic haters), but they have a further green, grassy taste. In a good way, I think. Anyway, they’ll have to do until we get some real spring vegetables.