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 finally here! It’s been pretty warm in Minnesota for about a month, but that only made the lack of fresh local produce seem even crueler. As of yesterday, the food drought was over with the advent of the Midtown Farmers Market. Martha and I were so excited that we arrived shortly after market open at eight and within a few minutes were enjoying our traditional farmers breakfast of tamales and coffee.

It was fun to see all our friends from last summer back at the market, as well as to welcome some new faces. Particularly promising is the stall for Gardens of Eagan, which in addition to the expected herb and veggie starters already had strawberries. Apparently hoop houses and a crazy-warm April can make this happen. For those who missed the market’s opener, their chalk board promised more strawberries and lettuce next week.

Looking back at last year, all I bought on the first day of the market (May 2, 2009) was a chicken, mutton and salsa — nothing fresh from the ground. Even though this year’s first market was a day earlier, I did a lot better for fresh produce: in addition to the aforementioned strawberries there were ramps foraged from the wilds of Wisconsion by Brett ‘Real Bread’ Laidlaw. There was also spinach available, had we been so inclined. As with last year, I couldn’t pass up a pound of that delicious ground mutton, and we also picked up a bag of spicy almonds from market fixture Barsy’s. This haul of food — already featuring fresh fruits and veggies — bodes well for the rest 0f the summer.

The Midtown Farmers Market is open Saturdays from May to October from 8am to 1pm and Tuesdays from June to October from 3pm to 7pm. The market is located at the corner of Lake St and Hiawatha, across from the YWCA.

Ramps and I started off on the wrong foot this year. It’s nothing personal against ramps; I just want to hate them because they’re so hip. But that’s not really fair. Ramps are pretty great: for one thing, they’re members of the onion family, and I could never hate an allium for long. And, in Minnesota at least, ramps start to appear well before even the earliest spring onions. Given the choice between locally-grown ramps and green onions trucked in from California, I’ll take the ramps.

In most cases, you won’t even notice the difference substituting ramps for green onions. One of Martha and my favorite dishes is a “Mexican Caesar Salad” (which comes from [cough] the Chevy’s & Rio Bravo FreshMex Cookbook; also, Mexican caesar salad? Where does caesar salad come from?) that combines green onions with cilantro, garlic, mayonnaise, anchovies and lime juice. I’d like to say that my sensitive palate picked up the extra grassy notes contributed by the ramps, but up against flavors like those they don’t stand a chance. Possibly a waste of good ramps, but on the other hand if you happened into a wild ramp bonanza and have more ramps than you know what to do with, this is not a bad way to use a few.

But what if you want the flavor of the raw ramps to stand out more? One of the best ways I know to highlight the flavors of fresh raw vegetables is spring rolls; what could be more spring-like than the flavor of fresh veggies rolled together with bean threads in a rice paper wrapper? Nothing, that’s what. Besides thinly-sliced ramps, I rolled in carrots, jalapeños, mint, cilantro, bean threads and cilantro chicken sausage from The Wedge. As the only onion the ramps contributed a distinct pungency but were balanced by the other flavors.

To some people, the idea of eating raw ramps —no matter what they’re balanced with — would seem barbaric. Ramps can be cooked too! They are excellent with eggs; I sautéed some thinly sliced ramps in butter until they were just starting to brown before stirring in a few eggs and queso fresco to make a frittata. With only mild cheese and eggs to stand in their way this was the best dish I’ve made recently for showcasing the unique flavor of ramps. They’d also  make a fine substitute for chives in topping scrambled eggs.

The challenge with ramps is that their timing — far and away the first vegetables of spring — makes them feel like they should be  treated with a special reverence. But hey, they’re just onions. By using ramps as a more everyday ingredient, I was able to taste them in unexpected ways.

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.