As much as I love the fresh vegetables at the Midtown Farmers Market, the joy of shopping there comes from more than just the products you can buy. Today, that joy was most aptly expressed by the beautiful weather: after a season-opener featuring gale-force winds and a second week where we endured a frigid bike ride only to narrowly avoid being hailed on, the mild temperature and sunny blue sky were a welcome change. Although the farmers market folks are always friendly, something about the sun put everyone in the best of moods. Vegetables may be few this early in the season, but the vendors and patrons more than make up for it with an abundance of cheer. It’s the Minnesota way.

Lest you think all this talk about sun and comradeship is to cover for lackluster market offerings, feast your eyes on what the market can offer: lettuce, spinach, spring onions, amazing strawberries from Gardens of Eagan, a hearty and spice-scented Swedish rye from Real Bread. Not quite enough for a market feast yet, but, coupled with the friendly faces I’m sure to see, incentive enough to be back next week.

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.

We’re not accustomed to visiting the May farmers market the morning after some (very slight) snowfall, but the morning’s bright blue skies  were enough to encourage us to hop on our bikes and head down to the Midtown Farmers Market. Though old man winter has stretched out one shivering, icy finger in a desperate attempt to hold on to the upper midwest, the smiling faces and ever-increasing produce of the market stand up in defiance, telling old man winter to get lost. Admittedly we were a little chilly from the ride in, but it was nothing hot coffee and even hotter tamales couldn’t set right.

The early spring market is an exercise in patience. The feeling of new vegetables right around the corner is palpable, yet week after week they only seem to trickle in: ramps the first week, lettuce this; can asparagus be that far off? In spite of the occasional disappointment when a sought after vegetable has not yet returned, there is a real excitement for each new arrival at the market. Like old friends returning after a long absence, each new vegetable is greeted with an enthusiastic embrace. By August, when we have ears of corn coming out our ears and enough tomatoes to fill every canning pot in the house, the abundance can be overwhelming. But for the moment, the slow appearance of one crop after the other allows for each vegetable to be given its due appreciation. And besides, after waiting all winter for the market to return, what’s a few more weeks waiting on asparagus and peas?

New this week was lettuce, from Gardens of Eagan. We also picked up a pint of their strawberries, which make a great garnish for oatmeal. And because I can’t resist, especially as we wait for a greener market stalls, I picked up a pound of ground mutton.

The hauls from these early markets are humble to be sure, but this shouldn’t be discouraging. It doubles our resolve to be at the market next weekend: after all, with new arrivals of our old friends each week, how could we even miss one of them?

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.

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.