Essays: The Leek Shall Inherit the Earth

We're giving you essays about food, written by the Food52 community, to read over your morning coffee. Want to share your story? Send it to us at [email protected].

One morning in late winter, you rise, scratch yourself; you want to be up and doing. After a long winter's fiction of turnips and tubers and the pulp of the pomelo, you feel the signs of early spring upon you. The drastic need for man-scaping, thoughts of the Final Four, and yes! the strains of Aaron Copeland leading you to the farmers market – to find – what? Acacia honey-flavored stout in 750ml bottles? At this point, you are hungry, and maybe a little fallow and pale from lack of sun. Even a stale Ritz tastes like a Batali feast in the mouth of a starving man.

And what noxious weed is this you see before you? The limp and the limpid ramp, a spring onion in need of puberty, a leek in need of Viagra. Like a vapid pop song that was on everyone’s spin list last summer, you thought the fad had passed, embarrassingly, but here they are yet again, calling you, maybe. 

In the hands of unseasoned cooks, you find garlic-ramp burgers: the pickled ramps tangoing double time with ramp-infused vodka tomatoes, baby gem lettuce culled from a back lot in East Williamsburg (sorry, Bushwick) only to be deconstructed to look like moss, polluting spring menus in hipstaurants across town. 

This garnish, this bit player, this mere afterthought, is, for a two week period, elevated to starring role. And worse, when hack-cooks pickle the bastards, you see them drooped over protein and drowning in cocktails for months afterwards.

Young chefs delve into trendy, amateur cuisine as though they snuck Papa’s Porsche out of the garage and did a spin at Le Mans without a learners' permit. They have the drive and the equipment, but they lack the experience. They follow Chef Lemming and his Merry Band of Bleaters to the white cliffs and hurl themselves into the void of ramp pizzas, chocolate dipped ramps, ramp baos, and Bubba Ramp’s Ramp Co. Sometimes restraint can be the grace behind the art. 

As for me, I will get tucked back into bed for another few weeks under my official Nigella Lawson bed spread and dream of sweet English peas and stinging nettles, earthy morels, and white asparagus.