THE FULL PRESS RELEASE

GO-Kitchen Ready Program To Provide Launching Pad For Food Service Careers And Life Skills Training

ASHEVILLE, NC (January 10, 2012) – An innovative joint venture between Green Opportunities, Goodwill Industries of Northwest North Carolina, Inc., Asheville City Schools Foundation, AB-Technical Community College, the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association and MANNA FoodBank will provide career opportunities in the food service industry, life skills training and potential job placement for future students of the new GO – Kitchen Ready Training Program.

The program, managed by Green Opportunities, will offer training in basic food service and technical skills in culinary, baking, food safety and sanitation, nutrition instruction, food vocabulary and kitchen math. A portion of the class will focus on such life skills training as interviewing, job search and retention skills, resume writing and management of personal finances. The use of local food products will be a key component of the program.

Students completing the program will be certified with “kitchen-ready” skills, including a SERV-SAFE certification and a mentoring program supported by Asheville area restaurants. GO, in association with the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association, Goodwill Industries and Asheville City Schools Foundation, will provide job placement support.

Classes are scheduled to begin in March 2012 and will be held Monday through Thursday on the campus of William Randolph School. The curriculum includes 192 hours of hands-on kitchen instruction as well as 96 hours of classroom instruction over a twelve-week period. Two twelve-week sessions will be conducted in the first year of the program and classes will be limited to 15 students.

Costs for participating in the program will be covered for qualified applicants. GO will use the training to produce meals for distribution through MANNA FoodBank as well as for some school meals for students and their families at William Randolph School.

The GO Kitchen-Ready program is modeled after similar programs in other communities organized under the umbrella of Catalyst Kitchens, a network of organizations with a shared vision of empowering lives through job training, self-generating revenue through social enterprise and nourishing bodies and minds through quality food service. The Asheville initiative was launched with a start-up financial gift from the Asheville Independent Restaurant Association, with leadership and vision for the project originating with Michel Baudouin of Bouchon Restaurant. Other key supporters of the project are Steve Frabitore of Tupelo Honey Cafe, Anthony Cerrato of Fiore’s and BB&T.

Mark Rosenstein, founder and former owner of The Market Place, is spearheading the research, development and launch of the Asheville program as its project manager.

Green Opportunities is an Asheville-based nonprofit organization dedicated to improving lives, communities and the environment through innovative green collar job training and placement programs.  The Asheville Independent Restaurant Association’s mission is to unite the independent restaurant community as committed to local people, local philanthropies, local businesses, local food and the local economy through genuine food and signature hospitality.

For more information about the program: GO – KITCHEN READY or contact Mark Rosenstein at 828-335-3328 or mark@greenopportunities.org

“Blind Pig- Fire & Chocolate” from Aaron Morrell on Vimeo.

A 20 minute video of the Blind Pig dinner in September.  A night to remember.

Last night I was visiting friends, Dory, John & Randall.  They hosted MOUNTAIN FIRE for Terra Madre last fall at Sunswept Farm.  They are big thinkers.  For me it was a retreat over the mountain, the Spring Creek area is another world, making Asheville seem a metropolis.  When the sun sets, there are no lights.

After we got done laughing about “getting an egg from a carrot”,  another story; a chicken story, the discussion stumbled down the mountain path to food.  The discussion reflected our shared view: we are in unsettled times and the ability to produce and prepare our own food puts us in a unique position.  Most cannot.  We fiddled around the topic.  John tossed out the idea “we are radicals.  Radical means “root”, a fundamental thing.”  Whoa, I had to remember that, I did not know that was the word’s definition and it sent me to the dictionary.

Radical; adjective: “of going to the root or origin; fundamental: a radical difference.  Forming a basis or foundation.”  As a noun: “a person who advocates fundamental reforms by uncompromising methods.”  The antonym is superficial.

Next, look up fundamental: “emphasizes the idea of going to the root of the matter, and this often seems immoderate in its thoroughness or completeness.”

The power in the precision of language amazes me.  Here in two words, radical and fundamental, are the basis of understanding the unsettled world surrounding me.  I am neither a radical or a fundamentalist.  I am not a radical, as I realize compromise is the way to move forward and I am not immoderate, as I can compromise.  It comes with a caveat.  I will not lose sight of the bigger goal; there is a moral, ethical, humane path and all our actions need to lead back to that.  Though I may compromise to get there.

There are two arguments as a society we have blindly come to accept as truth: convenience and bottom line, narrowly defined as corporate profit.  (We “buy into them”).  Both are the antonym of radical. Paul Roberts in his book, The End of Food makes the statement,” food itself is fundamentally not an economic phenomenon.”  Another “WHOA.”  Having operated a restaurant for 40 years, I have data to support that premise.  My radical idea is this: real food seems inconvenient, it takes many hands to produce good, healthy and just food.  Hands are not machines, hands are people, not subject to the efficiencies of industrial mechanization.  (If corporations are people, do they have hands?  Is handedness a requisite to be people?) Even in the 21st century we cannot escape this fact.

Food was the first source of acquired human wealth.  Today it is Big Business, global.  None of us can long exist without food.  In our rush to Somewhere, our relationship with food has become, well, weird.  It is a status symbol, a fashion statement, a means of control and in its absence; a cry to riot or war.  No matter what deception we wrap around our view of food, we are not far from the essential essence of food: it is what noursihes.  The biggest deception is its inconvenience.  This is the “tinny sound of the tiny drum” I beat.

The quest in the post-industrial revolution is expecting food to be cheap.  This system has brilliantly succeeded in just the opposite.  The real cost of food, if accounted for honestly, includes the health cost of obesity, diabetes and other disease, the social cost of families destroyed by convenience, the environmental cost of unsustainable energy and chemical inputs and the impact of bad food on our spirit; the brown and white meal most eat in the absence of a family table is astounding.  That real cost trivalizes any national debt.  The debt we are going to have to repay is the loss of the human connection to food.

All these ideas made their way around the fire circle. (If you want the smoke of the fire to blow the other way tell it: “I hate rabbit.”) My friends fly the banner “The Dawning of the Age of Aquarius” over their mountain enclaves.  They are optomistic. They ride in the Calvary of the Mountain Irregulars, independent of associations, fiercely loyal to kin and neighbors.   Mountain Irregulars subscribe to the Front Porch theory of society: come set awhile.  They wish to be free of the subjugation called government.  (In the War Between The States, they were neither Yankee or Rebel.)  They are not anarchist, they are locally ruled, their values rooted in tribal earth.  I was a senior officer, now an emissary.

Crossing back over  the mountain, food thoughts bumped side to side in my head, following the curves in the road.  I had to understand those two words.  In my research, I stumbled across another discussion of foods’ inconvenience, a New York Times piece: Could Farms Survive Without Illegal Labor? Now those bumpy thoughts became radical thoughts.  More hands.

The fundamentalism of food is there is no substitute for hands if the food is to be good.  Hands should not be cheapened.  Using our hands is not inconvenient, it is beautiful.

Good food is not really inconvenient, it is essential, it forms the basis of a healthy, vibrant and humane society.

-Mark Rosenstein, Calvary of the Mountain Irregulars, 1st Officer

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COOKING CLASSES AT WAKE ROBIN FARM with MARK ROSENSTEIN

SUNDAY, JULY 17 – SUNDAY, AUGUST 21 – SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 18

“WHAT’S IN THE BOX” – Learn to cook with season!  Using the food one will find  in a CSA offering or at the local tailgate, this bi-montly demonstration will teach techniques and provide recipes and a menu for a week’s dining.  Open to all.  SATURDAY, JULY 9TH CLASS IS FULL.

“BATTLE OF THE QUEENS”  OCTOBER 22 – 27, 2011 -An Italian Exploration, a weeklong  journey of  traditional country Italian cuisine with Mark and friends, music and  hiking the trails of scenic Aosta, Italy.

Without question, I believe farmers have always been inventive, creative individuals, perhaps taking on one of the hardest jobs of all – working with the ever-changing conditions of Nature.  It requires a lot of ingenuity.

I have been kicking around farms and gardens since my early restaurant days in Highlands, NC and continue to do so, partially in hopes of some sort of magic “gardening dust” rubbing off on me, maybe helping me to grow my own garden successfully.

Over the past few years, Venessa Campbell and Alex Brown of Full Sun Farms in Big Sandy Mush have humored me and let me visit.  I have always been impressed with the quality of the vegetables they grow.  I was out there this week, enticed by Vanessa’s description of the lunch she fixed. It sounded delicious.  I offered to work for food.

Tuesday and Friday are harvest days, preparing for the Wednesday and Saturday tailgate markets – and those are the days that Vanessa cooks, so I headed out North Turkey Creek through some of the most beautiful mountain valley land in western North Carolina.  I arrived mid-way through the morning’s work, as I had an early business meeting downtown.  Most of the day’s harvest was complete and now it was time to wash and pack the produce.

Necessity is the Mother of Invention

The task I was given by Alex was to wash the chioga beets for the CSA boxes and the tailgate on Wednesday. Over the seasons, Vanessa and Alex have collected various contraptions to make their farming task more productive.  As the era of equipping small farms has passed, at least for the moment, much of what they use is refurbished, antique equipment built before either of them were born.  For my assigned job, I was introduced to the Torrent Bunch Washer circa 1940. Two counter rotating brushes, belt-driven by an electric motor and a Rube Goldberg arrangement of two spray nozzles, this small machine would scrub the remaining earth from the mornings pickings.  Alex was clear and direct in his directions of how to wash the beets.  “Don’t press to hard, the motor can overheat, if you push too hard.  Be careful, there is a tendency for the brushes to pull the beets into the machine.  Be sure to get all the dirt off the beets.”  Using it was sort of like working with your grandmother, she knows what she is doing, but she’s not too quick about it.

So, I washed a-bucket-load of beets.  I liked it, very Zen.  At one point, Unnoticed, I caught Alex inspecting my work.  I had to chuckle to myself – I have spent 38 years picking and cleaning vegetables and inspecting others work – to meet my own high standards.  It was wonderful to see someone else as attentive to quality as I have been.  It seems I passed, he said nothing. It is one of those hidden, essential qualities for producing something of value.  Often it is unappreciated, but one of the reasons Full Sun Farms has always produced outstanding vegetables.  This trait would show up many times in the day.

Without question, I believe farmers have always been inventive, creative individuals, perhaps taking on one of the hardest jobs of all – working with the ever-changing conditions of Nature.  It requires a lot of ingenuity. To achieve what they do, which is to run a small, successful family farm, Vanessa and Alex have had to search far and wide for the tools of their trade.  The 1940 “Grandmother” Torrent Bunch Washer was only one example.  The barn area was littered with other, fine examples.  (Somewhere in all of this is the seed of a revival in small equipment manufacturing -as we MUST rebuild our local food systems).   These photos tell that story.

My task almost took until lunchtime.  Checking his watch, “we have five minutes”, Alex directed us to a few tasks, and one was clearing some straw from underneath tomato plants.  At Full Sun, tomatoes are grown in a greenhouse “tunnel”, in order to control moisture on the plants.  Excessive moisture and soil splash back from falling rain is the cause of a late season blight, which essentially kills the tomato plant.  One strategy is to plant them as they do here.  More work, superior product.  Our particular work, just before lunch, was to remove the straw mulch from some plants that inadvertently had some herbicide on them that was affecting the growth of the plants, causing them to spiral in on themselves, leading to destruction of the plant.  Additionally, this straw was suppose to be organic and had apparently slipped by from their source provider.  This done, time for lunch, the reason I was here.

Lunch was delicious, but, surprisingly, it was not about the food.  There were ten of us – Vanessa, Alex, their two daughters; Ada and Bella, Joseph and Joy (who are part of the Full Sun CSA and work 6 shifts on the farm as part of their payment), their 3 interns, Megan, Maggie and myself.

It was a very civilized – we sat together, ate lunch, talked about everything in the world, including farming.  When we finished, everyone pitched in to clean up and then headed off for hour of “private time”, letting the heat of the day pass until mid-afternoon.  I sat outside, while the kids climbed trees – the world slowed down.

I had an inkling about all these implements and recycled devices.  While I was washing the beets, I noticed an old washing machine.  I did wonder what it was doing out here in the barn, knowing full well, in the winter, everythng out here would freeze.  I was about to find out.

We were washing lettuce, filling two large sinks with water.  First we removed the root ends of the plants, discarding any bruised or rotten outer leaves, then a good soak in the first sink to remove the dirt and a final rinse to make sure all the grit had been removed.  (Trust me on this one, getting clean, grit free lettuce is not just a luxury, it is a necessity – too many times at the restaurant we had to reject lettuce that arrived unclean.)  Then the lettuce was allowed to drain on a drain board.  Next, Vanessa told me to me to fill nylon “onion bags” with five handfuls of the salad mix.  She moved over to the washing machine and told me that they had figured out that if they spun these bags on the Polyester Knit Spin Cycle, it was exactly forceful enough, without bruising the lettuce, to remove all the water!  I howled – a giant salad spinner.  So Nick and I proceeded to spin and bag lettuce for Wednesday’s CSA boxes.  

Like almost everything about this farm, and the others like it – returning to small scale, family farms requires making do with what you have or what you can find.  Alex and I discussed the fact that there no longer are small scale, durable farm implements being made, just like the Torrent Brush Washer, or the tractor attachments.  Returning to a rural farming lifestyle, one needs to be a pioneer, indeed, it may be the new frontier – the post-industrial, post-digital world.

Finding the tools to do the work is one thing  - keeping them working is another.  In addition to being able to actually grow something – in and of itself a daunting task – a farmer also must know how to maintain and repair equipment.  This is another dimension of Full Sun Farm, keeping things working.  Full Sun is also a “teaching farm” – each year hiring paid interns to help run the farm.  More important, they are learning how to farm and to keep it going.  I witnessed this exchange of knowledge and skill often.  At one point in the day, Alex was teaching Megan how to change the oil on one of their tractors.  

After preparing the lettuce – it was time to pick blueberries.  And so the afternoon went – until it was time for me to head back to town.

Beyond the exquisite tranquility of Full Sun’s setting in Big Sandy Mush, the relaxed working conditions, the pride and attention to growing food – I came away, again, connected to the food I cook and eat.  Still lingering is a sense of hope, seeing this wonderful family prosper in a way that dollars will never be able to measure.

In the big picture, we are surrounded by a broken food system – virtually every facet: corporate farms struggling to exist through hugh subsidies, chemical inputs, and food transported thousands of miles, to name a few – but here, on this farm, in this region of Western North Carolina, those essential “provisions of nature” are flourishing. The connection to life itself is alive.

“Once we lose touch with the spendthrift aspect of nature’s provisions epitomized by the raising of a crop, we are in danger of losing touch with life itself.”  Honey From A Weed - Patience Gray

-Mark Rosenstein

There is light in food.  This is a Truth – figuratively, literally, metaphorically.

The connection of light to food is simple to trace.  Even post modern molecular gastronomist must concede petro-chemical food at one time was light – sunlight to plant-life to rotten mass buried, subsumed and compressed into crude, then refined back to digestible molecules reassembled.  (A form of alchemy.)

One intention of the alchemist of old was to transform food-light (molecular gastronomy is an example of this).  The intent of a twenty-first century alchemist should be to preserve food-light and to keep that light in the fore of one’s work.  (“Cook” and “chef ” are ranks of Alchemy, as is the Zen “tenzo”.  As the alchemist grows in their practice, cooking remains essential to that practice and hence food-light remains essential).

A rhetorical question: “what does food-light taste like?”

A second rhetorical question: “why preserve food-light, and keep it in the fore?”

One answer to both is illustrated in a small dinner I prepared the other evening.  The occasion was a get together to send the Young Master of the House (a novice in training) off to France for the summer, friends were chaperoning him on his flights, which coincided with theirs.  It was also the occasion to share a special bottle of wine they had given me.

I start with a “recipe” and then some thoughts about it all.

BEEF BRAISED WITH SOUR CHERRIES, GARLIC SCAPES, NEW PURPLE ONIONS, RED WINE AND SPICES.

To be served with an older (20+ years) red Burgundy from Gevrey-Chambertin

Serves 6

Pre-heat oven to 275°F

• 4 pound piece of bone-in chuck roast of beef from Hickory Nut Gap Farms
• salt, pepper
• cooking oil
• 3 pints of fresh sour cherries (picked from my backyard)
• 1 bottle of red wine, pinot noir
• 6 purple new onions, cut into 3 inch pieces or leave whole
• 6 garlic scapes, leave whole
• 2 tablespoons all purpose flour
• one-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled, thinly slice
• 4 allspice berries, whole
• 1/4 teaspoon cardamom seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon mace blades

Method: Wash the cherries, place them in a stainless steel sauce pan.  Pour the bottle of wine over the top and bring to a simmer.  Cool until the cherries are completely cooked and soft.  Remove from the heat, allow to cool enough to handle.  Place a strainer over a bowl and pour the cherries into the strainer.  Using a heavy rubber spatula, work all the cherry flesh through the strainer.  You may have to pour some of the wine back over the cherries to do this.  Be sure to scrape the bottom of the strainer, to collect all the flesh.  Discard the seeds.  Reserve the cherry/wine liquid.

In a heavy enamel casserole, over medium-low heat, heat some cooking oil.  Brown together the onion and garlic scapes.  Season with a little salt and pepper.  Remove and reserve.

Next, dry the meat and season well with salt and pepper.  Add some additional cooking oil, turn the heat up slightly.  Brown the chuck roast on both sides.  Remove and set aside.

Add the spices to the pot, cook a few minutes to intensify their flavor.  Add the flour and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly.  All at once, add the cherry/wine liquid, stir well.  Add the onions, then the meat, finishing with the garlic scapes on top.  Correct the seasoning.  Bring to a simmer.  Cover with a lid and place in the pre-heated oven.

Cook for about 3 hours.  Check occasionally that the liquid is just simmering and not drying out.

When the meat is tender, turn the heat down to serving temperature (below 200° F).

Server with some braised new greens and some sort of simple potato dish.  (I made a potato gratin of potatoes and duck fat).

This beef was served with a 1987 Combe aux Moines, Gevrey-Chambertin.  It was a successful and happy marriage.

Why this meal?

I started out with a few thoughts – what is the occasion of the meal, who are the guests, what do they enjoy, what do we have from the season, what wine are we drinking?  A going away party, dear friends, rich and hearty fare, the cherries from my yard, fresh vegetables from surrounding gardens, a special wine that all of us would enjoy; one’s whose own essence was filled with food-light.

Each of these qualities filled with complexity – a first summer for a young man traveling between families for the summer, a friendship of twelve years that started over food and wine, the first real harvest of cherries from a tree I planted years ago; fruit perfectly tart so not to overwhelm the wine with excessive sugar, the subtle character of the garlic scapes, a wine we were all familiar with; hopefully at the peak – balanced between, youth, middle age and maturity.

My task as cook and alchemist was to bring all this together – to bring the food-light of beef, cherry, wine into the light of farewell and friendship.  This meal will be bound in our collective memory.

The taste of food-light is the deep harmony of grass beef, changing light of old wine – youthful brightness fading; the edge of dusk approaching, clear sharpness of fruit acid creating a chiaroscuro effect, the subtle complexity of spice binding all together – in a word, the taste of food-light is the taste of “alive”.

Not all meals attain such a plateau, nor should they.  However, all meals should contain the intent of this one.

-Mark Rosenstein

& Entertaining Weekends

TOURS:  Best of Burgundy, France

& Battle of the Queens- Aosta, Italy

The French Broad announces the Spring  cooking classes and culinary tours.  The “What’s in the Box” class based on using the local and seasonal products of Asheville’s farms, It is based on  the weekly produce that comes each week in a CSA share box ( community supported agriculture). Entertaining Weekends is a 3-day class focusing on menus for entertaining and special meals with an emphasis on food and wine pairings, organizing a menu and using foods of the season. Please send us an email for more information.

Calling upon 15 years of living and working in the Burgundy region of France, Alisa and Mark have put together a June 2011 trip to Burgundy . This an authentic cultural and gastronomic immersion in Burgundy’s stunning historic region that is currently under consideration for designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. for The trip is small and intimate.

Please contact us with any inquiries or questions.

A month ago, I went out in the woods with Dustin Raxter, scouting places he collects ramps.  This week, I was in the woods again with Dustin and his father, Ted.  This time, the earth had come alive – ramps, trillium, lily-of-the-valley, branch lettuce, and dozens of other wood-land plants.

Today we were collecting ramps for the last day of ramp “production” at the Smoky Mountain Native Plants Association – where the ramps would be dried and added to their cornmeal product, or powdered and sold as seasonings.  Ramps (“Allium tricoccum”), also called wild leeks, are found growing on rich, wooded slopes in the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains at altitudes greater than 3000′.  Mid-April is prime season.  Our goal today was twenty pounds of ramps.  Yesterday, Dustin and Ted collected 51 pounds, which took eight hours to collect.

Ramps are one of the four favorite Spring greens of the Cherokee.  The other three being sochan, poke sallet and branch lettuce.

Sochan (“Rudbeckia laciniatum”), also known as green-headed coneflower, is one of the most prized spring greens the Cherokees gather. They sometimes call it “sochani.” Closely related to black-eyed Susan (“Rudbeckia hirta”), it grows to 10 feet tall in wet areas and along damp woodland borders.

Poke sallet (“Phytolacca americana”) is also called poke, pokeweed, poke greens, pocan, pigeonberry, and inkberry. It can be found in abundance in open fields and along roadsides.  By various accounts, only young plants should be eaten, after multiple blanchings in boiling water, the older, reddish growth and the roots are poisonous.  In 1969 the song, “Poke Salad Annie”, recorded by Tony Joe White, reached Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.  I don’t know if it boosted salads of the wild green…

Branch lettuce (“Saxifraga micranthidifolia”) – sometimes called wild lettuce, bear lettuce, or lettuce saxifrage – grows on wet banks and in seepage areas and streams.  On our way in to the ramp patches, we crossed a small stream with an abundant growth and would collect some on the way back out.

All these greens are eaten raw or cooked, the most common method, is “frying them up” in rendered bacon fat – a staple of the mountain kitchen.

My own celebration this time of year is the flavor of “fresh” – after a winter of dull foods numbed by the act of preserving.  A quick mix of these greens, with a little vinegar, salt and pepper is all that is needed – at least for the first week or so.  After the initial thrill of the season’s first wild things, then the urge of creativity can take over.  Here are a few of the recipes I have thought up and tried with ramps and other wild spring things.

Ramps, Smoked Bacon & Branch Lettuce Salad

4 portions

• 2 ounces of bacon, cut into lardons (fat, short “sticks” about 1/4″ x 1/4″ x 1″)
• A healthy bunch of ramps, properly harvested*, cleaned, cut into 1″ lengths
• salt, pepper
• 1 teaspoon brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 4 hands-full fresh branch lettuce

Method:  In a heavy iron skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until it renders it’s fat and becomes crispy.  Toss in the ramps and cook for 1 minute, season with salt, pepper and the brown sugar.  Cook another minute.  Add the vinegar, turn off the heat.  Place the branch lettuce in a mixing bowl, toss with the ramp & bacon dressing.  Serve with some corn pone or corn bread sticks.

Mountain Trout Stuffed with Ramps

4 portions

• 4 whole, small fresh trout.  De-boned – having had rib cage and back bone removed
• 2 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil
• 1 good hand-full of fresh ramps*, cleaned, cut into 1″ pieces, reserve some of the green tops for cooking with potatoes
• 4 hands-full dandelion greens, stems picked, cleaned
• 2  cups of cooked corn grits, fairly soft
• salt, pepper
• 2 more tablespoons of rendered bacon fat or olive oil
• butter
• vinegar

Method:  De-bone the whole trout, leaving them whole.  Season the cavity with salt & pepper.  In a heavy iron skillet (select a skillet large enough to hold all four trout), heat the first two tablespoons of fat over medium heat.  Cook the ramps until lightly browned.  Add the dandelion greens and cook until they are wilted and all the water evaporates.  Season with salt & pepper.  Add the soft corn grits to the mixture, mix well and heat through.  Remove from the heat.

Divide the mixture into four parts and stuff the trout.  Reshape the fish.  Wipe out the skillet.  Over medium heat, heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of fat.  Add the trout and cook on the first side, about 4 minutes, until the skin is crispy.  Turn over and cook on the second side until brown and crispy.  Place the trout on four heated dinner plates.  Wipe out the iron skillet, add a healthy knob of butter.  Cook until the butter just begins to brown.  Add a dash of vinegar (or lemon juice) and pour over the fish.

Serve with some very crispy hash browns, seasoned with the green tops of the ramps, cut up.

Corn Grit Loaf with Ramps and Black Walnuts

1 1/2 quart loaf-shaped mold

some oil

Make ahead:

4 cups of corn grits, well seasoned

• 3 ounces smoky bacon, cut into lardons
• 2 hands-full fresh ramps, cleaned and wood grilled
• 1/2 cup black walnuts, coarsely chopped
• 1 cup baby turnips, roasted
• turnip greens, from the baby turnips, grilled and drained
• salt and pepper

Method:  First, assemble all the ingredients – cook corn grits to yield 4 cups.  Grill the ramps and the turnip greens  (wash the greens in 3 changes of water and dry well).  To grill them, toss each separately in oil and grill to desired doneness.  Place in a colander to drain.  Cook the bacon until crispy – reserving the rendered fat for another use.  Toss the black walnuts in with the bacon the last minute or two to crisp.  Drain the bacon and nuts in a colander.  Roast the turnips until tender and cut into quarters.  Season everything well.

To assemble – oil the loaf mold.  If you like, line it with a piece of oiled baking paper to facilitate unmolding later.  Heat the grits just until warm and softened.  Place a half-inch layer of grits on the bottom of the mold, then lay in some ramps, turnip greens, bacon and walnuts.  Add more grits and repeat the layering, finishing the top with grits.  Smooth the top and place a piece of oiled baking paper on top.  Place a weight on top.  Refrigerate for at least six hours.

To serve:  Unmold and serve.  You may serve it cold, or I prefer cutting the loaf into slices and cooking it very slowly in some fat until it is crispy on both sides.  Serve with some very finely cut slaw or early spring greens tossed with a little dressing.

-Mark Rosenstein