Now that spring has officially sprung it’s time to not only update our current menus for the upcoming months but it’s also time to slow down and savor some specific items that can only be enjoyed fresh for a very short period of time.  These few items are some of the last holdouts of truly seasonal produce left out there.

As a culture when we like something we tend to want it all of the time.  So for many years farmers and businessmen have worked on giving us our seasonal product on a year round basis. In doing this we can eat heirloom tomatoes year round, have asparagus in the middle of December and berries no matter how under ripe and lacking in natural sugar all of the time.  This trend in turning every product into a year round item in some regards is good for a consistency level, but in reality is it worth it?  I’d rather not eat heirloom tomatoes in the dead of winter because to me they are not missing the true quality of a vine ripened tomato.  First they are often very hard because they are picked very under ripe and trucked in.

The beautiful thing about an heirloom tomato that you get from a local farmer is that the tomatoes skin is very thin and delicate also the tomato is sweet and distinctively different from the other varieties that exist, which make it a special treat.  Also for people that eat these winter specimens don’t understand how great the true seasonal ones really are because they only eat the ones that are a so-so reproduction of the real thing.

These delicious items are beginning to pop up.  First example fiddle head ferns, not one of my favorites but the limited time they are around I always make sure to play with them in the kitchen.  Then there’s the fresh chickpea, green chickpeas so delicious and tender I make sure to use these whenever I can.  Morel mushrooms, these babies are just plain funghi perfection.  Green garlic, Onion Bulbs, Garlic shoots and baby asparagus are a few more items that are classically spring.  Then there is what I consider the king of spring, the Ramp.  Ramps are a wild leek that has a very distinct flavor, that’s likened to be a cross between shallots and garlic.  Ramps are only available for a very short time.  I use them everywhere because they are a true indicator of spring.  The greens are great grilled and the bodies of the ramp work wonderfully minced and sautéed.  Ramps are probably the one item that for me I truly miss for an entire year until they sprout again, but this is how seasonal eating should be.