Pesto Babka

My first experience working on a farm forever transformed my relationship to food. I had always been a food lover, especially growing up with my mom’s garden, but I had never personally experienced the sweat, exhaustion, and sore muscles from long hours shoveling compost, preparing new beds, seeding and transplanting, and weeding under the hot sun. Unsurprisingly, it gave me a whole new appreciation for the amount of hard work and resources that go into producing each item of food we eat. What I didn’t expect was that it would also give me a newfound respect and gratitude for wild foraged foods: gifts from fields and forests, where mother nature single-handedly does all the work of bringing those plants to maturity.

Of all the wild foods to harvest, ramps (aka "wild leeks") are a long-time favorite. I still remember biting into a pickled ramp as a curious four-year-old, the sweet vinegar mingling with the pungent foresty garlic flavor. It’s a taste I never forgot and every spring I crave it. Aside from garlic mustard, another favorite wild green that grows everywhere, ramps are one of the first foods to show up in the spring, well before anything is ready in my garden, and they are such a treat! They grow in woodsy eco-systems all over the northeast of Canada and the United States but these days, ramps are at risk of being overharvested and in some regions, they are considered endangered. So rather than harvest the full plant (with its tasty while bulb) as we did when I was a kid, the recommended method of harvesting ramps is to leave the bulb intact in the ground, and only harvest the leaves, ideally just one leaf per plant.

Part of the reason we have to be so careful with our harvests is that wild leeks have become very popular in recent years, at farmers markets and in restaurants, yet it takes a ramp plant 5 to 7 years to produce a seed & then that seed can takes about a year to germinate. So overharvesting a patch doesn’t give the plants enough time to reproduce and can quickly decimate it altogether. I consider myself extremely lucky to live near a forest that is home to an enormous thriving patch of ramps that no one else seems to know about. And each year, as I learn more about the plant, I try to harvest it even more reverently and cautiously than the previous year.

I’ve used ramps in everything from omelets to pickles but the very best use I’ve found for their leaves is to make ramp pesto. On pasta, nothing compares! But this spring, because of the explosion of bread and babkas on my social media feed, I was inspired to try my hand at a ramp pesto babka. Babkas are showy and fun to make and although they look complicated, the method is actually quite simple and yields impressive results. If you can’t find yeast right now but you have some sourdough starter, there are some great sourdough babka recipes online such as this one. One thing about babkas: even when they’re messy and imperfect, they still look gorgeous! Ramp pesto gives this babka an intoxicating fragrance, reminiscent of garlic bread. However, keep in mind you can use any type of pesto. Classic basil pesto works beautifully, you don’t have to use ramps.

Since self-isolation and distancing have prevented me from doing farm visits, I’m temporarily going back to my original Kitchen Vignettes format, and putting all my love into a few upcoming special episodes from my home kitchen. I hope you enjoy them!