Ramps are hyper-seasonal and are sometimes called wild leeks or spring onions. While they do belong to the same family (Allium) they are neither leek nor onion. Ramps are foraged as opposed to cultivated. As far as I know, attempts to farm ramps have failed and they only grow in the wild. Here’s an article from Eater if you want to learn more about ramps.

Ramps have a mild garlic flavor with a hint of leeks. They taste amazing sautéed in butter or bacon grease. I’ve made them with eggs and even added them raw to a salad. Chefs and cooks also like to pickle the stems to preserve them beyond early spring.

Because of the garlic notes, I thought they would be great with pasta. Pasta carbonara is pretty easy to make and a favorite at my house. Traditionally, pasta carbonara is made with peas. I decided to substitute the peas in the recipe for the ramp greens and use the ramp stems in place of the garlic.

This has become, hands down, my favorite way to eat ramps and my favorite way to make pasta carbonara. The mild yet wild taste of the ramps works perfectly with the bacon and creamy egg sauce.

Cooking Tips

Prepare the egg sauce before the pasta is cooking to ensure that the spaghetti will be hot and ready when the sauce is added; it is very important that the pasta is hot when adding the egg mixture so that the heat of the pasta cooks the raw eggs in the sauce.

Don’t forget to reserve the pasta water. In the heat of the moment, I often forget to reserve some pasta water when I drain the pasta. You will need to add some of the pasta water as the egg & cheese sauce is setting to make it creamier. The starchy pasta water works way better for this than just plain water.

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Pasta Carbonara with Ramps

When ramps are in season I head to the farmer's market. This is, hands down, my favorite way to eat ramps and my favorite way to make pasta carbonara.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Italian

Keyword dinner, pasta, ramps

Prep Time 15 hours hours

Cook Time 10 hours hours

Total Time 1 day day 1 hour hour

Servings 4

Ingredients

• 1 lb dry spaghetti
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 4 oz pancetta or slab bacon, cubed or sliced into small strips
• 1 bunch ramps (8-12 stalks)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more for serving
• Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

• Beat the eggs and Parmesan together in a mixing bowl, stirring well to prevent lumps. Cut stems from ramps where the white meets the green. Chop stems and cut greens about one inch wide.
• Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until tender yet firm (as they say in Italian 'al dente'). Drain the pasta well, reserving 1/2 cup of the starchy cooking water to use in the sauce if it gets too dry.
• Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. Add the pancetta and sauté until the bacon is crisp and the fat is rendered. Toss the ramp stems into the fat and sauté for less than 1 minute to soften.
• Add ramp greens and the hot, drained spaghetti to the pan and toss for 2 minutes to coat the strands in the bacon fat and wilt the greens.
• Remove the pan from the heat and pour the egg/cheese mixture into the pasta, stirring quickly until the eggs thicken, but do not scramble (this is done off the heat to prevent this from happening). Thin out the sauce with a little bit of the reserved pasta water at a time until it reaches desired consistency. Season the carbonara with several turns of freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste. Mound the spaghetti carbonara into warm plates or bowls and sprinkle a little more cheese over the top.

The post Pasta Carbonara with Ramps appeared first on Shoot What You Eat.

For a while, I was quite the tortilla soup connoisseur. I never passed up an opportunity to sample a bowl when going to a restaurant I had never been before. There are so many variations, I had to try as many as I could before I figured out how to make my recipe. The best ones were the simple ones that let the key ingredients shine. It’s not a stew — it’s a soup, so the ones with tons of corn, other veggies and thick, creamy broth kind of pissed me off (I’m very serious about tortilla soup). After a while, I ceased to be surprised that, for many restaurants, anything you put in a bowl with tortilla strips qualified as tortilla soup.

For this recipe, I created an amalgamation of the best soups I’d eaten over the years. The result is a simple, yet flavorful broth with nothing solid but chicken to start. It is a chicken base with a little tomato for color and chipotle for some smoky heat.

All of the other flavors are added when you serve. The rich avocado chunks, melted cheese goodness, cilantro kick and the salty crunch of fresh-made tortilla strips are added to each bowl and the soup ladled over to fill the bowl. Yes, you have to make the tortilla strips fresh. Don’t be a pansy.

A fun way to serve is to have the pot of soup with all the ingredients around and people can assemble the final soup themselves, family-style.

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Tortilla Soup

This tortilla soup is a simple version with tomato-chicken broth, shredded chicken, avocado, and tortilla strips as the stars of this soup.

Course Main Course

Cuisine Mexican

Keyword chicken, fried tortillas, soup

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Ingredients

• 2 quart Chicken stock
• 8 oz can Tomato Sauce
• 1 can Chiptotle in adobo sauce
• 1 Yellow Onion roughly chopped
• 1 bunch Cilantro
• Meat from a roasted chicken
• Diced avocado
• Corn tortillas
• Shredded cheese

Instructions

• Put chicken stock in a pot and bring to a slow boil. While the stock heats up, combine chopped onion, half of the cilantro leaves and chipotle in a food processor. It’s a good idea to start with one chili to test the heat — you can always add more later. Add a little stock and pulse until the mixture is a paste. Add the mixture to the pot of stock and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and add chicken.
• Heat enough oil in a pan to cover a layer of tortilla strips. Cut corn tortillas into strips and add to heated oil a layer at a time. Do it in small batches or they’ll stick together and burn. When they are golden, remove from the oil and place on paper towels and salt while still hot. (If you have a fryer, use that instead.)
• Assemble the soup one bowl at a time. Start with the avocado chunks, then sprinkle the shredded cheese over generously and add some chopped cilantro. Ladle the soup over the small stack and add the tortilla strips. The hot broth will melt the cheese into gooey goodness.

The post Tortilla Soup appeared first on Shoot What You Eat.

As soon as we drove up, it was all I could do not to run out of the car and start spinning around like a young Maria singing, “The hills are alliiive…”. Ok, maybe not that dramatic, but I was definitely a little giddy. When we pulled into the drive, there was a small gravel spot for a few cars in front of the Made in Ghent farm store.

As we got out of the car, Bumble, the farm’s steadfast retriever guard dog came barking up the path to welcome us (I assumed), followed by Richard Beavens. We all introduced ourselves (Bumble, quite enthusiastically), and Richard invited us into the farm store to meet his wife.

The farm store is a beautiful structure clad in reclaimed barn wood with a metal siding roof. The main entrance is a hallway through the building that splits it into a side with large refrigerators and freezers on the left and a beautiful large commercial kitchen on the right. This is where we were welcomed by Mimi Beavens into her domain. Having worked in and managed restaurants, Mimi rules the kitchen. A large part of the offerings of Made In Ghent are a variety of fresh baked bread and sweets made daily by Mimi.

Richard and Mimi were both born and raised in the UK. Richard was in advertising and later transitioned into commercial photography. They moved to Westchester over 11 years ago and in 2012, they bought a dilapidated 75-acre farm outside of the small town of Ghent. The property had not been a farm for over 40-years so there was a lot of rehabilitation involved. The land was overgrown and needed to be cleared and the farmhouse and barn were in such bad shape, they were torn down and completely rebuilt. Everything was built with the function of a small modern farm in mind.

Up on the hill opposite the farm store, they build a new modern farmhouse where they live with their two teenaged daughters. It’s a family business, and everyone does their share, especially in the summertime when there are more animals and the girls are on summer break.

No matter how busy they are, Richard and Mimi always have time to be hospitable (Bumble, too). After giving us a tour of the immediate area which included a nearby pond, Richard and Bumble took us deeper into the farm.

Up the gravel road is the new barn, also made from reclaimed wood, built into the side of the hill with two sides separated by a wide drive through that acts as an entryway to the agricultural part of the farm. Just through the barn to left a large chicken coop was built for the laying hens. To the right, the road travels past some bee hives and out to a large field where the mobile chicken coops are repositioned regularly to give the chickens fresh grass in which to forage. In the summer, there are upwards of 400 chickens roaming free around the coops.

Next to the field, is a forested area where 10-12 heritage breed pigs forage for acorns and other tasty treats. These are pretty happy pigs, snorting and grunting, free to roam through the wooded area. Don’t stand still around them, though. One came up and tried to take a chunk out of my knee while I was photographing another pig. Perhaps it was jealous. In the spring, a new batch of piglets are brought in to replace the ones that have been processed for the farm store.

Beyond the wooded area, the field rises up to a hill with more wooded areas on top. This area is mostly wild but Richard and Mimi have leased some land to a young farmer wanting to grow vegetables and herbs on the land. The farm is very much a work in progress as they are letting it evolve into a modern farm using traditional and sustainable farming practices.

The Beavens follow Animal Welfare Approved (AWA) standards for all of the laying hens, broiler chickens, and pigs. Their foraging diets are augmented with certified organic feed and all of the animals live in a quality environment with their well-being as the primary concern of the farm.

The farm shop sells the fresh eggs from the chickens as well as broiler chickens and a plethora of pork products from the animals raised on the farm. I can tell you first hand that the pork chops are, hands-down, the best I’ve ever had. The chicken is also fantastic. They definitely have a quality to the texture and taste that is clearly noticeable.

In addition to the cooking and farming that goes on, they have also started doing special dinners and various workshops. They have more to offer than I could possibly list here. You can find out more about the workshops, delicious foods Mimi cooks up in the kitchen, and the humanely-raise chicken and pork products they offer at their website, madeinghent.com.

Or, better yet, just hop in the car and make the drive to see the farm in person. The more I go the more I love it.

The post Little Ghent Farm – A Modern and Sustainable Farm appeared first on Shoot What You Eat.

While photographing over twenty variations of cider, I tasted more than a few, soon realizing that ciders were every bit as varied as craft beer and wine. It wasn’t long before I had picked out my favorites. Add cider to the growing list of things I’m snobby about (pizza, ramen, Mexican food, etc.).

We were talking about pairing cider with food and it wasn’t long until I started thinking about things I could cook using cider. I decided I was going to do some hard cider recipes and do some cross-promotion between shootwhatyoueat.com and hipcider.com. This was the first time I’ve ever really sat down to create a recipe for a specific purpose.

Admittedly, pork dishes are the low-hanging fruit (no pun) because everyone knows pork and apples go together. I figured a BBQ sauce using hard apple cider was a good place to get my feet wet. I don’t have a smoker, and trying to do ribs on a regular grill is just plain insane, so, I slow cooked the ribs: first in a dry rub sitting on a bed of onions, and then hard cider.

I put chipotle in the sauce because I like the kick and it adds some of the smokiness to the ribs that could be missing. I also finished the ribs on the grill to sear the meat and caramelize the sauce.

I don’t make ribs a lot, but I’ve made my fair share. I can honestly say that these are the most tender, fall off the bone and delicious ribs I have ever made.

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Hard Cider BBQ Ribs

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 4 hours hours 15 minutes minutes

Servings 4

Ingredients

• 1 rack pork spare ribs
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 cup hard apple cider

For the dry rub:

• 2 tbsp salt
• 1 tbsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp onion powder
• 1 tsp coriander (heaping)
• 2 tsp chili powder

For the sauce:

• 1 cup unsweetened apple butter
• 2 cup hard apple cider
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tblsp chipotle powder
• 1 tblsp cinnamon

Instructions

• Mix dry rub spices together and rub over both sides of ribs. Spread out onions on a sheet of foil large enough to fit the ribs with a few inches on all sides for sealing. Lay ribs on top of onions and place a piece of foil on top and seal the edges. Place the seal ribs on a pan and refrigerate for no less than 6 hours to overnight.
• Preheat oven to 225º. Open foil enough to pour 1 cup of cider in the bottom and reseal. Place ribs (in pan) in the oven for 6 hours. Pull ribs and let rest while making sauce. Even refrigerating them for a couple of hours will help them hold together on the grill.
• Combine apple butter, cider, brown sugar, chipotle powder and cinnamon in a saucepan over medium heat. Simmer until reduced by half and sauce thickens.
• Place ribs face down on hot grill and coat with almost half of the sauce. Let sear for a few minutes and then flip over. Slather with the rest of the sauce and close the lid for 3-5 minutes until the sauce on the top gets a glaze-like sheen. Remove and rest the ribs for a few minutes.

The post Hard Cider BBQ Ribs appeared first on Shoot What You Eat.

It’s the seafood version of the Chicago-New York pizza and hot dog battle: New York thin-crust pizza or Chicago deep-dish pizza? New York dirty-water dog or Chicago-style dog with all the fixings? The players in this lobster roll battle royale are the Connecticut-style and Maine-style lobster rolls. Always the intrepid explorer, I hit the road to Connecticut and then up to Maine to find out for myself.

I’m no stranger to the lobster roll. I had my frequent-buyers punch-card at Luke’s Lobster the first time I lived in NYC and I was no stranger to Red Hook Lobster Pound, either. What I’m saying is I had already pretty much made up my mind that I was a Connecticut-style guy. But, I’m always willing to challenge my beliefs and I’d never been to Maine, so I set out to sample from the source.

For those of you who don’t know, I’ll go over what the two lobster rolls are all about. Starting with the similarities, a lobster roll is usually on a New England split-top bun that has been lightly toasted with butter on a flat-top stove. The better lobster rolls strictly contain the claw and knuckle meat which is juicier and more tender (leave the tail meat for grilling). How the lobster is handled is where the two styles diverge. For Connecticut-style, the lobster meat is heated up in clarified butter and served warm, usually topped with a dash of Old Bay seasoning. The Maine-style roll tosses chilled lobster meat with a little mayo with a sprinkling of chives over the top. That’s it. Hot–butter, cold–mayo.

The first notable stop was in Connecticut. Lenny & Joe’s Fish Tale started out as a roadside clam shack in 1979. Now they have 3 locations and are a Connecticut institution.

The New England lobster roll tour begins in Connecticut. #swye #food #foodie #foodstagram #foodporn #lobsterroll

The roll was buttery, lightly toasted and filled to capacity with warm, buttered lobster. It’s so simple and so very good. Who doesn’t like melted butter over steamed lobster chunks? Connecticut set the bar pretty high for Maine to beat.

Since I have had plenty of Connecticut-style rolls, it was time to venture into Maine. If you’ve never been, the coast of Maine is quintessential New England. This is where nautical design and décor originated and it is effortlessly displayed all the way up the coast. Beautiful.

Also, quintessentially Maine are the many lighthouses along the coast. I have learned that one of the best lobster rolls was at a food cart at Fort WIlliams Park outside of Portland. Also at the park, Portland Head Light, one of the most famous lighthouses in New England. Done and done.

The multi-award-winning food cart is called Bite Into Maine and was set up in one of the parking lots. It was surprisingly small but fully stocked for the crowd gathered around. I muscled my way to the front (don’t these people know who I am?) to order up a Maine-style lobster roll. Unfortunately, they were out of the red potato salad which I would have liked to try. But they had plenty of lobster and some Maine blueberry soda, my beverage of choice with lobster rolls.

Lobster roll number two. Maine style from @biteintomaine amazeballs. #swye #food #foodporn #foodstagram #foodie #lobster #lobsterroll

We took our treasured rolls to a picnic table near the lighthouse to get the full New Englander experience. What can I say? Maybe it was the ambiance, but it was a better roll than the one at Lenny and Joe’s. Maybe the best I’ve had. Just enough mayo to add some flavor and fat without taking away from the huge chunks of perfectly cooked lobster meat.

Score a big one for Maine.

The last stop before heading back to the city was Scales in Portland. I had been there for an exceptional dinner the night before and decided to go back to try the lobster roll. It was on a very toasted buttered roll piled high with lobster, topped with mayo and chives. It was also served with an insane amount of french fries. Not my favorite.

There’s a whole bunch of lobster under that mayo and chives. #lobsterroll #lobster #foodie #foodstagram #foodporn #food #swye

The cost was pretty close to Bite Into Maine ($18 vs $19) but I’m guessing the nicer restaurant felt like they had to dress it up somehow with fries and the mayo on top. It’s much better mixed in. Some bites had too much mayo and some not enough. I’ve had some good lobster rolls at nice restaurants but I’ve had just as good or better at stands or seafood shacks.

But don’t take my word for it. Mike Urban literally wrote the book on road-tripping New England for the best Lobster Shacks. I’m going to take this book and head out to see how many of these places I can visit next summer.

By the way, forget what I said about choosing a side. There’s enough divisiveness in the world today. The only side you have to pick is which one you want today. Or get one of each. Two-fisting your lobster roll might be the best idea yet.

The post The Lobster Roll Rumble appeared first on Shoot What You Eat.

I volunteered for a Taste of the Nation event to benefit No Kid Hungry this summer. One of the unexpected perks of volunteering was an hour-long break to roam around and taste food. With many of the top restaurants and chefs present from LA, I had a ton of taste bud-dazzling food that day. The one that stood out the most was a dessert from Cliff’s Edge restaurant, with poached peaches and salted burrata drizzled with olive oil. I totally went back for seconds and maybe thirds, I can’t remember. Then it clicked. Cobalt blue plate, dark yellow peaches and white burrata made the perfect color combination for a food image.

Burrata, a creamy version of mozzarella with an outer shell of pure mozzarella and a soft interior of mozzarella and cream, giving it a smooth buttery flavor,  means ‘buttered’ in Italian. It is the perfect either/or for savory/sweet.

In this case, I decided to go a different way than the one I had at the Taste of the Nation event. Instead of poaching the peaches I decided to grill them, partly to bring out a darker peach color and partly because all the cool kids are grilling fruits these days. I also left the burrata alone, instead of salting it, because I wanted to drizzle it with honey rather than olive oil.

I have to admit, this was created with the image in mind first and taste coming in second. That being said, it’s pretty damn good.

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Grilled Peaches and Burrata

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 15 minutes minutes

Servings 2

Ingredients

• 2 peaches
• 1 container of burrata
• Honey
• Mint leaves for garnish
• Olive Oil

Instructions

• Cut peaches in half and remove pits. Cut peach halves into wedges. Coat with olive oil and place flesh side down on heated medium-high grill for 1-2 minutes (you can also use a grill pan on the stove). Turn over for another 1-2 minutes. Set peach wedges aside.
• Put a dollop of burrata on the plate and arrange peach wedges on top. Drizzle honey over peaches and burrata and garnish with mint leaves. If you like a savory kick, sprinkle a small pinch of sea salt.

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Sometimes, when I tell people what I do they say, “That sounds like a fun job.” I can’t deny it–it’s great work when you can get it. Then there’s Zack Brooks from the Food Is The New Rock podcast. He has a really fun job. He gets to talk to musicians about food and chefs about music. I worked with Zack for a while but what does an audio podcast really need a photographer for anyway?

The answer came when Zack called me to see if I was interested in shooting 5 LA chefs in their restaurant kitchens and then a dinner party. It was for a promotion Ultimate Ears was doing for their portable Bluetooth speaker, the UE Boom. “Uh, hell yes!” was my brilliant response.

The concept was family meal at the restaurant. The tradition of the staff eating a meal after prep and before service has been getting mainstream attention thanks to some books on the subject and industry Instagramers. The 5 chefs would share a family meal recipe and a music album that inspires them. My job was to get a shot of the chef in their kitchen and also a shot of the family meal. The challenge: often I had about 15 minutes to get in, get the shots and get out before the staff descended for their much-deserved dinner before service.

Setting up lights was definitely out of the question. I didn’t have the time or the space to do it. The best I could do was bring one or two Speedlites to strategically bounce some light around the kitchen. Shooting the food required some quick finesse. I got lucky at a couple of the restaurants and was able to shoot close to a window. The others I just winged it.

The chefs were Jeremy Fox at Rustic Canyon, Bruce Kalman at Union, Josef Centeno at Orsa & Winston, CJ Jacobson at Girasol, and Karen Hatfield at Sycamore Kitchen. Everyone was great and helped to accommodate me as best they could in the flow of the day.

The second part of the assignment was to shot an overhead of a table with all five family meals labeled with the chefs and their musical inspiration and then a party with people enjoying the food. This was a produced shoot so I could take the time to do what I wanted.

Thankfully, I was helped by food stylist Nicole Kruzick who cooked the five of the family meals. Prep for this shoot took all day to get ready for the evening party. While Nicole cooked, I set up for the overhead shot. I didn’t want to shoot it with a wide lens so I put the camera on a second floor landing with the table below.

Once the overhead shot was done, we transferred everything to the kitchen and let the people loose on the food while I captured the action. It was a long day but a really fun one.

I was able to capture some of the behind-the-scenes action for a ‘making of’ video.

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