Using the last of the ramp (wild leeks) as the season comes to a close: ramps can be mixed into butter. There are many anecdotal recipes across the Catskills. You can blanche the leeks first in hot water or heat the butter, but the best way to get the taste of the plant and all its raw nutrients is to just finely chop the ramps and mix them well into the butter. You’ll get the sweet onion taste, but not overwhelm the dish to which you add it. A knob of raw ramp butter on a steak or steamed fish, for example, will complement it well. You can add a couple of tablespoons of this butter to a stew before you serve it. The butter above will be going over roasted asparagus and into a Guinness stew.

Chop the ramps on a plastic surface, so you don’t lose any of the juice into a wooden chopping board. Soften the butter slightly – I tuck it in my armpit for a few minutes – and then fold the ramps into the butter and whip it for a few minutes. Ensure that every part of the chopped ramps are either fully submerged in the butter or, if the ramps stick out of the butter slightly, that they are thickly coated in it. You don’t have to worry about this too much if you freeze the final product, which makes it easier to handle. If you do freeze it, roll it in to a log, or similar shape to a stick of butter and wrap it in the discarded butter wrappers, so you can cut it into knobs when you use it.

It’s wild leek (ramp) season and this year we’ve had more than the usual amount of rain needed to nourish these delicate, wild beauties. Every local in the Catskills has their secret ramp spot and few years ago, I transplanted a handful of wild leeks to a shady, wet spot by our house that they love. They love a water source and our house at the top of a ridge has brilliant underground drainage, so when it rains, all the water flows downhill through the ramp patch. Our patch is now several patches. Just before they die off, they send up stalks with dark, perfectly spherical seeds that look like tiny balls of onyx.