Metro Pulse/Secret History/Consider the Ramp

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Is a hillbilly eccentricity becoming a yuppie staple?

by Jack Neely

When I first heard about this, it sounded like the definitive example of our rejection at our own culture. More often that not, we disown our best attributes, even as the world catches on. However, the more I think about this particular example, the less sure I am about it.

Consider the ramp. This is the weekend of the famous Cosby Ramp Festival. It's not the only ramp festival in America; the pungent herb is celebrated in annual festivals in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, as an Internet search proves. At least one ramp festival, in Raleigh, N.C., actually celebrates that mechanical wonder, the Inclined Plane. But most ramp festivals celebrate the wild mountain herb. Of those, the net's references suggest that Cosby's festival, which once attracted Harry Truman, may be the best known of all of them. Since Cosby is within an hour's drive of Knoxville, it does get on the local radar.

Once a year, one of the TV stations sends one of their more lovable reporter-scamps to cover the Ramp Festival in Cosby. The reporter arrives and first says something charmingly derogatory about the smell. He makes a face calculated to get a chuckle in suburban living rooms. Then he takes a bite, makes another face, and says something like, well, OK, whatever. The assumption in Knoxville is that nobody, anywhere, eats ramps except those demented hillbillies in Cosby.

However, a week ago Sunday, I happened to be listening to the public-radio show "The Splendid Table." It's a nationally popular culinary show that seems aimed at prosperous yuppies. I made a point to listen to that show because I'd heard that Jane and Michael Stern would be discussing the murky origins of Mississippi Delta tamales. I wondered if they might offer a clue to Knoxville's fairly ancient and equally inexplicable tamale traditions. The Sterns' descriptions were interesting, but didn't solve the mystery.

What got my attention was a separate feature on the same show about a completely different subject of local culinary interest. Host Lynne Rossetto Kasper had a long chat with another writer, well-known New York gourmet Sally Schneider, a former chef who writes about food for Vogue and Elle. Their conversation was about the preparation of ramps. Schneider freely confessed, with no tongue-in-cheek asides, that she loves ramps, thinks them to be delicious, and each spring makes a pilgrimage to a ramp festival in Helvetia, W.Va. She discussed the taste of ramps with Kasper, who, I was startled to realize, seemed familiar with them, describing them as a cross between garlic and leek with a little something else in the mix.

Matter-of-factly, Schneider stated she has several favorite ramp recipes; the one she offered on that show was called "Pasta with Ramps," which calls for extra-virgin olive oil, red peperoncini, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, half a pound of pasta, and a pound and a half of fresh ramps. The New Yorker recited the recipe flatly, without a smirk, as if eating ramps were a perfectly normal thing to do.

Kasper agreed that it sounded delicious, as she always does, and said that ramp recipes were important to have, "now that ramps are easy to find in your local market." This was a lady talking on Minnesota Public Radio.

Cooking and eating ramps used to be one of the few things left that East Tennesseans could do and shock Yankees. It's not working anymore. Kasper and Schneider make ramps sound like they're as common up north as rutabagas. They obviously have a much better idea of what to do with them in the kitchen than I do.

People sometimes ask me about ramps, assuming I know all about them. I don't.

I haven't been to the festival since I was

a kid, and I don't remember trying one. When I go to Cosby, I usually eat Mexican.

Knoxville may be the biggest city in America's prime ramp-cultivating region. The Cosby festival is said to have been inspired by Knoxville newspaper columnist Bert Vincent. You'd figure if they were in markets up North, they'd be in markets here. But the fact is that I've never, ever seen a ramp for sale in Knoxville.

I called around. Local Kroger produce managers say they've never carried ramps, that no Knoxville-area Kroger carries ramps, and I got the impression they didn't expect they would ever carry ramps. They didn't know where I might find some. Fresh Market sells various exotic clumps of greenery in its produce section, bok choy and the like. But they never carry ramps. "They're not wanted very much around this area of Knoxville," the produce manager told me. In calling around, I found out there's apparently no demand for them in any other area of Knoxville, either. One produce manager suggested I call the Knox County Regional Farmer's Market. I did. Even though it's high ramp season, they didn't have any ramps in this week. He added that somebody will bring some ramps in "just every once in a while."

Somehow, though, they're dependably handy in Minneapolis. Like bluegrass, ramps seem to be catching on in yuppiedom. But are they still too exotic, or too strong, for Knoxville's conservative tastes?

Or is it that the ramp isn't really Knoxville's culture so much as it is the culture of people who live 50 miles from here? Is it, therefore, only natural that it should emerge in the more open-minded cities of the North before it shows up in Knoxville? Beats me. I'm going to try to go to the festival this weekend and see what I can figure out.