Note Culinaire, April 24, 2026

Food

Audio By Carbonatix

Hi there and welcome to another week here at C’est si Bon. Spring is in full swing, although the weather has still been somewhat cold and dreary here in the NYC Tri-State. The spring blooms and seasonal vegetables are in abundance, though, however cold the weather. Lilacs and cherry blossoms are blooming and Morel mushrooms and ramps are starting to show up on restaurant menus. 

I’ll be bringing you a review of one such restaurant next week, where I had the absolute pleasure of enjoying a gorgeous seasonal spring menu. 

This week’s menu is an ode to my very favorite fleeting spring allium, the ramp. Technically, it’s a wild garlic and it must be foraged. It cannot be deliberately grown, hence its scarcity. If they are in grocery stores at all, they tend to show up between the last week of April and first week of May. I’m still waiting for them to come in at the store in which I usually find and purchase them. 

So while I wait, I’m bringing you a recipe of my favorite way to prepare them—a compound butter. Making the butter allows me to enjoy their delicate oniony flavor for more than just two weeks out of the year—I  freeze it and use it all year long. If you’re lucky enough to get your hands on some, I highly recommend doing the same. 

If you don’t happen upon any ramps this spring, you can still make my recipe for avocado toast with perfectly jammy eggs. I make it when I want a satisfying meal, but am not in the mood to cook something complicated. That’s all for this week… come back next week for my review of the very special restaurant I dined at recently.