Tuesday, April 05, 2011

 Ramps are Back! Spinach Deal!

Clockwise from top left: spring
onions, leeks, ramps
Ramps and morels are sure signs that spring is here -- even if they have to be "imported" from other states.

Iovine Brother's Produce had them Saturday. The ramps, as you can see from this photo, were thin on the leaves, but the bulbs were nice. Great to add to home fries made in bacon fat. I used the morels (along with hedgehogs and chanterelles) to surround a de-ramekened portion of crustless quiche; I topped the fungi with a shallot-inflected beurre blanc. That and a good baguette welcomed spring to my kitchen. The ramps were priced at $1.99 for a small bunch, which, IIRC, is a better deal than last season.

Bagged flat leaf spinach at Iovines was a big seller last week at the Reading Terminal Market. Given how much spinach cooks down, if you had a hankering for creamed spinach to accompany some steak this deal would have been hard to resist. Other good deals at Iovine's over the weekend included Texas sweet onions, 69 cents (pretty good while you're waiting for Vidalia season), both lemons and limes at a more reasonable 25 cents apiece, and two heads of Iceberg lettuce for a buck.

The Chilean grapes have yet to reach bargain levels so far this winter, but with the season peaking south of the Equator, maybe they will soon. The best price I've seen for seedless whites has been $1.49, but they're usually $1.99; reds and blacks are $2.49 and up. I actually found a better deal for bigger seedless whites at Whole Foods a couple of weeks ago: that's a rare occurence given than Iovines usually beats WF on both quality and price for just about everything.

Spinach deal at Iovine's last weekend

1 comment:

phillychuck said...

Wonderful spinach. We cooked down nearly the entire bag into a recipe of spinach paneer - for which there happened to be a recipe in the Inquirer last week!

Post a Comment