Finally found ramps at the farmers’ market. Hot damn.

I’m convinced Spring is here now that I’ve seen the herbs and ramps at the Union Square Greenmarket — let allergy season commence! Despite feeling like a kid in a candy store, I kept my purchases reasonable and only bought some winter baudolino and cave-aged cheddar cheeses from Bobolink Dairy and two bunches of ramps.

Just in case you missed it — ramps! They’re here! (They’re queer! Get used to it!)

Last weekend’s Seder was a success; Miriam did most of the heavy lifting, and the only thing I really screwed up was overcooking some asparagus, which I put into the fridge for later comsuption. Heidi’s recent post on plump pea dumplings convinced me that we needed to have them in our lives, and I thought the asparagus would be a natural addition to the filling. Alas, it was not meant to be, as I am lazy. After work, the last thing I wanted to do was slave over wonton wrappers and spilling filling, so the asparagus languished too long and turned in a way that only asparagus can.

:: shudder ::

So I made the dumplings Saturday using my greenmarket find. I cooked one bunch of the ramps in some bacon fat (yummmm) and mixed it with about a cup and a half of peas, lots of black pepper, and two teaspoons of sumac instead of lemon rind; my lemon was nearing its final journey to the afterworld and I thought it should arrive complete with the rind that saw it through its full life on earth. Otherwise, I stayed true to the original recipe.

The easy part, she is over. Now the sealing must begin.

OK, not as bad as expected. And they even held together as they cooked.

I fried them in just enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan and they were really something — creamy, fresh and vegetal, like Spring in a bite-sized wrapper.

But we have lots of filling left over, which gives me an idea for another dinner…

Happy 2008, everyone! Keeping with our tradition, Gil and I stayed in for a movie marathon last night rather than endure the crowds in the city and the loooong drive home. This year’s feature: The Lord of the Rings trilogy. (No, really, it was his idea. Something about the big screen HDTV, battle scenes, I dunno. I wasn’t going to argue.) We started late and only got up to about the 45-minute mark of The Two Towers, but it’s a rainy day, so I’m sure we’ll finish what we started before nightfall.

With hours of Middle Earth fun ahead of us, I wanted to make something festive for dinner that wouldn’t require too much time in the kitchen, and after my success with two recipes from Simple Chinese Cooking, I turned to its pages again for inspiration. The shrimp dumplings practically leaped off the page and demanded an audition, so I obliged, despite the potential for disaster — eviscerated dumplings churning in a pot of boiling water isn’t as appetizing as you might think. But Kylie Kwong’s step-by-step photo illustrations of dumpling assembly made the technique seem easy enough, and it really was.

Oops, looks like a bit of shrimp got away from me there. We’ll just ignore that.

Didn’t affect the outcome, at least:

Awww … they couldn’t be cuter if they were a pile of puppies frolicking on the cutting board. Hairier and much less sanitary, yes, but definitely not cuter.

Wonton regiment 24 reporting for duty!

And you may find this hard to believe (I certainly did), but not one dumpling burst in the boiling water! That’s a success rate I haven’t come near with homemade ravioli, so I think there’s something to Ms. Kwong’s techniques. Hmmm, maybe I’ll start making “tortellini” instead — sneaky, sneaky.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Gil and I have to get back to our movie research; he has a theory that Ed Wood was resurrected to direct Orlando Bloom in this trilogy, and I’m having trouble disproving it.