Spring is one of the most evocative times of year. Here in New Haven, we’ve had our fair share of rain and overcast, and now with the sun shining it feels like the season is finally here. We’ve passed our last frost date, and all those April (and May) showers did indeed bring flowers. There’s life again!
I love spring for that reason. The promise of New. The green of life. The buzzing of bees. The dandelions and mugwort that need to be pulled… Okay, I could do without that, but I guess when you’re truly living you can’t earnestly take in all the good without expecting a little bad (and we should be so lucky that weeds are the worst of our hardship).
Then there are the harvests to enjoy. Asparagus spearing up from the ground, greens growing like bouquets, fresh peas hanging, nestled in their pods from trailing tendrils, rhubarb—oh, rhubarb!—and fresh herbs are just an arm’s length away in the garden. But for me, spring still holds the remembrance of days of winter passed. Nights are still cool, and warming comfort is still needed. I don’t throw myself into warm-season cooking just yet. I need bright and cheery eating, teasing me with thoughts of summer, but also coziness that coddles the still cold nights.
The ultimate spring dinner for me is my appropriately named Spring Chicken. Roasted chicken, a staple of winter cooking, is greeted with the tender offerings of spring: baby new potatoes, asparagus, fresh artichokes, and baby arugula. The gravy you might normally see with roasted chicken is traded for a lighter sauce—a vinaigrette of sorts—made from what some might refer to as the undisputed king of spring: ramps.
Ramps, or wild leeks, are harvested from the dark cover trees in heavily wooded areas and have recently been considered all the rage by chefs, foodies, and forest foragers. More recently though, they’ve started to fall out of vogue, many claiming that their 15 minutes has passed, or that they were never even special enough to begin with, but rather simply the first vegetation to grow in spring worth getting excited about, or, morels aside, one of the last truly wild vegetables that we eat—mere novelty. Fashionable or not, though, I love them. They remind me of tasting a shallot for the first time every time I eat them; undoubtedly an allium, but also so much more. The subtle taste of onion, with a hint of garlic, is so ethereal and nuanced that I can’t consider disregarding them for whatever this year’s trend may be. But hey, I’m not someone that has to worry about “fashion-forward” accusations.
I finally had a free Saturday to visit the Wooster Square Farmers Market in New Haven, orchestrated by City Seed, and picked up some of the later season ramps sold by Waldingfield Farms. They can have such a short season so I can’t help but take advantage of them while they’re available. For this recipe, I puree the green tops with some olive oil, lemon juice, and white wine vinegar for a sauce, while the pale white and rosy bottoms are sliced and roasted with the chicken and vegetables. Other than that, the greens can be pureed in lieu of basil for a pesto while the bottoms get pickled, they can be sautéed and made into a compound butter, grilled, and so much more; it might be apropos, but sautéed and mixed in with scrambled eggs or in a frittata is unbelievable.
The ramps are an important part of this recipe, but they are just that: a part. There is chicken in there after all. I break down a whole chicken into 10 pieces—two legs, thighs and wings, and four breast pieces, each split breast being cut in half horizontally through the breastbone (though, I do usually end up only cooking eight of these pieces; the wings don’t usually get eaten here so I tend to freeze them for stock-making later, but feel free to cook them if you prefer). These pieces get roasted, very low and very slow, with lemon, garlic, thyme and wine until it is so ridiculously tender you’ll find it hard to consider cooking chicken any other way going forward. After the chicken is cooked to a tenderness that will make you weep, fresh artichokes and baby potatoes are tumbled in and roasted, then asparagus, and those illustrious, ivory ramp bottoms.
I do want to mention that using fresh artichokes does give you something totally different from what their frozen or canned friends would. Roasted, these soften beautifully, but they retain a toothsomeness that you would never get from their ultra-soft counterparts. If you ask me it’s just as well; against the buttery soft texture of the chicken, it’s a welcome contrast. It does also mean a bit more work, though nothing too strenuous, having to peel a number of leaves, scoop out the fibrous choke, and clean the now exposed hearts up before submerging in acidulated water to keep from oxidizing. These are not like avocados, which can take a while to oxidize; mere seconds after cutting and peeling leaves away from the heart they begin to brown. Another mention to make is that when it comes to fresh artichokes, there is a lot of waste. A whole artichoke can weigh in at two pounds, but once cleaned, its heart can only come in at a few ounces. Much of the artichoke that you see isn’t edible. You just have to accept it and move on.
This is the perfect way to celebrate spring. It’s comforting and warm all the while being fresh tasting, letting you know that those dark winter days are fleeting and summer is just around the corner. Regardless of how captivated the zeitgeist is with ramps these days, I love them. They’re so fleeting, their seasonality being so short, so using them with gusto is a not only understandable, but also necessary in order to get your fill while they’re available. The method of this recipe is pretty adaptable—swap out the asparagus and artichokes with butternut squash and parsnips in the winter, or peppers and tomatoes or zucchini in the summer, and using scallions in lieu of ramps—you’ll find yourself making any variation of this you can imagine. And don’t stop yourself from making this just because you’re serving fewer people; shred any leftover chicken and toss with leftover dressing for an amazing chicken salad sandwich or wrap the next day. Talk about reinvention and rebirth. Pretty fitting, right?
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| Servings | Prep Time |
| 6 - 8 | 1 hour |
| Cook Time |
| 2 hours, 40 minutes |
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Bone-in chicken is roasted low and slow until meltingly tender, then scattered with baby new potatoes, fresh artichokes, and asparagus. Served over a bed of baby arugula and topped with a sauce made of ramps--the king of spring--this is the ultimate way to celebrate the season!
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- 1 6-pound chicken broken down into 10 pieces (see note)
- 1 head garlic cloves separated, left whole and unpeeled
- 4 tablespoons olive oil divided
- 1/4 cup dry white wine (such as chardonnay)
- 2 lemons 1 cut into eights, the other juiced
- A few sprigs fresh thyme
- 4 - 6 globe artichokes
- 12 ounces baby new potatoes halved
- 12 ounces asparagus wood endds removed, cut into 1-1/2" long pieces
- 4 ounces baby arugula
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves
- 1 t-spoons kosher salt
- About 12 - 16 ramps (6 - 8 ounces untrimmed), cleaned very well
- 1/4 cup fresh parsley leaves
- 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice freshly squeezed
- 1 t-spoon white wine or champagne vinegar
- 1 t-spoon Dijon mustard
- 1/2 t-spoon kosher salt
- Preheat the oven to 300°
- Place the chicken, lemon chunks, garlic, sprigs of thyme, wine, 2 tablespoon of the olive oil, and a generous bit of salt in a roasting tray. Smoosh it all around with your hands so everything is evenly coated, and spread in a single layer with the chicken skin-side up. Cover the tray with foil, place in the oven, and roast for 2 hours.
- In the meantime, halve the potatoes, and prepare the asparagus. Snap the woody ends off a few asparagus and use that as a guide on where to remove the ends from the rest. Chop them into 1 – 1 ½” pieces and set aside.
- Now, make the dressing: remove the tops from the ramps and puree in a food processor, along with the parsley, until minced. Add in the oils and puree until everything is smooth, before adding in the lemon, vinegar, Dijon, and salt. Blend just to combine, then transfer to a bowl or container and set aside.
- Juice the remaining lemon into a bowl of water, large enough to fit all of the cleaned artichokes in (which frankly, just needs to be about a quart capacity). Prepare the artichokes: one at a time, remove all of the leaves until you’re left with the pale upper leaves. Chop the tender top leaves off where they meet the heart, and scoop out the fibrous choke out from the heart and then, using a vegetable peeler, clean the outer edges and stem of the heart. Trim the bottom of the stem so there’s just about an inch left on the heart. As you finish each one, transfer it to the bowl of lemony water to keep them from oxidizing.
- Once the chicken’s 2 hours are up, remove it from the oven and unveil. Turn the oven up to 400°.
- Remove the chicken to a plate and discard the what’s left in the pan—everything else has done its work now—and wipe the pan out a little before adding the chicken back to the pan.
- Dry the artichoke hearts, quarter them, and toss with the potatoes and a bit more oil and salt. Return to the oven for 15 – 20 minutes, until the potatoes are halfway cooked.
- Slice the rosy and pale bottoms of the ramps into thin rounds, toss them with the asparagus and a little more oil and salt again. Once the 15 – 20 minutes are up, tumble these over the pan and roast for another 15 – 20 minutes, until the potatoes are perfectly soft and the asparagus are tender-crisp at the very least.
- Create a bed of peppery baby arugula on a large platter. Scatter with the remaining parsley leaves and then transfer the chicken and vegetables to the platter. Spoon the dressing over the chicken and serve immediately.
- Personally, I don’t bother cooking the wings—nobody ever eats them. Instead, I throw them into a freezer bag, along with the back bone, and stash in the freezer for making stock out of later.