Spring Ramp, Radish & Spinach Soup recipe (2024)

As much as I love the hearty sugar shack fare we enjoy during sugaring off season in Quebec, I’m ready to lighten up for spring.

Last weekend, we had one final maple-coated feast, which we were privileged to enjoy with Alana and family, who were passing through town. Cider-glazed ham, maple baked beans, tourtiere, and heaps of roasted asparagus with ramps kept us around the table for over an hour. Then dessert – maple taffy poured on a slab of snow from my chest freezer – kept us at the table a while longer.

Later, the children scattered to play a board game while we lingered over coffee and discussed blogging, cookbook writing, food and family. It was wonderful to have a slow afternoon, with no nagging thoughts about what I should be doing instead. Since handing in my manuscript for Brown Eggs and Jam Jars, I’ve been reveling in the spare hours and the respite from the enormous project.

It’s a new season, both out and about on the homestead, as well asin my work life of blogging and book writing. Today’s soup recipe feels like a cleanse, and in many ways it could be squarely placed in thedetox camp. I wholeheartedly believe inspring cleaning my body with real foods, so consider this the beginning.

Around the homestead, the ramps are the earliest harvest. Sure, garlic is up, rhubarb is shooting forth leaves, and the chives have re-grown, but the wild leeks are first ready for picking and come into the kitchen by way of the forest.

In the past, I’ve tossed them in a warm potato salad, sprinkled them into omelettes, and roasted them with mushrooms, but this year I had soup on the brain and I couldn’t shake the thought.

We’ve been having an absolute deluge of spring rain. It has been so damp, all I want to do is burrow under a quilt and sip tea. The craving for soup has not passed with the snow; it’s still very much alive.

What is the perfect spring soup, though? This was my quandary. You can’t go wrong with a simple cream of asparagus, enhancedwith a splash of white wine, but that is playing it too safe. Hearty stews? Out of the question. Chowder? Save it for corn season.

I wanted to create a soup that looked and tasted like spring. A little earthy, yet light, vibrant, and still simple. So I started with the seasonal ingredients I had on hand: small radishes, firm asparagus, tender spinach and freshly-picked ramps from my back yard.Roots, stems, leaves – everything went into the pot and melded together in a smooth and fragrant soup, ideal for the season.

A slice of fresh ginger root and homemade vegetable stock rounded out the soup, although chicken stock would work well, too. The vegetables were cooked gently and uncovered to preserve their colour; covering green vegetables during the cooking time leads to brown results.

Making your own vegetable stock serves two main purposes: it uses kitchen scraps that might otherwise go into the garbage or compost and it yields a fragrant broth that is suitable for a myriad of dishes. Light pasta sauces, risotto, vegetarian main dishes, and delicate soups all benefit from a homemade stock.

This ramp, radish & spinach soup turned out to beexactly what I was craving: undeniably healthy, but comforting, too. It was a spring in a spoon, even though the rain continued to fall and the light in my dining room remained moody.

A splash of rice vinegar and a generous portion of sea salt balanced out the sheer amount of vegetables in the mix and the ginger root came through subtly but unmistakably. This one is going in the books for an official post-sugaring off detox dish.

Do you have a preferred soup in spring? Which vegetables are making their way into your kitchen this month?