Probably inspired by too much Top Chef, I woke up with an idea in my head for a great pretentious restaurant name.

**The place:** An upscale cafeteria located on the fourth floor of a large hospital.

**The name:** IV

We’re still eating our way through the Anson Mills grits. Iris and I tried the quick grits the other day. In Anson Mills country, “quick” means half an hour of cooking instead of 90 minutes (but see below). They’re good, but they’re not really that different from Albers quick grits, which cook in ten minutes and cost much less. So if you’re ordering from Anson, which I recommend (especially since they just redid their [web site](http://www.ansonmills.com/), stick to the antebellum grits.

Sticking to the old-school grits doesn’t mean you have to stand watch by the pot, like they did before the Civil War. If you soak them overnight (just combine the grits and water in the saucepan and put the lid on), they cook in 30-40 minutes. I’ve gotten better at removing the chaffy bits, too. But the best thing to do with your cooked grits is to put them in the fridge so you can slice them and make gritcakes.

If you’ve had fried or grilled polenta, you know what I’m talking about. These are even better. Just slice the cooked grits about 1/2-inch thick, dredge them in a little flour, and fry them up. As for my preferred cooking oil, it rhymes with “chard.” The cakes cook about four minutes per side on medium-high. Iris dipped hers in syrup. But it’s hard to improve on plain.

There sure are a lot of good fried leftovers. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a risotto cake.

I managed to nab one of the last two bunches of ramps at Frank’s Produce yesterday.

Ramps (also known as wild leeks, ramsons, and probably some kind of cool hillbilly name like stinkgrass) are one of those stubbornly seasonal and wild crops. They appear for a few weeks in the spring and that’s it. Ramps have beautiful floppy broad leaves and an unforgettable aroma. I held one to Iris’s nose and she said, “Smells like ramps!”

They’re native to the eastern US and grow profusely in various parts of the country, including parts of the Northwest. I tried to forget this fact while paying $3 for a tiny bunch of ramps at Frank’s.

I’ve eaten ramps at fancy restaurants, but never cooked with them at home before. Luckily, I found that a few ramps go a long way. Last night I made ramp pizza. I kind of buried the ramps–probably I should have ditched the tomato sauce–but it’s hard to smother a ramp completely. Iris didn’t like the ramp leaves, but she ate all the stem pieces off the pizza before biting into each slice. (Although she insisted those were not “ramp stems,” just “ramps.”)

There were a few ramps left in the fridge, so I asked Iris, “Should I make some scrambled eggs with ramps for breakfast?”

“For Iris!” she replied.

So I did, using mostly stems. Predictably wonderful. Iris wasn’t very hungry, but she pulled a few ramp stems out and ate them. Our house smells like ramps. A guy I know, Allen, lives in Texas and says that every spring when people mow their lawns, you can smell ramps for miles. I’m not home, but I think I smell some now. It’s probably coming from my skin.

Oh, I learned one more important piece of information. According to this page, “ramp pizza” is a slang term associated with the great sport of barefoot waterski jumping:

> “Ramp Pizza” is what you are if you fall on the ramp.

I have big flat feet, so I’d probably be awesome at barefoot waterski jumping.

Normally I am a major cheese booster. The [Seattle Cheese Festival](http://www.seattlecheesefestival.com/) is coming up, and I’m going to be hanging out in Artisanal Alley, scarfing down as much as they’ll allow.

Cheese is so powerful, however, that when you cook with it, it can snuff out other flavors. This is why Italian cookbooks are always warning against the overuse of Parmesan. There’s a series of water conservation bus ads in Seattle, one of which says: OVERWATERING DROWNS PLANTS. The Parmesan principle is similar. Naturally, I disregard this principle all the time, and so does Iris, who has recently learned how to grate her own Parmesan onto her pasta. I encourage this, because it’s the only nonmelted cheese she likes.

Dinner on Monday really brought home how a carpet of cheese can sweep flavor under the rug. We often make chicken enchiladas with red chile sauce, the classic American kind with lots of chili powder and cheddar. We all love them, but on Monday, inspired by Rick Bayless’s awesome book Mexican Everyday, I made a completely different kind of enchilada. These were *enchiladas verdes*, made with tomatillo sauce and filled with spinach, mushrooms, red onions, and (because I had some left over from the endive adventure) Westphalian ham. Instead of rolling the enchiladas and baking them, these enchiladas are dipped in sauce, rolled, further sauced, and served immediately on heated plates. Bayless calls for some crumbles of *queso seco*, but I didn’t have any, so I just left off the cheese and garnished with some raw red onion.

These are the best enchiladas I’ve ever had. (Maybe tied with the green chile chicken enchiladas at Barbacoa.) Even beyond the fact that anything with tomatillos is good, these were a brilliant synthesis of flavors, and we all gobbled them.

Today I was down at Pike Place Market in search of ramps (I found them), and I stopped at the Mexican grocery and bought some *queso seco*. I’ll never learn.