This is just the best thing when your ingredients are this good! The flavors are simple and clear and big and powerful and delicate and creamy all at once. It's messy and sexy and super, super satisfying.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb Beautiful Morels – they need to be super fresh.
• ½ lb Ramp Leaves and Bulbs or as many as you can reasonably consume. You want a lot.
• 4 beautiful eggs from someone you know like James and Linda at Q Farms
• 4 Thick slices of a whole local grain sourdough with big personality
• Microplaned zest of 1 lemon – extra credit if you have your own tree. I don’t.
• 3 tbsp beautiful olive oil
• 2 tbsp Canola Oil
• Sea Salt
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp White Vinegar or other neutral vinegar for egg poaching. It’s important.

Preparation:

Clean the ramps well, separating leaf from bulb if you get bulbs (it’s more sustainable for the patch if you leave the bulbs when you harvest). Slice the ramp bulbs VERY thinly crosswise. Leave the leaves whole.

Clean the morels. For small ones you can take a peek inside and see if anyone’s living in there and pull them out with tweezers. For big morels, split them open and brush any dirt or unsavory creatures from the mushroom. Give them a bath in lukewarm water to pull any more dirt out, then lift them out to a towel to dry. Give them time to dry.

Fill a 10qt or larger pot with 5 inches of water, add the vinegar and bring the pot up to a boil. The vinegar helps hold the egg together when it poaches. It’s magic.

Heat a 10” sautee pan over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp canola oil, then the sliced ramp bulbs. Move them around in the pan, stirring to soften the bulbs about 2 minutes. Don’t let them get any color. Then add your morels. If they’re still wet they will steam in the pan. That’s OK, but we want them to sautee a bit. Move them around the pan, adding more canola oil if the pan is too dry. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Cook the mushrooms just until they relax. They will fight, they’ll suck up oil, they’ll stay stiff – and then they’ll just give up and relax. That’s the point you want.

When the mushrooms have relaxed, add ALL the ramps. Mix them through. And if you have any left over add them too. Season again with salt, keep mixing them through JUST until the ramps change color. They do this amazing thing like the mushrooms when they puff up like little balloons, then they change from light green to dark green. When they all have changed color, pull them off the heat, add a drizzle of that super nice olive oil you have.

Now, grill the bread. If you happen to have a hot grill for this, great. You can also roast the bread in a pan with a little olive oil or butter on both sides till it’s golden brown. When the bread is grilled, put 1 slice on 4 plates. Or 2 slices on 2 plates.

The eggs! Poach the eggs. Crack all your eggs into small dishes or coffee cups. With the water at a pretty rolling boil, use a large slotted spoon to spin the water around in a circle. Let it get moving pretty well, then gently lower your eggs in one by one. They should spin and hold together in one piece. You can do this in batches. Cook about 4 minutes, or until the yolk is just getting cooked, and if you pull one egg out and poke on it the white is firming up. It should still be pretty runny.

Gently pull each egg out with your large slotted spoon, and drain the water off against a towel if you want to and put it on the toast. Do the rest of the eggs. Divide the ramps and morels among your plate and your very lucky guests’ plates. Drizzle with a bit more olive oil, add some crunchy sea salt, a grind or two of black pepper, and a microplane of lemon over the top. And go!

If you want, this toast loves wild onion grass, basil….and the amazing triple cream cheese that Rock Cobble makes. You can keep that on the side or spread it around on the toast. Now your guests are REALLY lucky.