10 Underestimated Spring Fruits and Vegetables to Sink Your Teeth in Now

Blythe Copeland
Living / Green Food
April 19, 2010

Ahh, spring. After months of eating from your stores of winter vegetables, canned relishes, and frozen fruit, nothing tastes as good as the bounty of a spring garden. From the first ramps of April to the flavor-packed punch of morels, pile these fruits and vegetables on your plate in the coming months -- particularly if they are local and seasonal to where you live. To help you along, each listing contains a tasty recipe.

Ramps

Start with ramps, wild leeks that are becoming more popular every season--even at the risk of being overpicked -- and that add an onion-y flavor that many chefs prefer over scallions or chives. Foodies -- and gardeners -- love them for more than the taste, though: As author David Kamp told Time magazine, "The ramp is not a salad green, but it is a green vegetable, and it is the first legitimately green thing that appears from the ground in April, a month that, in terms of farm yield, is otherwise an extension of winter."

Try them in a ramp, bacon, and ricotta tart -- and then stock up on the rest of these seasonal treats before fall.