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I got some ramps at the NYC Union Square farmers market today and I am amped to use them. Any suggestions on preperation, I was thinking of sauteeing (that can't be spelled right) them with some broccoli rabe that I got.

Hello All, I have been reading this forums for a while now and this is my first post. Im interested in cooking a brisket and Ive seen a lot of conflicting information on the forums as well as elsewhere. Until recently I was quite certain that I wanted to follow the MC recipe which is to smoke it at a low temp for 7 hours, then SV at 63 C for 72 hours. However, last night I had a bad experience with a 30 hour eye of round done at 57 C, it was dry and not tender enough. Some additional info on that piece of meat. I had seasoned it with salt/pepper/chilli flakes and vacuum sealed it about a week before cooking. The end product had lost a lot of moisture and as a result was quite dry, also I feel that my temp was not high enough to tenderize the meat. There are two points where I am confused. 1. Time and temperature: MC says 72 hours @ 63 C. According to http://www.citizensousvide.com/brisket.html: Serious Eats did 10 hrs at 82.2 C, Doug Baldwin has done 24 hrs @ 80 and 48 hrs @ 57.2, Nom Nom Paleo has done 48 hrs @ 63.9 C, while another source says that the French Laundry has done 48 hrs @ 64 C. So many different recommendations. Then upon reading http://wiki.egullet.org/index.php?title=Sous_vide#Cooking_tough_proteins I get the impression that I should be cooking below 60 C, maybe 57 C? (so that collagenase can do its thing [as it seems to inactivate above 60 C], and prevent the collagen from wringing the moisture out of the meat as it denatures) and then possibly increase the temperature to 63 C to allow thermal tenderization (the mechanism of which is currently unclear to me) to take place. So maybe 24 hours at 57 C and another 48 Hours at 63 C? Another possible source of confusion could be that some recipes are for the point vs for the flat which seem to have different compositions. The meat I bought says flat, I am not confident enough to try to identify it (I could post a picture if that would help). 2. To season before SV or not? I feel that a possible reason that the eye of round came out dry is because I had it vacuum sealed with salt for about a week before I cooked it. This may have lead to moisture being drawn out of the meat (though I did not see notable moisture in the bag before cooking). The MC recipe is quite curious in that it says nothing of seasoning the meat. Simple that one should smoke it and then SV it, finally brushing some BBW sauce on it after slicing it. But I do see many recipes both on these forums as well as elsewhere where people season before the long SV cook. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would like my brisket to turn out pinkish and not gray on the inside, but I would be happy with gray meat if it was tender and moist.

question -- if i were to blanch ramps for pesto, is three minutes too much? i've seen recipes that call for five seconds to as many as three minutes. and yes, i could just as well not blanch them but that's not what i asked.