Have You Ever Cooked Leeks?

If you’re stuck in a rut with onions, how about leeks?  Milder, sweeter, and more complex than yellow onions, leeks are amazingly versatile.  Use them in stews or soups, sauté them with other vegetables, or prepare them as a side dish on their own.  They are good hot, cold, or room temperature.  Although they are big and tough in their raw state (I think they resemble scallions on steroids), when cooked leeks are surprisingly tender. Although they are almost always cooked, you can even use very thin slices of raw leek in salads. 

 

How to Choose Leeks

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Onion Alternatives

This blog post is a tease, but hopefully you won't hold that against me.  Last week, as I roasted shallots along with the garlic I was using for bruschetta, I thought about how many wonderful alternatives there are to the plain, reliable old yellow onion.  Instead of burdening you with recipes or lots of information on onion alternatives, I decided to start this topic with a list of ideas and let you think about them - and perhaps come up with other alternatives - before getting down to specifics.

To me, yellow onions are a workhorse vegetable.  They sauté well and work in lots of different situations (think ratatouille , onion soup, chicken, and latkes) but they are basically boring. 

Raw, yellow onions have a sharp taste that I don’t generally like in sandwiches or salads, though I know that others do enjoy slices of onion on their bagels and lox or cut up in salad.  Even in my orange-onion salad, I prefer sweet or red onions to yellow ones. 

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Julia Child's Vichyssoise

I adore Julia Child for many reasons.  My love affair with everything Julia began in days of yore - before computers, cell phones, and cable TV celebrity chefs.  In the 1970s, I flambéd my way through my junior year of college.  Mastering the Art of French Cooking and a book of matches taught me more about experimentation than any science course I ever managed to barely pass.  Through several of her books and countless episodes of her cooking shows, I learned more valuable lessons than how to use a pastry bag or truss a chicken.  

Not too long ago, the social media world starting buzzing with news of a celebration of the 100^th anniversary of Julia Child’s birth.  I decided to participate in the festivities in my own way.  Occasionally I’ll join in the “Julia Child recipe of the week,” including vichyssoise (a chilled leek and potato soup) this week.  

But my real homage to her will be those times when I stop what I’m doing – in the kitchen, at the table, or elsewhere - and think about how much braver I am and how much more fun I have, when I think “what would Julia have done?”

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