Leeks are with out doubt one of my most favourite vegetables of all time. I love them cooked in a number of ways. You can use them in bases of sauces to give a real buzz to a sauce. As a member of the onion family, they give a real lift to things and are subtle as well in the way the flavours infuse in the food.
The first thing you must do is clean them properly. The best and quickest way of doing this is to take your leek and trim of all the brown bits. Do not cut away all of the green leaves as they gibe a lot of taste to the leek .Take a knife and insert it in to the leek at the root end above the root. Pull the knife up to the top of the leek. Now you should have split your leek and still have it all being held together by the root. Then simply just wash it under a tap until all the dirt has gone.
If you want a nice starter, take some good bacon leeks. Dice them up till quite small. Get a pan and a little butter in it cook of the bacon and the leeks. Add a few sliced mushrooms and let all of the ingredients cook down. Add a little white wine if you have some and some cream and cook until reduced. Then place in a pastry case and cover with a good strong tasting cheese. Glaze this under the grill till brown and then serve it up and a bed of salad leaves. A nice tart let.
You can make a nice flan with them as well. Instead of the salmon and broccoli quiche, use leeks instead. Warm or cold it is very nice for a change.
If you want, you make a sauce for some kind of meat dish this works well with pork and chicken. Take some long thin strips of leek. You can use diced leeks but for presentation, I like to use long thin strands. This way you can scope them out of the sauce cut up what you have cooked and fan it over the leeks. Add a little stock and white wine to a saucepan and bring to the boil. Then add the leeks a little slat and pepper. A dash of cream and reduce for a while. Once you have, it starting to reduce add a little grated blue cheese of some kind. I prefer Stilton but any good strong blue cheese works well with this. Allow the cheese to melt in to the sauce. Remove the leeks and make a nest on the plate .Carve up the piece of meat that you have cooked and place that on the leeks and then spoon over the sauce in the pan.
After all this, cream and cheese you might just like to stir-fry it. Take a leek, just cut if down the middle, and then in to six equal sized bits. Use a little sesame oil and a good hot wok. A few seconds in the pan and you are ready to go .Some soy sauce at the lat minuet and a nice clean healthy veg dish.
Looking for a winter warming thing to make then take a potato peal it and cut it up so that it is very fine. Boil it until it disintegrated in to the water. Take some fine diced leek and add that to the potato. Cook for a little longer, season with slat pepper and a hint of nutmeg and you have a warming soup.
Another classic way of cooking leeks is to make them in to a pudding. Make some suet pastry line a pudding basin. Fill it with leeks a little butter. Seal up the pudding and steam for a while until the pasty is cooked. Then serve with any thing that you might like.
Comments
Post a Comment