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Leeks
These may be simply washed, thrown into cold water half an hour and served neatly on a pretty dish, or they may be cut into slices and dressed with French dressing.
Two minimal treatments for raw leeks: crisped in cold water and served whole, or sliced and dressed. The whole thing hinges on the leek you start with, since modern supermarket leeks are usually far too coarse to eat raw.
- Choose small leeksThis works only with slender young leeks no thicker than a thumb, of the sort sold as baby leeks or pulled early from a garden row. A full-grown winter leek two inches across is fibrous and aggressively sulphurous raw; it wants braising or soup instead.
- Grit is the real problemLeeks are grown hilled up with soil, which lodges between the layers where rinsing the outside will not reach. Split them lengthwise and fan the layers under running water, or slice first and swish the rings in a bowl of water so the sand drops to the bottom.
- What to keepUse the white and pale green; the dark green tops are tough enough to be worth saving for stock. Trim the root plate but leave enough to hold a whole leek together if you are serving it undressed.
- The half hour in cold waterThis is a crisping soak, not a cooking step. Ice water is better than tap water and it firms the leeks noticeably; drain and pat dry or the dressing will slide off.
- French dressing, 1900 senseIn American cookbooks of this period French dressing means plain oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, roughly three parts oil to one of vinegar, whisked or shaken to combine. It is not the sweetened orange-coloured bottled dressing that later took the name.
- If the leeks are not tenderSimmer them whole for eight to twelve minutes until a knife slips into the thickest part, drain well, press dry, then dress while just warm. This is the classic poireaux vinaigrette, though it is a departure from the raw treatment given here.
- YieldThe recipe gives none. Allow two or three small leeks per person as a first course or salad.
Leeks belong to the oldest layer of the European kitchen garden, grown around the Mediterranean and across northern Europe since antiquity, and valued because they stand in cold ground through winter when little else is available. Their appearance here may reflect a turn-of-the-century American interest in widening a table that leaned heavily on potatoes, cabbage and canned corn; writers of the period often urged readers toward vegetables the French treated seriously. The brevity of the entry is itself telling: the author assumes a reader who can be told simply to serve something "neatly on a pretty dish" and will understand that presentation is half the dish. The leek's association with Wales, where it is a national emblem, is traditional and of long standing, though the origin usually offered for it is legend rather than record.