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Leeks a la Liegeoise
Take enough of leeks to make the size of dish required; if they are very thick, cut in two lengthwise; cut off the green tops; leaving only the blanched piece of stalk; put them into boiling salted water and cook thoroughly about one hour: strain and dish neatly on a fish-drainer. Have ready some hard-boiled eggs; shell them, cut in two, and place round the leeks; serve hot with melted butter, or cold with mayonnaise sauce. N. B. The water in which the leeks have been boiled makes a wholesome drink when cold, or a nourishing basis for a vegetable soup.
A Salad of Tomatoes To make a tomato salad you must not slice the fruit in a dish and then pour on it a little vinegar and then a little oil; that is not salad--that is ignorance. Take some red tomatoes, and, if you can procure them, some golden ones also. Plunge each for a moment in boiling water, peel off the skin, but carefully, so as not to cut through the flesh with the juice. Take some raw onion cut in slices; if you do not like the strong taste, use shallot; and lay four or five flat slices on the bottom of the salad dish. Put the tomato slices over them, sprinkle with salt and just a dust of castor sugar. In four hours lift the tomatoes and remove the onions altogether. Make in a cup the following sauce: Dissolve a salt-spoonful of salt in a teaspoonful of tarragon vinegar. Stir in a dessertspoonful of oil, dropping it slowly in, add a very little mustard, some pepper and a sprinkle of chopped chervil. Some people like chopped chives. Pour this over the tomato salad and leave it for an hour at least before serving it.
Two dishes share the page: boiled leeks dressed with egg, and a tomato salad built on a long maceration. Both are simple, and both hinge on timing rather than technique.
- Cut the boiling timeAn hour in salted water will reduce trimmed leeks to grey threads. Whole blanched stalks of ordinary thickness are done in 15 to 20 minutes; test with the tip of a knife at the root end, which cooks last.
- Drain them properlyA "fish-drainer" is the perforated plate that sat inside a fish kettle. A rack set over a tray, or a folded tea towel, does the same job -- leeks hold a surprising amount of water and will thin the melted butter if you skip this.
- GritThe book assumes you know to split thick leeks lengthwise, but not to wash them after splitting. Fan the layers under running water before they go into the pot; grit trapped near the root will not boil out.
- The cooking waterThe note is sound. Leek water is mild and slightly sweet and makes a decent base for soup. Salt it lightly at the start if you intend to keep it, or you will be working with something too salty to build on.
- Salt-spoon and dessertspoonA salt-spoonful is roughly a quarter teaspoon; a dessertspoonful is two teaspoons. That gives a dressing of about one part vinegar to two parts oil, sharper than a modern vinaigrette and intended for fruit that has already given up juice.
- Castor sugarSuperfine or caster sugar, which dissolves on contact with the tomato rather than sitting in grains. Granulated works if you use a pinch and give it time.
- The four-hour macerationThis is the point of the recipe. Salt, sugar and sliced onion underneath draw juice and onion perfume into the tomato, and the onion is then removed so nothing raw is left in the dish. Do it at cool room temperature, not in the refrigerator, which mutes tomato flavour.
- Golden tomatoes and chervilYellow and orange varieties are back in most markets in late summer. Chervil is harder to find and does not dry well; flat-leaf parsley with a little tarragon is the nearest substitute, and the recipe already offers chives as an alternative.
- YieldNeither dish is given a count. Reckon three or four medium leeks and two eggs per person for a first course, and about a pound of tomatoes for two as a side salad.
"À la liégeoise" points to Liège, in eastern Belgium, and in Belgian usage it usually signals a dish finished with juniper or, as here, simply a local way of serving a vegetable that the region grows well. Leeks with hard-boiled egg and butter is a pattern found across northern Europe -- asparagus and salsify get the same treatment -- and it belongs to a cooking tradition where a single vegetable, well grown and briefly dressed, is a course in its own right rather than an accompaniment. The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in Britain during the First World War from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees, and pages like this one carry that origin plainly: nothing is wasted, the cooking water is put to use, and the writer takes the time to scold the reader about tomato salad because such a salad, made carelessly, would have been an insult to good fruit.