The leek is a marvellous thing. And I’m not even Welsh.
There were two of them in the fridge. I lopped off the tops, rinsed said tops cursorily in running water, and bunged them into the stockpot with a chicken carcass (it’s a fairly pointless exercise without one of these or equivalent, to be honest), a carrot, salt, and water to cover. I could have put in a bay leaf and some parsley and all the other usual gubbins, but what can I say? I’m a rebel. I live on the edge.
The rest of the leeks, the main attraction so to speak, were sliced into ticker-tape thin ribbons, rinsed rather more thoroughly and thrown into a lidded pan - I’d removed the lid temporarily to avoid littering the floor with ticker-tape thin ribbons of leek - with some butter, the water that clung to the rinsed leeks, some more butter, a lick of salt, and, what the hell, just a smidge more butter.
Set phasers to low, captain. Mr. Spock gets antsy if there’s any chance of his leeks sticking.
That is not a euphemism.
Leeks go wonderfully with eggs, I find. On this occasion I asked the Flame-Haired Temptress, as she came in from work, “what shall I do with the eggs? Scrambled? Poached? Omelette?”
I was treated to the weary look of one who simply doesn’t care, but who is wondering why the hell the food isn’t on her plate NOW.
I answered my own question.
“Poached then.” You know that thing that happens when you want to have water boiling at what the professionals call a ‘quiver’, so you boil up some water in a pan and it’s boiling at what the professionals call a ‘rolling boil’, so you turn it down and then it goes off the boil when you put the things in that are supposed to be being boiled, so you turn it up a bit and put the lid on and then it goes up to a rolling boil again and water spits out of the sides and goes everywhere, putting out the gas, so you have to relight it and by that time the water’s unrolling again and you coax it back to a quiver but then it somehow starts rolling again even though you thought you had it just right and your eggs end up being what the professionals call inedible kack?
Well, that.
The leeks were nice though.
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