However, I did manage to take some breaths. Specifically, on my mother's suggestion, I had lunch sitting in the sun in the (communal) garden. Lunch was a very large bowl with 3 salads in it (potato-and-parsley, mixed lettuce, and tomato-and-feta). It was extremely nice. So nice that I decided to remain sitting there for my daily meditation session. The garden is surprisingly quiet for something only a few metres away from the quays.
For dinner, after an emergency panful of homemade popcorn (I was starving around 7 pm), I had poireaux citronnette (I feel posh tonight. It's really leeks with oil and lemon). Here is the recipe: couldn't be simpler, and it's delicious. And it can probably be done with other vegetables too, which I intend to confirm soon...
Poireaux citronnette
Cut off most of the green part of the leeks (you can leave some; the discarded bits can be used for veg stock), remove the outermost skin, and clean the leeks (they gather soil between skins; the way I clean them is by cutting them lengthwise for about half their length and then rinse them well separating the tops of the skins).
Boil a pan of salted water and cook the leeks for about 7 minutes. (I overcooked them slightly, which made them messy but didn't actually spoil the taste.) Drain and arrange on a plate.
Mix together olive oil, a little bit of salt and a generous amount of squeezed lemon; add a dash of chilli powder (this is a touch I found in a recipe book and it works really well!). Mix well and pour over the leeks. Leave the leeks to cool and get flavoured for a couple of hours at room temperature. Eat.
- Mood:
exhausted
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Comments
Why? This puzzles me: Why take a perfectly edible vegetable and discard half of it?
Good question.
Personal taste, I suppose. I find that the green part is tougher, more bitter, and less interestingly flavoured than the white part. If I was cooking the leeks with other stuff (for example in a soup or a stew), I would leave in more of the green part (almost as if I had an extra vegetable in there: leeks and leek greens); if I'm having leeks on their own, I prefer to have only the "nicer" part (and use the greens for stock later if I manage). How much of the green bit I leave in depends on how tender/fresh it is.
The very top of the leeks, in any case, tends to be wilted or dried or simply too tough for use in anything other than stock (for my taste, again), so there is always some trimming to do: of course it also depends on how much has been cut off before I buy them, and how long I leave the leeks sitting around before I cook them...
[1] Italian mothers are of course the ultimate authority for any issue related to food preparation: they are trumped only by Italian grandmothers, who are like Italian mothers squared :-)