We haven’t had much indolence here recently, have we? (Well, we have, but I haven’t been writing about it.) So today we have a post on leeks!
Leeks are some of my favorite vegetables and are the essence of spring to me. They have a delicate savoriness that reminds me of the scent of spring flowers, yet still hold a hint of sharpness, the way spring nights can still be sharp with winter’s cold.
I’ve tried several times to grow leeks from seeds, but it’s been a failure every time. So this winter, I took the lazy way out and ordered some leek plants with my winter garden order.
I put them in, and promptly forgot about them. In my meager defense, we had a murderously hot winter here. Some days I could barely rise from the fainting couch, much less do any gardening. (The greens, usually my favorite part of a winter garden, never survived even a week.)
I’d see the leeks, as I was picking peas, and would think “Oh yeah, the leeks. I ought to do something about them.” And then never did. What can I say? If you were looking for “The Industrious Homesteader”, you misspelled the search terms.
A few weeks ago, I decided to pick some of these poor, neglected leeks and put them into a potato leek soup. (I used this recipe here, which is modified from Julia Child’s recipe.)
The soup itself was dead easy. I cooked up the potatoes (Yukon Golds) along with the leeks and some carrots from the garden with a lot of butter. When they’d taken on some color, I simmered in vegetable stock for about thirty minutes. After a few passes with the immersion blender, salt to taste, and some heavy cream, it was ready.
My husband, who is not at all a fan of soup, declared it the best soup he’d ever eaten. He thinks it’s because the leeks were homegrown. I think it’s because of the massive amounts of butter and cream I put in. 🙂
But now this has become my go-to-recipe for many a Sunday dinner. My kids still won’t eat it, but my husband slurps it right up. I served it last night along with a pie made from the peaches from our trees. (Yep, we already have peaches, although they’re not great, thanks to the winter we had.)
So next winter, I’m definitely putting in more leeks. And maybe this time, I’ll even try to take care of them.
I’m impressed! I have never successfully grown a leek (though we did have spinach through the winter and now we have arugula and soon peas).
It’s way too generous to say I grew them–more that they survived despite my efforts. But did have a nice batch of peas, 3/4 of which my kids ate directly off the plant. 🙂
I have a few leeks that seemed to start growing through the winter 😀 I love cheesy leeks, very yummy!
Ooh, cheesy leeks sound great! I’ll have to try those.