The Farmer & His Wife
Anne Taylor tries out a new leek recipe for John.
IWAS down in Anstruther delivering bags of potatoes to the greengrocer. While I was in the shop I bought a leek.
“How much do you think this cost me?” I asked Anne when we met up outside the chemist. “Seventy-one pence!” “Why did you buy it then?” I wouldn’t have done if I’d known the price. As I had just been paid for my potatoes, though, I didn’t like to quibble about the price of a leek. I don’t want to get on the wrong side of the greengrocer – he buys a lot of my tatties.
So, why did I buy it? Well, I might as well be honest, I had been looking through some of Anne’s magazines and seen an interesting recipe.
I decided that, next time I was in a greengrocer’s, I’d buy Anne some leeks and ask her to make it.
Anne laughed when I got the magazine and showed her the illustration.
“John, you are hopeless. You didn’t read the recipe properly. This leek is too big!”
The thing about leeks is that you are paying for a lot of rather tough green leaves. Anne says a lot of people cut these off and put them in the dustbin.
Not my Anne. She washes them and then cuts them up into wee bits and puts them in one of her plastic containers and labels it Leek For Soup.
Well, Anne cut that leek in half and boiled it. She cut it into one-inch lengths, then placed it in a dish and covered it with one of her mouthwatering white sauces.
We had it with roast lamb and potatoes and I forgot about the cost. It was really delicious.
“John, next time we have someone over for dinner, I’ll do that leek recipe you found,” she promised.
She did, and I was proud of her.
“Anne, that was delicious,” the two ladies we’d invited said.
This is what she did. She bought about three pounds of small leeks; trimmed the tops and saved them for soup. She sliced them in half lengthwise and then tied them together with string so they didn’t fall apart when cooking.
She boiled them in a pan of salted water for a few minutes, then drained and carefully arranged them in one of her square, shallow dishes.
She added about half a pint of dry white wine, olive oil, salt and pepper and a host of lovely spices. It went into the oven for a while, then she finished it off with three hardboiled eggs which had been cut into halves, and some chives out of her herb garden. It was delicious and certainly made a change.
I think the next time I buy a leek, though, I’ll consult Anne. After all, she’s still head of the kitchen!