take a leek

One of my favorite vegetables, and in my opinion, one of the most overlooked, is the leek. I think the vegetable scares people. It's long, with those big green leaves going off to nowhere. It looks sort of like an "Ahnold" scallion, and frequently, it's not stored properly in grocery stores (but then again, what is?). The other part of it, unfortunately, is that leeks are expensive. Or at least it looks that way. A bunch of leeks, containing three or maybe four, will set you back 3 bucks. So if you don't know what to do with them, why bother?



Because they're good. I have heard the described as a mild onion, in flavor, and I disagree. I think "leeks taste like leeks." I can't really compare them to anything else.



You can buy leeks in different sizes: some are huge and thick, others thin. I think that it is a question of how long you allow them to grow. The younger, the smaller. And the size of the leek will determine what you can do with them . Small ones you can poach whole, large ones, no. The recipe I'm going to give you here could be used universally. It's a very rich, filling, decadent quiche. You're going to love it. And we're going to have a little bit of a discussion of cooking bacon.



First, you're going to need a piecrust. Now, I've written about quiche crusts before, and here's a quick recap . To make two, you need a stick and a half of cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes. You also need a cup and a half of unbleached flour, a teaspoon of salt and a tablespoon of sugar. Mix those dry ingredients together, and then cut in the butter. I use a food processor, and I pulse it . Add some ice water - maybe four tablespoons or so - and wait for the stuff to begin to form a wet crumb. If it doesn't , add another tablespoon, but no more. Then dump the stuff out and form it into two firm balls, with your hands. Wrap them, and toss them in the fridge for a few hours while you make the filling.

Ah, the filling. Let's start with the bacon. Buy good quality stuff, and heed this about cooking it. Almost always, people burn bacon when they cook it, they get clouds of smoke, and a smell in the room they can't get rid of. Know why? There's an assumption that because bacon is fatty, you don't need fat to cook it. If you add just a tablespoon of vegetable oil to your pan before you start frying, you'll be fine . Don't overcrowd the pan, and take your time. I use a medium high flame, and I only cook about three strips at a time, three minutes to the first side and two to the other. I cook up a half pound for two quiches. As you cook the bacon, fat will accumulate, and you can drain this off to keep no more than one or two total tablespoons of fat there. When you're done, drain the bacon on paper towels, and keep a few tablespoons of fat, to cook the sliced leeks. You slice them by getting ride of the dark green stuff and then cutting circles , thin ones, until you get about two cups. In the hot fat, it won't take more than about five minutes to get them soft. Put them in a bowl separate from the bacon, while you make filling.

To make the filling, you'll need about two cups of milk and eight eggs. Common wisdom says three large eggs to a cup of milk for quiche filling, but I like the extra egg. Use large ones. Mix the milk and eggs together, and add a pinch of pepper and salt.

You now have all the components you want, unless you feel like adding some cheese. This is optional. The quiche is pretty rich as it is.

Preheat your oven to 400. Get your crusts out, and put down a fair amount of flour on a surface and roll each one out. There are lots of sets of instructions on how to roll out pie crusts, and they're better than I could write here. All I can add is, go easy. Don't press too much.

I bake my crusts "blind." That is, I put down foil and weights, and bake them for ten minutes and then take the weights and foil off and bake them for another ten. Put on some gloves and then take them out. To put them together, I put the leeks down first, half to a quiche, then the milk egg and optional cheese mixture, and the bacon last. Bake the stuff for thirty minutes and check to see if you have a fairly firm texture. If you don't, bake em for a nother fifteeen minutes, but make sure there's still a little wiggle. Let them cool outside of the oven. They'll firm up.

And there you are. It's a long one here, but there's not much new. You can do this . Go do it.