Leek News

I was shopping for dinner last night and saw the most amazing monstrous leek ever. I hefted the thing, shook it like a Viking testing the mass of a new war-hammer he was considering buying, and saw a lady looking at me dubiously from a long way away. Look all you want, lady! I got the best leek in the store!

I took it home and got out my favorite cookbook. If you like French food more than you like working to make money to buy it in restaurants, you should have this book: At Home With the French Classics, by Richard Grausman. He begins his discussion of leeks with this:

Leeks, known in France as the poor man's asparagus, are generally used in America only by those who can find them.

I wondered if asparagus (asparaguses? asparagi?) are known in France as the rich man's leek. (This is the kind of thing I wonder while other people are wondering how to make more money.) And I admired the unassailable logic of the second part: I've lived in America all my life, and I've never seen a person using leeks if that person couldn't find leeks to begin with. Grausman says that 12 leeks serves 6, but he didn't see my leek from last night. And that's all I have to say about leeks. I also had a chicken breast that came from the most monstrous chicken ever. This chicken undoubtedly shook the ground when it walked, and blotted out the sun as it passed by. It's breakfast time now but I'm not terribly hungry, if you really want to know.