Leek pies are popular worldwide and can be served hot or cold, with various crusts and fillings. Properly preparing leeks involves peeling and rinsing them thoroughly. Cooking them until lightly browned brings out their sweetness, and they can be used in a variety of flavor combinations.
Any kitchen that celebrates leeks among its homegrown vegetables is sure to offer a version of leek pie. From Greece to Indonesia, the United States to Wales, leek pies are served hot or cold, as a main course paired with salad and bread, or as a light lunch eaten cold from the fridge. Some leek pies nestle in a rich buttery crust, while others enjoy the luxury of sleeping in on a bed of flaky pastry or a mock crust formed by the marriage of eggs and cream and cooked to the consistency of an omelette or tortilla. Spanish.
Before creating a leek pie, it’s important to understand that the queen among onions is the leek. The first time a cook encounters a leek, she or he will no doubt try to cut and use the greens just like shallot greens are used. It’s true that a leek looks like a shallot on steroids, but the chewy green leaves are best left for the pot of stew and not the pie.
The second time a cook encounters a leek, she or he knows enough to cut the greens, though the best technique for doing so may be a mystery. With a little more experience, the cook will find that peeling the tough, stringy leaves and cutting them with a sharp knife releases the sweet, onion-like white flesh that is the leek’s truest claim to fame. If there isn’t a potato soup or pot of vegetables simmering on the back burner, she or he can chop up the vegetables, bag them, and store them in the freezer until soup is on the menu.
The third time a cook encounters a leek, that leek will end up in a steady stream of rinse water for a long time. For reasons known only to the leek, all those months in the ground are lovingly documented by an almost breathtaking amount of dirt and sand pressed into the leek’s many layers. As leek home cooks quickly discover, the vegetable clings to the dusty, dirty, gritty pearls of its former life, and nothing but a lot of rinsing and rinsing will ever get the many layers loose enough from a savory pie.
Bringing out the sweetness in the white bulb of the leek to prepare it for pie can easily be done by roasting it in the oven or sautéing it in a little butter. An overcooked leek is a sad thing indeed, so sad that the garbage really is the best place for the slimy goo to slip. Leeks aren’t particularly cheap, but once they’re overcooked, there’s no way you’re carrying them around in edible land.
Leeks that have been properly cooked until lightly browned, perhaps with a handful of red, white or yellow onion cousins or some sliced mushrooms are ready for their true destiny. There might not be a particular rhyme, but there are a thousand reasons for the flavor combinations cooks create to showcase this humble pie. A base of beaten egg, cream and goat cheese, feta or gruyere poured into a rich pastry crust creates a pie-like dish, while tickling a salmon with lime zest, dill and leeks and dressing it in a dress of beignets the pastry creates the kind of onion pie that has the power to bring dictators to their knees.
A deeply satisfying and perhaps more modest leek pie layered with some cooked sausage and shredded cheese in a thick mashed potato “crust” sprinkled with Parmesan cheese and passed under the broiler makes a hearty dinner. Coconut milk instead of cream, a squeeze of lemon instead of sausage and a pastry shell instead of mashed potatoes, and the leek pie transformed once again, this time into an Indonesian meal. An Italian Leek Crostada is a simple yet utterly delicious concoction of sautéed leeks drenched in butter and thinly sliced, kissed with some ricotta and hard, grated cheese thinly layered in a pastry shell.
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