There's nothing base about the leek. The French word for this noble vegetable is poireau, which also means simpleton, but never has a double meaning been less apt. Recipients of the esteemed Chevalier dans l’ordre du Mérite agricole (an order of merit second only to the Legion d’honneur) are said to avoir le poireau, in reference to the deep green of the medal’s ribbon. Its culinary prowess is equally grand.
Because this is the most subtle and elegant of alliums, a slender flaneur to the onion’s squat heft, bookish rather than bold. Garlic might shout and holler, but the leek is mild, sweet and discreet, happy to linger in the background, offering unstintingly steadfast support. It has little time for pungent histrionics, instead merrily submitting to butter’s warm embrace.
Leeks are also the least snobby of ingredients, as happy with truffles and foie gras as they are in the most humble of soups, which is why vichyssoise is such a perfect distillation of the leek’s appeal. Louis Diat, a French chef working in New York, was so inspired by his mother’s classic, hearty leek-and-potato soup, all warm, uncomplicated allure, that he decided on a rather more refined summer version, served cold and sprinkled with chopped chives. As a native of the Bourbonnais, he named the dish after Vichy, one of its most famous cities. Attempts by French expat chefs to change the name to crème Gauloise during the Second World War (Vichy was the capital of Nazi-occupied France) fell upon deaf ears.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 14, 2020 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة October 14, 2020 من Country Life UK.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
