Love of Leeks

I sometimes rise before six, make the coffee (grinding the beans as quietly as I can) and sit in the Poang chair by the front window watching light come into the sky. A few mornings ago, as I sat at my pre-dawn post, the word "strata" came to mind. Why? Rummaging through my grab bag of associations, I quickly rejected the opera singer Teresa Stratas and the Fellini film La Strada from consideration.

When the word "stirato" drifted into view I knew I was getting warm. Stirato bread, as you probably know, is like an Italian baguette, and there was a glass container of bread, sliced into small cubes, sitting on the kitchen counter. I'd seen it there while making the coffee.

But the word "strata," I seemed to recall, referred to a breakfast dish consisting mostly of bread and cheese. Should I make some such thing?

These idle thoughts stood to attention when it occurred to me that there was a leek lying on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. A leek strata! Such a thing might not exist, but it was suddenly clear I had to make one.

It didn't take long to find a long string of recipes for strata online. I chose one from a website called Pioneer Woman—because it offered four or five variations and made the process of  assembly otherwise very casual. I converted the text to a Word document and printed it out.

Five eggs, 2 cups of milk, four cups of hand-torn day-old bread, some cheese, and whatever else you have available. The recipe called for 8 strips of bacon (!) and 1/3 cup of shallots. I made do with my single precious leek, which I sliced lengthwise down the middle as quietly as I could, and then into quarters in the same direction, finally cutting it crossways into 1/4 inch pieces. I sautéed the little pieces in butter for a while and also got a bag of parsley out of the freezer and tossed a generous handful of surprisingly green and aromatic leaves into the mix.

Next, I fetched two stubby pieces of hard white cheese from the cheese drawer, both with rind attached. One was Gruyere, I'm pretty sure. The other, who knows? A dash of salt, a big dash of dry mustard, then into a lightly greased  8 x 8 pan. You're supposed to let it chill in the refrigerator for six hours, but that wasn't going to happen. I slipped it into the oven at 350 degrees to bake for 50 minutes. A few minutes later, when Hilary came around the corner, a variety of pleasant aromas were emanating from the kitchen.

The results (if I do say so myself) were outstanding, and the effect was heightened by the spontaneous nature of the event. The day-old bread (actually three days old) was from Rustica, the city's premier bakery, which helped, but it was the subtle elegance of the leek, I think, that put the dish over the top.

Can a vegetable be elegant? I hope you know what I mean. Yes, a leek is just a glorified onion ... but I have long since grown suspicious of this usage of the word "just." Most of the good things in life are "just" better versions of the crummy things in life. 

It's true that leeks cost more than onions, but a single leek from Trader Joe's costs no more than a fancy apple or vine-ripened tomato. So what? And at mid-summer farmers markets you can get a bundle of three long, tender stalks for $2.

Leeks have been held in high regard since ancient times. They appear in Egyptian tomb hieroglyphics and figure prominently in Apicius's famous Roman cookbook. Yet no one has been able to put their unique flavor into words precisely. Waverly Root describes them as "less fine but more robust than asparagus," a remark that seems very odd to me. The Oxford Companion to Food refers to their "mild, sweet flavor."

Off the top of my head, I'd say they taste like ethereal onions infused with a hint of thyme. But words aren't worth much in a situation like this. You just have to try them.