Leeks

Last fall I led a group of good friends on a weeklong wine-and-food tour through Burgundy. During our short stay in this eastern area of France, we visited wineries during the day and dined in restaurants in the evening. It had been a long time since I had traveled in this region, and I had forgotten just how delicious Burgundian food is. Night after night, the chefs amazed my companions and me with their incredible creations. Such dishes as a terrine of foie gras and smoked duck breast served in one restaurant and a savory gateau of guinea fowl and fresh artichokes offered in another were true works of art, but were too complex to reproduce in my home kitchen.

Thanksgiving can be an overwhelming holiday. Even the most seasoned cooks can become agitated by the menu planning and trying to get all the details just perfect. Relax. Area farmers' markets have got you covered. Even as the growing season draws to a close, the markets' bustle increases with shoppers looking for ingredients for their Thanksgiving feast and farmers selling their last big crops of the year. The weekend before Thanksgiving is traditionally the markets' biggest weekend of the year (though many run until the week before Christmas)

Every once in a while, you cook a dish that captures the essence of the season. That happened to me recently when I made tarragon chicken breasts with leeks. The leeks turned an appetizing pale-green color. The chicken turned out plump and white. And the pan sauce, made with chicken stock and flavored with a shot of lemon juice and tarragon, was soft and delicate. This dish looked and tasted like spring. I was so taken with the dish that a few days later I picked up The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper, the cookbook from which the recipe had come, and telephoned its author.

There's little that's more romantic than a wonderful dinner enjoyed a deux in a cozy setting. With Valentine's Day in the offing, restaurant phones (and websites) are undoubtedly busy taking reservations for just such tete-a-tetes . If you're into the "cooking is showing love" lifestyle, however, an even more romantic way to spend an evening with your honey is to fix a lovely meal you don't have to go out for. Dinner, and even a movie, seems just the thing for telling someone you have feelings for him (or her)

Sometimes a vegetable perfectly matches its true season. After the solemn cold of winter, when farmers' market stalls seem to rescind their promises, leeks emerge from the earth, dirt-clad and single-minded. Slow-growing underground, able to bide its time once out of it, a leek also can hold up to myriad cooking techniques. If the stubborn, riddled-with-earth quality of a leek is part of its appeal -- a quiet reminder of the necessary proximity of food to farm -- the leek's leaves also have a story to tell.

Garlic tempests and onions shout, but leeks whisper. When a breeze of flavoring is preferred to a windstorm, many chefs turn to this subtler member of the aromatic allium family."

Golden leek soup is a delicious, low-calorie, low-fat delight flavored with a hint of curry.Made from a nourishing combination of leeks, potatoes and evaporated skim milk, the soup is fresh, creamy and filling, but gets just 15 percent of its calories from fat.It is a fine choice for summer dining because it tastes great either warm or chilled.With a salad and a loaf of whole-grain peasant bread for dunking, the soup makes a complete meal.The soup takes its name from the color of the leeks after they have been browned for several minutes in olive oil. The slow cooking heightens the flavor, too, picking up the rich taste of caramelized onions.

My husband, who grew up in Alabama, adores Southern pork barbecue, and although I make all types of barbecue, I have never been able to reproduce the slowly roasted, pulled pork cooked over hickory wood that he likes so much. This past week as a surprise for his birthday, I ordered several pounds of barbecued pork from a restaurant in Memphis and had it shipped to our house. Then I called several couples and invited them to a barbecue supper. The pork would be heated, slathered in barbecue sauce and served as sandwiches on buns, so all I needed to prepare were the accompaniments.

Leeks are a visual and culinary delight. Their sturdy, deep green stalks form a chevron-patterned crown atop a pearly white, cylindrical bulb. A forest of dense roots forms a playful tangle at its base. They look like green onions on growth-hormone therapy. Related to both garlic and onions, leeks have a sweeter, more subtle flavor than their lily-family cousins. When cooked, they have a luxurious, silken texture. Raw, young leeks are spunky but not overpowering. Leeks have been prized for thousands of years.

Homemade soups are mainstays of my winter meals. I use them routinely when entertaining during the cold-weather months. Robust creations like gumbos, chili or seafood chowders -- which are really meals in themselves -- become anchors for casual suppers, while lighter versions star in opening roles for the season's dinner parties. The unremitting cold of a New England winter definitely makes a cup of steaming hot soup seem like an elixir, but there are other reasons I find a bowl of warm broth or a creamy vegetable potage irresistible.

Since spring starts at 1:32 p.m. Saturday, does that mean all the area restaurants with seasonal menus will be changing them later that night? Well, no. Unlike the sudden rush of summer's bounty, the culinary attractions of spring arrive more slowly and more fitfully. Aside from a stray morel or two, scarcely anything in the way of spring produce, livestock, seafood or even wine has arrived yet, and every chef we talked to agreed: We've still got a few weeks. When asked when they'll know it's spring, nearly everyone said the same thing: I'll know when the first asparagus comes in. Until that happens, they'll be braising just a bit longer dreaming up recipes for morels, lamb and English peas.

The recipe for Asparagus Vichyssoise in last week's Taste section omitted an ingredient measurement. The correct recipe appears below. Asparagus Vichyssoise Makes: 10 Servings Nutrition information Per serving: 179 calories, 8 grams fat, 2 grams saturated fat, 8 milligrams cholesterol, 19 grams carbohydrates, 8 grams protein, 238 milligrams sodium, 2 grams fiber 1 1/2 pounds asparagus 2 ounces virgin olive oil 1 pound potatoes 4 ounces leek...

Every once in a while, you cook a dish that captures the essence of the season. That happened to me recently when I made tarragon chicken breasts with leeks. The leeks turned an appetizing pale-green color. The chicken turned out plump and white. And the pan sauce, made with chicken stock and flavored with a shot of lemon juice and tarragon, was soft and delicate. This dish looked and tasted like spring. I was so taken with the dish that a few days later I picked up The Splendid Table's How to Eat Supper, the cookbook from which the recipe had come, and telephoned its author.

The great Irish potato famine that began in 1845 wiped out a fifth of the small country's population -- but it couldn't displace the potato, long since recovered, as a mainstay of the Irish diet. An Irish Potato Soup is an easy dish to celebrate St. Patrick's Day next week. Fred Parmenter, a chef instructor at Baltimore International College, updates the traditional blend of potatoes and vegetables by frying leeks and roasting fingerling potatoes to top the soup. You can prepare both garnishes while your soup simmers, so this rich treat, thickened with cream, can be ready to serve in less than an hour.

Sometimes a vegetable perfectly matches its true season. After the solemn cold of winter, when farmers' market stalls seem to rescind their promises, leeks emerge from the earth, dirt-clad and single-minded. Slow-growing underground, able to bide its time once out of it, a leek also can hold up to myriad cooking techniques. If the stubborn, riddled-with-earth quality of a leek is part of its appeal -- a quiet reminder of the necessary proximity of food to farm -- the leek's leaves also have a story to tell.

The Bon Appetit Cookbook By Barbara Fairchild Kitchen Sense By Mitchell Davis Clarkson Potter / 2006 / $35 With 600 recipes, this volume is half the size of Bon Appetit's offering, but still worth having on the shelf. We found a lot to like here: the modern, accessible tone of the recipes; the precise directions for advance preparation and handling leftovers; the suggestions for variations and substitutions. Mitchell Davis, vice president of communications at the James Beard Foundation in New York, brings an urban sensibility to his cooking.

As the weather warms, cool drinks beckon. Try this Great Grape Smoothie from the California Table Grape Commission to quench your thirst. Combine 1 cup seedless grapes, 1/2 cup each frozen cherries and strawberries, and 1/2 cup each peeled and sliced orange and banana in a blender and process until smooth. Serves 2. Leek technique Love leeks but hate to clean them? Here's a technique from a recent Williams-Sonoma catalog: Remove tough green tops of leeks. Cut through leek about 1/2 inch above the root.

From elitist French fare to kitsch cuisine to standard deli food, quiche seems finally to have found a permanent niche on the U.S. culinary scene.In its most ancient form, quiche (from "kuchen," German for "little cake") was a savory pie with a bread base. Contemporary quiches have shells of pastry or phyllo (some are crustless) and imaginative fillings with cheese, vegetables, seafood or vegetarian combinations.Butter-braised leeks and a hint of mustard flavor this cheese quiche.Leek-Gruyere QuicheServes 63 large leeks, trimmed and cleaned2 tablespoons butterEgg Pastry for Quiche, unbaked (recipe below)

A spur-of-the-moment dinner for friends is often far simpler and a lot more fun than one I've planned two weeks in advance. I feel less pressured to have the house cleaned to the nines, thus avoiding the usual tiff with my spouse about his picking up piles of books and pairs of shoes strewn throughout our home. Last-minute menus require simplicity, so I base mine on what's in the fridge and on what I can quickly pick up at the store -- I don't even make a grocery list. Best of all, though, inviting someone to come and share a meal with you at the last moment seems to give host and guest alike a lift, adding a spark to an ordinary day. This was the experience I had last week.

Holding up a slimy leek at the Baltimore Farmers' Market yesterday, Earl Martin said the torrential rains that soaked the region are causing the vegetables he grows to "melt." "Have you ever seen decomposed grass?" Martin, 41, asked. "That's what the fields look like." Minus the rotting stalk, the leek he displayed is at least edible, he said. But he estimates the rains ruined 25 percent of the crops at his Perry Hall farm. Growers selling produce yesterday told horror stories of drowned pumpkins, waterlogged watermelons, soupy muck under the drying topsoil, and fields so full of water they could only be crossed with a rowboat.