Vegetables and How I Cook Them: Leeks

I wish there was a term for the flavor of chlorophyll. “Greenness” circuitously describes it as grassy at best or vegetal at worst. Chlorophyll tastes of wet spring mornings or matcha tea. It is this green flavor that separates a leek from her cousins, garlic and onion.

Oddly enough, while I associate the taste of chlorophyll with spring, leeks are of the winter. It’s one of those vegetables, like parsnips, that I resist until my options are more limited in late fall. When I have been lucky enough to have leeks in the garden, their greenness comes into the kitchen under piles of snow. The onions were pulled in from outside months ago, but the leeks wave their broad flag leaves through the winter winds.