I've had leeks on the brain lately, so I picked up four at Harris Teeter last night, even though I don't normally cook with them. The plan was to cook steak (a once a week splurge) with leeks in some form on the side. I saw a recipe recently that put me onto leeks for springtime, but I couldn't remember the source, so a quick Google search led me to this recipe for salmon with caramelized leeks. Obviously salmon wasn't in the cards, nor were carrots (blech), but the rest of the ingredients were no problem. Normally, I prefer to use olive oil instead of butter when sauteing my vegetables, but I just drained the last drop last night. A few problems:- Not having had much experience with leeks, I assumed that they would make a good side dish--i.e. the proportion would render an appropriate meat to vegetable ratio. Wrong. Once I peeled off the first leaf or two, cut them in half length-wise and chopped them horizontally, the pieces I had were fairly small. After cooking them down with some butter, brown sugar and salt, and they got even smaller, leaving the leeks only as a garnish.
- I have stainless steel pans, and I love them. However, they heat up more quickly and retain more heat than other pans. Knowing that, I kept the heat lower than the recipe suggests and watched the leeks as they cooked down. I thought I turned them off when I started cooking the steak, but alas! I was wrong. Consequently, about half of the leeks ended up a bit burnt. Rookie mistake.
- The flavor was good, but at the end of the day, something a little less sweet would have been a better pairing with the steak. Occasionally, I could taste a hint of fragrant earthiness break through the caramelization, but I wished for more of that and less of the sticky sugar. Next time.
photo credit: srqpix
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