How to Cook Leeks French Style (2 ways) | French Bistro Recipes

Welcome back everybody. My name is Stéphane and this is the French Cooking Academy. And as I said the last time, today we're going to be talking about leeks. And not just talk about it, we're also going to try to make a recipe. Now, leeks I think has really become kind of the underdog of cooking. I mean, how often do you actually see a recipe that uses leeks, away from like soups and perhaps quiches. And it's a shame because in France, I think leeks are really well appreciated. So I thought today we're going to try to concentrate on that and make another vegetarian recipe. And we're going to make the leeks in two ways. So one way I know, it's the simple Poirot vinaigrette, which has the leeks in French dressing. So that's a classic Parisian starter. And the second one, we're going to be adventurous and try a recipe from Normandy that uses cream and cider. And we're going to use these two things to try to make a velouté, and apparently the leeks are cooked the same way, and then served or covered with that special cider and cream velouté. Let's have a look. So today we're making really two recipes. So the core ingredients we're going to need are the leeks, the plain leeks that we're going to cook in water. And I propose two versions. The simple one is going to be just the leeks covered in a French dressing, a vinaigrette. So this is it here. And the second recipe, which is much more complicated, as you can see, is going to use all of these ingredients. So you're going to have the leeks, but then you're going to have lemon, onion, flour and butter to make a roux, salt, white pepper because it's a white sauce, fresh nutmeg, cream and cider. So this is quite interesting. I haven't tried that one yet, but I'm really curious. In terms of food preparation, the most important, of course, is preparing our leeks. Now, the thing you need to know about leeks, when you eat them like that, so just with a vinaigrette or just on their own, the real culinary value of the leek sits here with the white part of the leeks. And you don't use that part to eat like this. This is reserved usually for soups or to clarify consommé or any other use. So in this instance, when you get a full leek like that, you're just going to make sure you're going to trim a little bit the bottom here. So you leave some so it's not falling apart. And as we've seen in a previous video that I will put a link, you just make a little incision to remove just that outer leaf. Okay, so you can discard that. And then we're going to just trim off the whole thing where it was. So there's not going to be much cleaning going on. So this, you can reserve for another use. And that is what we're going to actually cook. Okay, so when it's done, you can make sure you pass a little bit of water to make sure it's all clean. And you repeat the same for all of the leeks. So once you're done, you've cleaned and cut your leeks. This is what you should have. And they are more or less the same size. And this is important as well. When you buy the leeks, they have to be small caliber leeks, not the big ones and the small ones. So the next thing we need to do because we're going to boil it in water is to try to use a string like this. And I'm really not good at this. And to make a little, you know, package. So you're just going to try to attach all the leeks together as much as you can. And then, you know, put the string around where you get the idea. All done. Look at this, a little package. And this is going to go in the boiling water afterwards. All done. The food preparation is ready. And this is what I have. And I've got everything at hand. It's been arrayed. I've got the cider, the cream. This is lemon juice that you have to press. Thinly sliced onion. I've got the leeks ready. And this is for my roux. And now we can start cooking. Now, cooking, the first step, of course, is to cook the leeks. And the main ingredients, I always use rock salt to salt your water. Not too much. And you take your leeks, your little package, and boom, in the water. And when the leeks are in, another thing you can do is to add and cover your pot to make sure you see how this could get dry. So just make sure you cover them and cook them with the lid on. Now that the leeks are cooking gently on the side, we're going to start our little veloute. So you arm yourself with a saucepan, a whisk, and we're going to start the recipe. So the first step is to color the onions. So we're going to take all of the butter that we have and melt it in a pan with the onions. When the pan heats up with the onion, you're going to cook this on low heat for just a few minutes until we get a nice little coloring, a little bit of coloring on the onions. We just want to make them sweat. After a few minutes, we're then going to add the flour. And this is going to make basically a roux. So as always, with the roux, you mix everything and you get that little paste. And you're going to keep on cooking it for like a minute or two on very low heat while mixing like that continuously. Now never skip the cooking part of the roux because that removes that floury taste. You want to kill that flour taste in there. So once you're done, put all the cider in. And you can raise your heat a little bit just to get it started so we can thicken that mix. Sorry, guys, I just had a camera problem and I was adding basically the lemon juice and the cream into the thick mix and the camera didn't turn on. So basically what you see here after you have the roux, you pour all of the cream, the lemon juice, and you keep adding cream until you get the desired consistency. So you want something not too liquid and not too thick. So once we have the desired consistency, this is what I went for, a bit of a creamy sauce. This is the consistency I've got. It's time to add the seasoning. So that's going to happen with just a pinch of salt, a pinch of white pepper, and a little bit of nutmeg. So it's up to you to really get that seasoning right to your liking. And basically, once you've added all that, you can let it sit and it's going to be just ready. So we're going to take the leeks out of the water. They must be cooked by now. Remember for the leeks, they must be cooked by now, so you can take a fork and try to grab these, but they're going to be very fragile, so be very careful in that. And immediately on the tray, let them rest and get rid of the excess water. They need to dry a little bit, very gently. They're very, very fragile. So leave them to rest and keep on removing the water. All right, we've done it. So it's all done. I've got my velouté sauce ready in the back. I've got the leeks that have rested a little bit. And what I'm going to do now for the last resting time, because leeks, they need to rest. That's very important, and they are very fragile. So I'm going to put them in the dish I'm going to use to serve, and that's a good practice. So you can use your rope like that, and when it's in there, then you can cut this off and gently take it off there. And I'm going to leave them to rest to make sure they reach, like, minimum is room temperature, and maybe a little bit colder than that. When it reaches that temperature, I'm going to then serve everything. And now for the service. So this is the two versions we have. On this side, we're going to have the poireau vinaigrette, or the leek in French dressing. And this is going to be the one with the velouté. So poireau vinaigrette, extremely simple. You just take your dressing and basically you pour it over. Now, you don't want to add any parsley or anything on top because this is very unique. It's a unique taste. It's very delicate, and you don't want to add some foreign elements. So this one is classic. When they are nice and cold, you can eat them. This one, on the other hand, never tried it. And it says you need to cover, serve leeks or other vegetables, like turnips or carrots. And we need apparently to just have it with a little bit of sauce. So it really looks and sounds interesting. And you know what? I'm going to steal a little decoration from here. Sorry. Just to give a little color on the side. But what I'm curious about is really to taste that thing. So let me try to cut. So the leek is tender, as you can see here. This is the inside. And without making a mess, let me try it. I'll tell you what I think. All right. So the first thing that comes to my mind when I try this velouté sauce, because of the lemon, immediately I thought about it's like a hollandaise sauce. It's really kind of a béchamel slash hollandaise with that heat of lemon. Really nice. But when you add the leeks to it, it really adds that extra kind of vegetable fresh flavor. And it really goes well together. It's really interesting. So if you want to be adventurous, try this one. If you want to try the Parisian version, the real classic, try that one. But that's it. That completes the video of the week on how to cook and prepare leeks. I hope you enjoyed the video. And as always, if you have some comments or questions, just post them and I will come back to you as soon as possible. New thing also, remember there is a Reddit page, the French Cooking Academy, on Reddit.com and I've put a link in the video description. Have a good time and I'll see you all next time.