BOTANICAL NAME: Allium ampeloprasum
FAMILY: Alliaceae
Leeks have been grown as garden vegetables for thousands of years. The Kurrat leek, which resembles a miniature leek with a bulbous base, has served as a salad leek since the time of the pharaohs. When it is young it is so mild that it can be eaten raw; when it becomes a little more mature it takes on a shallotlike flavor. It is also a hardy plant that overwinters in my garden with little more than a loose covering of straw. The same may be said of nearly all the leeks now popular in Europe. I think American gardeners are misled in thinking leeks are too tender or too fussy. Actually, once they are established, leeks are robust growers that more or less take care of themselves. This brings me to a leek called Jaune du Poitou (pronounced joan du pwa-TOE), which I discovered one rainy day on the way to Soufflenheim in Alsace. The story bears telling because it captures some of the impressions that rise up when confronted by Jaune du Poitou for the very first time.
My first encounter happened in a small village seed shop crowded with people from the neighorhood who were bartering for flats of fall cabbages in a courtyard out back. Racks of old-fashioned seed varieties lined the wall. There was a purple podded pea called Desirée, a tiny one called Gloire de Quimper, and another labeled Plein le Panier which I recognized as Fillbasket, an English variety introduced by Thomas Laxton in 1872. I had either stepped through a time warp or this was the last place in France where one could actually find the old sorts of vegetables on which the regional cuisine was built. Were there any leeks? The proprietress motioned toward the garden beyond the cabbage-filled courtyard.
Leeks have been grown as garden vegetables for thousands of years.
The garden was large and enclosed by a high wall. In the center stood a forest of leeks with golden yellow leaves. They were plump and succulent, the most beautiful, most impressive yard-tall leeks I had ever seen in any garden anywhere. I was told that they were called Jaune du Poitou and that the shopkeeper and her friends would cook with no other kind. Joseph Decaisne and Charles Naudin had discussed this famous old French leek in their Manuel de l’amateur des jardins (1866) and even provided an illustration of a fine specimen, but this country garden in Alsace was my first inkling that Jaune du Poitou, so highly esteemed in the eighteenth century, was still extant.
Naturally, I obtained seeds, and when I have since shared them with growers in this country I have gotten letters the following year telling me how extraordinary those leeks were. Perhaps I expected it, for when I finally arrived in Soufflenheim to pick up a ceramic terrine that was waiting for me I presented the potter with a gift of some of those wonderfully fragrant Jaunes du Poitou—whereupon his ecstatic wife prepared a fondue aux porreaux, which the locals call Kachelmües. I shall never forget how good that tasted. It was the essence of a perfect leek.