Leeks Gribiche
a classic
For the last few weeks the leeks I’ve been cooking at the shop are as good as you’ll get: pencil-thin, sweet and tender, and ideal for some of the most simple preparations of early spring. Being half-Welsh, I’m very fond of a leek. Creamed leeks invariably feature as part of a Sunday roast, at least certainly with roast lamb, and they are excellent in a gratin smothered with a silky cheese sauce and browned under the grill. Blanched first, then oiled and grilled over charcoal, leeks are delicious with a smoky romesco sauce (just like a calçot) or with breadcrumbs and a punchy anchovy butter.
But really when the leeks are as good as this there are only two true options: a mustard vinaigrette or a sauce gribiche. Leeks vinaigrette is one of my favourite things to cook. It’s an exercise in precision and control, each seemingly small decision vital to the outcome - should the leeks be served room temperature or warm? How much mustard should the vinaigrette contain, and what vinegar to use? Should I put a few capers in the mix, or leave it plain? Is it weird to put a few spices in the sauce (yes it is, but I recommend it thoroughly)? What herbs, if any, should I put on top? And what about some grated egg on top?
Enough silly questions. Leeks vinaigrette is all very well and good, but sometimes nothing but sauce gribiche will do. That “Funny Egg Sauce”, as my friends Mike and Darcie refer to it, is effectively a mayonnaise made with boiled eggs, the yolks mashed up to form the emulsion, the whites chopped in at the end, the sauce flavoured with all manner of yummy bits: dijon mustard, capers, chopped cornichons, mixed ‘fines herbes’, classically parsley, chervil and tarragon.
When made right, sauce gribiche is perfectly balanced - rich with the cooked egg and mustard, aromatic with the herbs, briny and piquant with the capers and pickles - both savoury and tart. Gribiche is thus perhaps the most versatile of the compound mayonnaise sauces, something I’ve served succesfully with all of the following: grilled asparagus, grilled smoked ox tongue, or cold, thinly sliced ox tongue (especially good in a sandwich, that one), poached chicken, leftover cold roast chicken, or slices of cold roast beef, a thick slice of ham with some new potatoes, half a deep-fried partridge, some poached fish, roast carrots, boiled calf’s head, half a boiled egg (egg with egg and egg, a top-tier cook’s snack), and most recently, some simply boiled leeks.
