Underappreciated Spring Vegetables: The Noble Leek

There are certain vegetables that I am embarrassed to admit I have had almost no experience with. I could blame my upbringing in small town Oregon in the middle of the last century where iceberg lettuce was the only fresh green in Piggly Wiggly's produce aisle. Or my father and brothers who considered any vegetable outside of frozen peas and creamed corn to be potentially poisonous, so much so that my mother rarely dared to venture further afield. But there was that magical day when she somehow—call it a mistake, a lapse in judgement, or maybe a frozen food-aisle epiphany—came home from the store with a box of frozen broccoli with cheese sauce. Packaged in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, the only cooking required was to submerge it in boiling water for ten minutes to heat the broccoli and melt the cheese sauce. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, and have been a fan (and evangelist) for vegetables ever since (though not so much frozen or cooked in plastic). I am, though, a latecomer…