Carpet of Leeks
Now Playing: Adrian Belew--"Big Blue Sun"
I work, as some of you may have gleaned, in a restaurant in the United States. As such, I see a truly staggering amount of food wasted every day. People are actually better about cleaning their plates in my present workplace than they were at my old job at the high-end Italian place in Akron, where they were a lot more profligate with the kitchen's bounty. One of the factors behind my recent decision to actively pursue a culinary career has been to try and reverse, in however insignificant a fashion, this appalling habit. There's more than one way to go down with a ship. While some might protest, in the manner of one of Dickens' more celebrated characters, that the state of things helps to curb the excess population, their reasoning doesn't quite face up to how many more resources the relatively few well-to-do consume in contrast to the many impoverished.

This isn't a fresh discovery on my part--even while watching the egregious Nickelodeon game show Double Dare (in middle school, I think--such an irresponsible show could only have come about during or after Reagan), where groups of screeching preteens slid along waves of chocolate or whipped cream, I couldn't help thinking "I know all those sweets are horrible for you (not that it'll stop me from eating their ilk) but couldn't something more constructive be done with them?" My present quasi-poverty has made me more personally knowledgeable as to the benefits of food conservation, but even my ill-fated attempt to use egg whites in frying potatoes (I used the yolks to make homemade mayonnaise and didn't know what else to do with the remainder) wasn't enough to deter me from new endeavors in this cause. So I went for Food Gatherers, which I'd been meaning to do for a while.

Food Gatherers is a local organization that takes food from donors, mostly restaurants and grocery stores with product they can't or won't use, and then distributes it to those in need. These latter are a variety of local organizations including the Delonis Community Center Kitchen, where I made a commitment to volunteer for a couple of hours the third Saturday of every month. The kitchen is located in the downtown shelter building, which has a wide array of services for the hard-luck and homeless. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I wanted to use my experience to some good purpose. I'd been able to do so once before, at a Planned Parenthood reception in the house of a wealthy patron, where I was able to use my bussing skills (yes, bussing skills) to smooth things along. This gig promised to be a little more substantial.

I arrived at the kitchen in the wake of a church group who apparently do this every Saturday. Paula, the kitchen manager, promptly assigned us all duties and told us we'd have our orientation after we'd finished. This was actually refreshing, as I got to skip the awkward "sitting around, being the new guy" thing (although it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be; I don't picture people in their underwear--well, some less than others--so much as in Eddie Murphy-style Gumby outfits), and get straight to work. Paula had me unloading the delivery truck, making coffee (odd as I usually don't like it), and then teaming up with John, an avuncular gent in his sixties, to make salads.

The whole ethos of the kitchen is to use what you have. This should hold true of any kitchen, but it's a welcome escape from the tyranny of set recipes and it helped that Paula told us to use our own judgment. Her only contribution was to add corn to the salads, which I'd never have considered, but apparently people seem to like it. I got the tossing into an assembly-line format, with John chopping carrots and I parsley (and ripping romaine leaves to make them more edible for people with severe dental problems) and then back again. It was great fun and I was happy to be doing something useful with my abilities. Afterwards, Paula gave us the orientation session, which amounted to a brief history of the organization and how it worked. I could really get used to the kitchen as a monthly deal; their mission lies in exactly the direction in which I want to fashion my own life.

That night, I made vichysoisse.

Vichysoisse

3 tsp butter
8 leeks
3 medium potatoes
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 cup cream
milk or water to thin

Melt butter in pot. Clean and chop leeks, and add to pot. Stir while cooking for 20 mins. on low heat. Peel, slice, and stir in potatoes, then add stock. Bring to boil and then simmer until potatoes soften, about 30 mins. Puree until smooth. Season with salt to taste and pepper. Add cream. Thin with water and milk if necessary, then serve hot or cold.

This was my first cream-based homemade soup. Those are fraught with danger at my workplace, as our stovetop has two settings--"scald" and "off"--and easily burn. This happens a lot less nowadays, but you never know. I won't lie--vichysoisse was fun to make. I'd already eaten, so there was little rush. Leeks are interesting things--sweeter and milder than onions, and they have an equally lovely smell while cooking, only different. I tried a bit of the chopped raw, and it went down so much better than raw onions; I can definitely see how they would be excellent on salads. Softening and sauteing in the butter, they're a joy, and they reduce really fast--it was like watching a jungle in my soup pot transform into a marsh. I was even able to play with the leeks' texture a little, chopping them into waves and then smoothing them into a carpet.

I'd brought down my stereo to listen to CBC Radio 3--one of the fun things about cooking for me is the music. They did some Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Tom Waits (as well as a lot of obscure Canadian bands, which is really the appeal for me), and then a report from one of the Arcade Fire's "secret shows" from Montreal. I tried to dispel the leeks' aroma, which, while very pleasant, was close to suffocating, and remembering we had a blower atop the oven, I also realized that we had a small kitchen light much dimmer and softer than the main (and very harsh) ceiling light. Turning off the main, I turned on the oven light, and then kitchen was transformed. I was alone in the dim glow, snow all around the house and visible through the window, and stirring a pot. I felt like a wtich, maybe Sleeping Beauty's spurned, malefic would-be godmother plotting mischief aplenty. I doubt she was listening to Wolf Parade (maybe a wolf parade), but then I guess these comparisons only go so far. After stirring in the potatoes (and using the spare simmering time to bake off two spare cod fillets I had in the fridge), I found that the half hour had rendered the soup so soft and tender that I saw little reason to puree anything. Potage parmentier (vichysoisse without the cream) may be one of the basic French soups, but it was my kitchen, dammit. After all, this is presumably how they did it before food processors, and the peasants never needed any of those to go on jacquerie (though invented by a French chef around the turn of the last century, the soup's potato-leek base makes it great peasant food). I added the cream, gave it a stir, and then some milk and just a little water. The soups I make at work are good, but we got panned (if one can call it that) in the local paper (if one can call it that) for our soups being more like stews, velvety (our server's favorite description) and thick. I prefer it thus, but I know many like their soups thin, fluid and reedy (the last makes no sense, but it goes well with the other two in prose, I think), so I tried to overdo it with the water (it didn't "help"). I poured a small bowl, and stuck the rest in the fridge. It was great--stracciatella was okay, but this was so much better. The leeks and cream made it sweet while just a little bit spicy and mysterious.

I felt very satisfied with the day.