Leek and You Will Find

I was already in a mood last night before the creme fraiche pushed me over the edge. Reluctant to face another two hour stint tomorrow without access to the Koru Lounge I sent a cheeky request to Air NZ asking for a free pass based on the fact I'm flying heaps with them at the moment, I've blogged about their lounge twice and I always coil my headphones beautifully using the over-under method before leaving the aircraft.

They said it may take up to 72 hours to respond but it took Roberta less than an hour to shoot me down.

I know this has come out unreadably small but if I make it bigger it gets too wide and slips underneath my 21 members. All you really need to know is Roberta told me to take a flying leap and if I wanted access to the Koru Lounge in Melbourne I could pay $40 in Christchurch which only goes to prove she didn't even read my cheeky request properly. I shall take my revenge tomorrow by ordering at least four red wines on the flight and pissing in the aisle Jetstar styles.

To recover from the disappointment I decided to cook my meal of the moment, Jamie Oliver's Grilled Fillet Steak with the Creamiest White Beans & Leeks. I know Jamie is very busy stopping the world from getting fat but you'd think he'd have come up with a better name for this dish. I would have called Meaty Leeks, or Creamy Meaty Leeks, or My Meat's Bean Leekin' or Show Us Your Knob (of Butter). I went to Coles because I want to cook like a Masterchef cooks but it seems nobody on Masterchef wants to cook with leeks because they didn't have any. How can a supermarket claim to be super or a market when it doesn't have any bloody leeks! Everyone loves leeks! They're long and succulent and Welsh like Tom Jones.

Tom Jones about to take a leek.

I bet they have loads of leeks in the Koru Lounge. That's probably why there were none left at Coles. I walked to Woolworths which is much bigger than Coles and sure to have leeks even though Masterchefs never shop there. Sure enough there were leeks for Africa and butter beans, (which New World in Bishopdale Christchurch do NOT have at ALL....unless you're willing to buy four cans of Four Bean mix and pick out the butter beans...assuming that the butter beans make up a quarter of each can which is a big call, so you'd better buy five cans just in case), but everything turned to custard when it came to the creme fraiche.

Creme fraiche is never easy to find because nobody knows what it is. Do you look in the creme aisle or the fraiche aisle? Nobody knows. I think creme fraiche is French for fresh cream but it's not fresh it's sour and I don't like asking anyone where it is because I never know if I'm saying it correctly. I'm pretty certain your creme should rhyme with phlegm but should your fraiche rhyme with fresh or creche? I wandered around for a good 15 minutes muttering and blustering and banging into people with my basket of butter beans before pouncing on a hapless Woolworths employee stacking spuds.

'Excuse me, do you know where the creme fraiche is?' (I rhymed it with fresh this time.)
'I don't think we have any. It's one of those things we sometimes have for six months and then we don't.'

WTF?? Is there a season for creme fraiche? Do the creme fraiche cows dry up for six months? Is there a French fraiche cartel called OFEC that ruthlessly controls supply to drive up prices? He told me it's usually in the cream section but I knew it wasn't because I'd already screamed at the cream three times. I followed him and he couldn't find any either but told me to wait because his fresh produce supervisor could confirm the absence of creme fraiche once and for all. Then I saw this.

That's right....there was no creme fraiche!

Except for the one in my BASKET!

Hollllaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I had nabbed the last fraiche in Australia. It had been hiding at the back behind the cooking cream and now it was mine. I could see an old woman near death looking enviously at my creme fraiche and I thought about licking it and offering it to her to see if she'd take it but instead just slapped her in the face with my pack of 25 peel and seel envelopes. Wooly boy returned to confirm there was definitely no creme fraiche and I let him finish before producing the evidence to shame him for life. The look of utter bewilderment on his face was priceless. I think I could have pulled Ving Rhames out of my bumhole and he would have looked less surprised. Here's a photo of me at home full of the joys of creme fraiche.

Here's a photo of Jamie Oliver's Leeky Meat Bean Cream.

And you won't find that in the Koru Lounge.