meaning - Is “Know how to cook leeks”an idiom? What does “Read “Hamlet” and know how to cook leeks” mean?

There was the following sentence in New York Times’ article (February 28) titled “What you learn at 40s.”:

"Victor Hugo supposedly called 40 “the old age of youth.” - - The
conventional wisdom is that you’re still reasonably young, but that
everything is declining: health, fertility, the certainty that you
will one day read “Hamlet” and know how to cook leeks. Among my peers

there’s a now-or-never mood: We still have time for a second act, but
we’d better get moving on it."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/opinion/sunday/what-you-learn-in-your-40s.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

What does the line -“Read Hamlet and know how to cook leeks” mean? Is “Know how to cook leeks” an idiom, for instance, to mean to get 'the worldly knowledge'?

Readers English Japanese Dictionary at hand carries “eat the leek” and “not worth a leek” as idioms, but don’t include “know how to cook leeks.”

Answer

I'm pretty sure there’s no connection intended between the literary and culinary achievements. I think you are misparsing this as

the certainty that you will someday read Hamlet and [as a result] know how to cook leeks

when in fact it is supposed to be parsed as

the certainty that you will someday read Hamlet and [that you will also someday] know how to cook leeks.