Cooking with Watercress

When I am at the wet market, I am drawn to buying watercress if I noticed that there are no yellow leaves on the bunches for sales.  I will usually buy about 500g to 600g of watercress.  I will choose some young shoots with thinner stems to be stir fried and served as a vegetable dish.  The ones with thicker stems will be used to boil soup with.

You should wash watercress by soaking it in a pail of water with two tablespoons of salt added.  After a while, you will notice baby snails climbing to the top of the bunch to get away from the salt water.  So always give your watercress a good shake in the water to remove any dirt or critters still on it.  Soak it again in a pail of fresh water to remove any salt residue.  When you remove the watercress from the pail, the water should look clean.  If it is not, give it a good shake in the water and soak it one more time in fresh water.

Once it is clean, I will remove the tips of each shoots and the leafy greens from the stems.  

The tips from the young shoots can be kept for stir frying. If I am using their stems too, I will break it up about 2 inches in length.  I will not break up any of the thinner or thicker stems kept aside for boiling soup as we will not be eating them. They will be removed from the soup before I add the tips of the shoots and leafy greens.  I turn the cover from my pot upside down so that I can placed them on it to remove.  This is how the stems looked like after boiling them for an hour.  

This is how the watercress soup should look like when it is ready to be served.  This time I added dates and chicken feet to enhance its flavour.

Here are the steps for preparing and stir frying watercress.  If I have enough greens to cook the dish, I will not include the stems. 

This is how you can boil watercress soup.  Note that any leftovers from the stir fried dish and its sauce can be added to the soup when it is ready to be served.  Do not let it boil too long after adding as it is already cooked.