holy men. Monks were known to spend long periods living on watercress alone, or sometimes supplemented with a little bread. This wasn’t a case of self-flagellation but an attempt to stimulate their thinking powers. The combination of the plant’s cleansing and healing properties with its reputed effect on the brain would have been a powerful stimulant to those who set themselves apart in isolation to confront the great issues of mind and soul. Even if the effect were not purely scientific, the very deliberate act of putting yourself in that situation of‘taking to the watercress’ would surely sharpen and focus the mind. Whatever gets the work done, I say. And they certainly got some work done. The religious communities in Ireland have been credited with carrying the torch of civilisation during the Dark Ages. They took on the task of writing down as much as possible of European literature, even as the barbarians were destroying it, and later disseminating it back across the continent. Many of these communities were fiercely isolationist, putting themselves in seemingly uninhabitable places, like the Skellig rocks off the south-west coast, in order to have the physical freedom and safety as well as the sense of remove that were needed to carry out their visionary work.
Perhaps it’s just foodie wishful thinking, but I’d like to think that, although taking to the watercress was a form of fasting, it was done with such positive and specific purpose that these holy men would have enjoyed the stuff. Watercress is one of the most flavourful and easily digestible greens, so it certainly must have been better than if they had attached mind-enhancing properties to nettles or the like.
The taste of watercress is a pungent mix of mustard-like heat, an aromatic freshness and a slight bitterness. Some varieties of land cress are available, similar in appearance to their watery cousin but grown in soil, and the flavour is usually a much more direct hit of unadulterated heat with none of the subtleties of watercress. It is only in direct comparison that you really appreciate the exquisite and complex flavour of the original.
Watercress makes a great salad green, bringing a peppery vibrancy to any mix. It’s delicious with orange, fennel, the oily nuts like walnut and pecan, as well as pears and green apples. Blue cheese is fabulous with cress, as are soft mild cheeses, especially those made from goat’s or sheep’s milk. Despite all that, I actually cook it as often as I serve it raw, although cooking is probably not quite the right word. If you heat it for much more than a minute or so, you risk losing both the vivid colour and the full impact of the flavour. In risotto, pasta, sauces and even soups, I add the cress at the last second so it just warms through. Eaten as part of dishes such as these, you may not get enough to turn you into a seer, but it certainly adds a kick to your dinner.
The future might be greener than you think
There is no doubt that we’ve come a long way from regarding greens as a purely medicinal form of food. Or maybe it’s not so much that we’ve moved on but that we have eased into a more comfortable relationship with green vegetables. We live in an age where we could easily give them up for a few supplemental pills, and yet vegetables are actually becoming more embedded in our food culture than ever. This is partly due, in an era of extreme health-consciousness, to the wonderful research conducted on the healing and disease-inhibiting characteristics of so many greens, especially watercress and almost all of the brassicas. But it is also true that, released from the slavery of feeling we have to chuck the stuff back to keep us off our deathbeds, we have actually come to love green vegetables for their flavour, texture and almost indefinable life-force quality. When greens were medicine, they were cooked as such and swallowed reluctantly. I especially pity the poor kids of America who had to swallow whole cans of slimy spinach in an effort to grow protruding muscles and strong jaws. Now that we are free to enjoy our greens, we are constantly playing with new ways to flavour the familiar, as well as looking for new varieties to add to the repertoire.
Almost half of the vegetables discussed here are new to me, in the sense that up to two years ago I didn’t have sufficient quantities of them to cook with. You only have to walk through the markets of small towns in Italy or China, or to browse through the vegetable-growing books of pioneers like Joy Larkcom, to see that the potential for further growing and cooking experimentation has barely been touched. Next time you eat some wonderfully exotic, if bitter, greens in Italy, don’t come home only extolling the joys of Italian food culture. Wonder, too, why it is we don’t grow them here. Yet.
Sprouting Broccoli and Oyster Mushrooms in Ginger Broth with Pumpkin and Macadamia Dumplings
First make the broth by bringing the water to the boil in a large saucepan and adding all the ingredients except the soy sauce. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the soy sauce and leave for 20 minutes more. Strain through a sieve into a bowl saving the broth and discarding the vegetables.
| Serves 4 as a starter, 2 as a main dish |
|---|
| vegetable oil |
| 4 small handfuls (about 350g/12oz)purple sprouting broccoli |
| 100g (3 1/2oz) oyster mushrooms,sliced or torn if large |
| 4 spring onions, diagonally sliced |
Steam the pumpkin until tender and mash it. Stir in the nuts, lemon zest and juice and coriander, and leave to cool.
Place the wonton wrappers on a work surface, with a corner facing you. Put a teaspoon of the pumpkin filling across the centre, shaping it into a rectangle. Moisten the uncovered wonton pastry and fold up first the nearest corner, then the sides and finally the top corner, to make a neat rectangular parcel. Repeat with the rest of the filling to make eight dumplings.
| FOR THE BROTH |
|---|
| 1.5 litres (2 3/4 pints) water |
| 1 medium onion, roughly chopped |
| 2 celery sticks, chopped |
| 1 carrot, chopped |
| 4 garlic cloves |
| 85g (3oz) fresh root ginger, sliced |
| 1 fresh chilli, sliced |
| 1 handful fresh coriander leaves |
| 1 handful fresh parsley leaves |
| 100ml (3 1/4fl oz) soy sauce |
Reheat the ginger broth gently in a large saucepan and keep warm over a low heat. Heat a little vegetable oil in a wok or large frying pan, and fry the broccoli and mushrooms over a medium heat for 5-6 minutes, occasionally ladling in a little of the broth to keep the vegetables moist. Add the spring onion and continue cooking for 2 minutes more.
| FOR THE DUMPLINGS (MAKES 8) |
|---|
| 100g(3 1/2oz) pumpkin flesh, diced |
| 1 tbsp shelled macadamia nuts,finely chopped |
| finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon |
| 1/2 tsp lemon juice |
| 2 tsp chopped fresh coriander |
| 8 wonton wrappers |
When the vegetables are almost tender, bring the broth to the boil, drop the dumplings in, lower the heat and simmer for 2 minutes, then remove them and place two each (or four if serving as a main dish) in warm shallow bowls. Divide the cooked vegetables between the bowls and ladle in the broth.
Spring Cabbage Dolma of Pumpkin and Chickpeas with Sesame Yoghurt Sauce
Serve these lightly spiced dolma with couscous, either simply steamed or flavoured with lemon and herbs. Any squash with reasonably dense flesh will work in this recipe, including the widely available hokaido and butternut squash.