Ingredient: Watercress
Category: Vegetables - Salad
Season: Summer
Water cresses are fast-growing, aquatic or semi-aquatic, perennial plants native from Europe to central Asia, and one of the oldest known leaf vegetables consumed by human beings.
These plants are members of the Family Brassicaceae or cabbage family, botanically related to garden cress and mustard, all noteworthy for a peppery, tangy flavour.
Like many plants in this family, the foliage of watercress becomes bitter when the plants begin producing flowers.
Watercress is grown in a number of counties of the UK, most notably, Hertfordshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. Alresford, near Winchester, is often considered the watercress capital of Britain (to the extent that a steam railway line is named after the famous local crop).
In recent years, watercress has become more widely available in the UK, at least in the South-East, being stocked pre-packed in some supermarkets, as well as fresh by the bunch at farmers' markets and greengrocers.
In the UK the packaging used by supermarkets, using sealed plastic bags under some internal pressure (a plastic envelope containing moisture and pressurised (inflated) to prevent crushing of contents) has allowed the distribution of watercress (and sometimes a mixture of it with other salad leaves).
This has allowed national availability with a once purchased storage life of 1 - 2 days in chilled/refrigerated storage.
Also sold as sprouts , the edible shoots are harvested days after germination.
Value-added produce such as the traditional watercress soup, as well as watercress pesto are increasingly easy to source. |