Tasty Salad Leaves For A Change From Lettuce (Watercress)

Member Name: janharper

Product:	Watercress
Date:	09/05/08 (98 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great flavour, healthy

Disadvantages: Seasonal crop

Watercress is one of my favourite foods. It comes in big cellophane packs from supermarkets like Tesco and Marks & Spencer. I particulary like the one stocked by M&S in early summer onwards. It is imported from Portugal because our own watercress season doesn't start until later in year.

This is a leafy salad vegetable that has a peppery taste to it. It is great in salads, or in sandwiches. My favourite way of using it is to put it into sandwiches with Marmite. This is an extremely tasty and nutritious way to eat it, not to mention its befits if you are a diet.

Watercress is grown in or near water and it was first introduced to England by the Romans. It is a greeny brown colour and grows along the surface in a kind of creeping way. It is a member of the nasturtium family and similar heart shaped leaves. The larger leaves are at the ends of the stems.

This does grow wild but some people find it difficult to distinguish from fools cress, or Marshwort which is poisonous if eaten. Marshwort has more pointed, thinner leaves but the best rule here is to leave alone unless you are a hundred percent certain.

As a salad, watercress is said to improve appetite and if you bruise it apply to the skin it is claimed that it will help to soothe blemishes.

This plant is easy to grow but you need fresh running water like a cool stream to do it, so that cuts out most of us. It is quite expensive to buy and a large bag of it cost me £1.49 in M&S. This will be lovely in salads for two days, then the remainder can be used in watercress soup which can be eaten hot, or cool.

This is worth buying for change of salad greens but it doesn't keep very long. Once you have opened it you need to roll the top of the bag down and store in the fridge like that. If you seal it up again it will go soggy and slimy very quickly.

Summary: Succulent, flavoursome and refreshing salad veg