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Water-Cress, Stewed
Lay the cress in strong salt and water; pick and wash it well; and stew it in water for about ten minutes. Drain and chop it, then return it to the stewpan with a bit of butter, some pepper and salt. Stew till tender. Just before serving put in a little vinegar, and serve with fried sippets. This is excellent with boiled chicken.
A short Victorian side dish that treats watercress the way we would treat spinach. The chief risk is overcooking: the whole point is a soft, peppery green, not a grey one.
- The salt-water soak"Strong salt and water" means a heavily salted cold bath, used to drive out insects and grit from cress that was gathered wild or sold loose. Ten minutes is plenty; supermarket bagged cress needs only a rinse.
- Wild cressIf you gather your own from a stream, cook it thoroughly rather than tasting it raw. Wild watercress from pasture-fed water can carry liver fluke. Commercially cultivated cress is grown in controlled water and is a much smaller risk.
- StewpanA stewpan is simply a wide, straight-sided saucepan with a lid. Any sauté pan or medium saucepan does the job.
- TimingTen minutes in water is far more than modern cooks would give a tender leaf; two to three minutes in a covered pan with only the water clinging to the leaves is enough to wilt it. The second stewing in butter should be a couple of minutes at most, just to warm through.
- Drain hardWatercress holds a great deal of water. Press it in a sieve or squeeze it in a cloth before chopping, or the butter will not cling and the dish will be watery.
- The vinegarA teaspoon of a mild vinegar, added off the heat, is the right scale. It sharpens the natural pepperiness; added early it dulls the colour.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter or dripping until crisp. Cut them from a firm white loaf and fry just before serving so they stay crunchy.
- YieldWatercress collapses to almost nothing. Reckon on a generous 3-4 oz (about 100 g) of trimmed leaves per person as a side dish for two to four.
Watercress was one of the cheapest greens in Victorian Britain, grown in vast beds along the chalk streams of southern England -- Hertfordshire and the Colne and Lea area, Hampshire and Wiltshire were the principal centres -- and carried into the cities by early train to be sold in bunches by street hawkers at dawn -- "cresses" was a familiar London cry, and a bunch with bread made a poor family's breakfast. Cassell's, which is often said to have aimed at covering every ingredient a household might meet, treats it here as a hot vegetable rather than a salad, in the same manner as spinach or sorrel: boiled, chopped, buttered and sharpened with vinegar. The pairing with boiled chicken is sound period logic, the peppery green and the acid lifting a notably bland dish, and the fried sippets supplying the crunch that a plate of poached fowl and stewed leaves otherwise lacks.