For centuries it was an arbiter of the British spring; people used to munch bunches of watercress in the street like ice-cream cones. After a winter of eating meat and root vegetables, it was believed to be just the thing to “clear the blood”. The Greeks swore by its health-giving properties, and the Romans thought it would help them excel in combat. But no one has embraced watercress like the British – since the Earl of Sandwich paired it with cold roast beef in the nation’s first-ever takeaway, we have been eating more of it than anyone else in the world. However, this peppery crop, so rich in iron, vitamins and minerals, should never be taken for granted. If it was not for a few white knights who stepped in to bail out the industry a decade or so ago, watercress would have vanished from the greengrocers’ shelves.
By the 1980s, the ready availability of lettuce, followed by a contamination scare, had all but killed the market, with 90 per cent of Britain’s watercress growers deserting their gravel beds. Fast forward a few decades, and thanks to a Page 3 Girl and the saucy tag-line: “Not just a bit on the side”, the fortunes of this tasty superfood have been reversed. Watercress has become a booming £60m industry, doubling in size over the past seven years, with supermarket sales 30 per cent up in the past year alone. “It has the heart and soul of the nation,” is how Tom Amery, one of a new generation of growers, rather lyrically puts it. “We were overtaken by rocket briefly, but then we turned around and beat it again. The British just love watercress.”
At London’s Le Bouchon Breton brasserie, head chef Vickram Singh Purewal has devised a dish for his spring menu of watercress risotto served with a soft-poached hen’s egg. “I cook a basic risotto, using |either chicken or vegetable stock, then, in the final minutes, add a ‘chlorophyll’ of watercress. I love its vibrant colour, both as a key ingredient and a garnish. It is just so versatile. During winter, I usually combine it with meat and game, but I also use it for a dessert of watercress soufflé served with a salt-caramel sauce.”
It seems that the salad-starved Brits of old instinctively sussed out the health benefits identified by Hippocrates as long ago as 400BC. That’s when the founder of modern medicine set up his first hospital on Kos beside a spring, in order to grow bountiful supplies of watercress to feed his patients.
The Greeks called it kardamon, and believed it could brighten their intellect, giving rise to the proverb: “Eat watercress and get wit.” Two thousand years before Popeye came on to the scene armed with a can of spinach, General Xenophon was making his soldiers eat their greens – specifically watercress – “for vigour” before going into battle.
drive from www.independent.co.uk
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