Wild Watercress

I bought this from the farmer's market forager after reading about wild watercress in the NY Times. It did not disappoint! The peppery leaves are superior to arugula, which I guess is much more prevalent now as a watercress replacement because watercress has to be found on a fresh stream to be of good quality.

Watercress has also given me a lot of faith in our Lake Forest Park forager. I found all these warnings online about watercress and liver fluke. I emailed the gatherer and he emailed me right back with a quality description of his picking site and the precautions he'd taken regarding liver fluke, so I thought WTF? let's eat this raw and not worry about it. And we are fine, so yay! And I feel like i had a little adventure eating salad :)

Here's the watercress after a thorough washing
 

Our first salad was Pink Lady Apple (also from the Farmer's Market, gorgonzola, walnut. SO good.
 

Our second was with the blanched fiddlehead ferns. This was good, but I think in the future I won't use this combination because the ferns were so big it was hard to eat them with the watercress at the same time and i don't want to chop up the fern because it's so pretty, ya know?
 

We also enjoyed the watercress in Mock Benedict - so good, knocks Eggs Florentine out of the park.