More Adventures with Watercress

We thoroughly enjoyed the first batch of watercress, but what really inspired me to buy it a second time is this pizza we had with Elizabeth and Sean at the Carmelita Happy Hour - which no one should miss - it was a flatbread with sunchokes pureed with truffle oil, hen of the woods mushrooms, pecans, roasted garlic, and topped with a watercress salad. So amazingly good.

Here's my version below:
 
I couldn't get sunchokes, but it's a newman's own four cheese, topped with rehydrated porcini mushrooms, slivers of garlic, pecans, and waterdress dressed with white truffle oil. Delicious.

And of course we had to have it our favorite way from last time again - pink lady apples, pecans, and gorgonzola.
 

A new favorite, truffle oil dressing, with hazelnuts, and pecorino.
 

And on top of ramen to add a little pepper to the soup :)
 

Sea Beans

Another farmer's market find. It's amazing that our local wild foods are so forgotten that they seem like exotic foreign vegetables. But these are harvested from our local shores. I honestly could not figure out what to do with them. They can be eaten raw or cooked, but they are surprisingly salty.
 

The best thing I did with them was make a faux Greek salad, which is great with just tomato, cucumber, sea beans and oregano. But also good with a little cottage cheese or yogurt on top.

 

Stinging Nettles! Risotto!

I guess it was kind of crazy of me to buy these from the forager, rather than picking them myself at the park, or perhaps just crazy to eat them at all. But honestly, I'd worry about pesticides if I picked them at a park. I wanted to try them because it sounded exciting.
 

But when it got right down to it, I was afraid to touch them. Here's Charlie being my hero and blanching them for me. We went for 3 minutes, to ensure all the stingers were toast.
 

They boil down to what almost seems like puree. And the stems become just as soft as the leaves
 

After that they are easy to work with. To make a risotto, saute rice with onions and garlic, gradually adding broth until rice is full cooked. When the rice is getting close, stir in the greens. I used half and half instead of butter to give it a creamy texture. This is topped with pecorino ribbons.
 
This dish was quite good, but somehow we still had a hard time relaxing about eating nettles. Charlie was convinced it was making his mouth tingle. I agree, but really we did not actually get stung or anything and it was quite good, but maybe I will stick with spinach in the future unless I find nettles in my yard.

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.

Fiddleheads

I'm so excited about the forager at the farmer's market! How cool is that?

I bought fiddlehead ferns, wild watercress, morels! yay! I'm pretty taken with the ferns. They taste kind of like asparagus, but look way better and don't make your pee smell, which never bothers women - guys just sit down! - but will make fiddleheads more popular in my house.

Here they are being beautiful.  

To prepare them you dust off any of the brown fuzzy "ferny" stuff called chafe. I also trimmed off the edges of their stems first like you would asparagus or broccoli. Then blanch them in boiling water for about a minute, poor them in the pasta strainer and run cold water on them to stop the cooking process.
 

Then you can do anything with them really. Even just eat them in a salad. Here's the two best ways we had them:

In a delicious pasta with morels. A slight (read: low cal) cream sauce flavored with marsala wine. YUM.

 

On top of a small premade organic mushroom pizza. A rare indulgence these days!
 

Mock Benedict

You can make a low calorie benedict sauce with yogurt, mustard, and light mayo. For good measure I added in some sorrel and green garlic. I first made this with 2 Tb Yogurt, 1 Tb mustard, and 1 Tb light mayo. I thought it was a touch mustardy, we used about 2/3rds of it, so I added 2 Tb of half and half for round two. That was better. But really both were good, given that these plates check in at 325 calories total (including shared potato patty and whole morningstar farm veggie sausage), I'll take it over the real thing anytime.

Wild watercress mock benedict
 

Oozing with goodness
 

Mock benedict with leftover corn salad and stuffed peppers