Tag Archives: Watercress

Spinach and watercress soup

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I am rushing a bit today but I wanted to share this delicious soup recipe with you. The base of this soup is basically the potage parmentier recipe that I posted on a few weeks ago that I adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertolle. That recipe (leek and potato soup in case your French is as good as mine) is a delicious meal in itself but I have given it a bit of pep by adding some fresh spinach and watercress. 

  • 500g of peeled and cubed potatoes
  • 250g of very finely chopped leek
  • 1½ pints of vegetable stock
  • 100g fresh spinach and watercress
  • Salt and pepper
  • 50g butter
  • 2 tablespoons of double cream (optional)
  1. Cook the potato and leek in the vegetable stock until the vegetables are tender. Using the back of a fork roughly mash the potato.
  2. In a small pan bring a small amount of water to the boil (probably less than an inch of water) and cook the spinach and watercress for a minute. With a hand held blender, roughly blend the spinach, watercress and the water into a course soup.
  3. Add the spinach and watercress to the the leek and potato soup and stir in well.
  4. Season the soup with salt and pepper and stir in the butter and cream.

Feta & Watercress Sauce with new potatoes.

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This weekend I made a beautiful feta cheese and watercress sauce from the book A Slice of Cherry Pie. The recipe in the book makes 450 ml but if, like me, you are cooking for two you will need a lot less so I quartered the ingredients. I then used the finished sauce to coat some boiled new potatoes before serving them with a medium rare fillet steak and a watercress and rocket salad.

  • 50 g feta cheese
  • 50 g double cream
  • 25 g roughly chopped fresh watercress
  1. Pour the cream into a small pan and crumble in the feta.
  2. Heat gently so the cheese melts and the sauce warms.
  3. Finely chop the watercress and add to the cheese sauce.
  4. Cook for a few minutes and pour over the boiled, drained new potatoes.
  5. Coat the potatoes gently with the cheese sauce and serve.

I had a think about what else you could do with the sauce and one idea I came up with was to fill a large field mushroom with some fried bacon and a spoonful of the sauce, top with some breadcrumbs and bake in the oven. You would need to make sure that the bacon was of good quality and not too salty as the feta cheese is quite salty in it’s own right. It might also be nice with some freshly picked vegetables such as yellow courgettes, pod peas and broad beans tossed in the sauce and served with a little squeeze of lemon juice.

Recipe taken  from: