Cress Soup with Potatoes and Garden Cress
vegan
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© Courtesy of Lisa Pfleger, Eugen Ulmer Verlag Cress Soup (Kressesüppchen) from the cookbook “Vegan regional saisonal” by Lisa Pfleger.
Ingredients (for servings, )
| For the cress soup | |
| 4 | Russet potatoes (13 oz) |
| 1 | Onion (3.9 oz) |
| 1 tsp | Sunflower oil (cold pressed? organic?) (0.16 oz) |
| 600 ml | Tap water (mineral water, drinking) (21 oz) |
| 2 ⅔ oz | Garden cress |
| Seasoning and serving | |
| 1 dash | Salt (0.01 oz) |
| ⅞ oz | Garden cress |
Equipment
- hand-held blender / immersion blender or blender
- stove
- saucepan
Type of preparation
- cook
- chop or grind
- sweat
- season to taste
- purée
Preparation
For the cress soup
Chop the potatoes and onion and sweat in some hot oil in a saucepan.The author uses medium-size waxy potatoes for this recipe.
Pour the water (≈ 4 cups for 2 servings) on top of the potatoes and onions and let cook for 15 minutes, or until tender.
You can use a little less water at first and then add more later to achieve the desired consistency.
Add the fresh garden cress to the soup and purée.
The original recipe calls for 2 bowls of cress. To be on the safe side, use a little less at the beginning as cress sometimes tastes quite spicy. If you think there isn’t enough cress in the soup, you can always add more.
Seasoning and serving
Season with salt, garnish with the remaining cress, and serve.
This cress soup with potatoes and garden cress can be made quickly and easily and has a very rich flavor.
Garden cress: Garden cress is in the cabbage family. It owes its characteristic spicy flavor (slightly reminiscent of mustard) to benzyl isothiocyanate, which is formed from the glucosinolate glucotropaeolin found in garden cress. In cooking, cress is mainly used as sprouts, and these can be harvested about a week after planting. Garden cress works well for sandwich spreads and salads, or for soups, as is the case in this recipe. Since garden cress contains a lot of vitamin C, iron, calcium, folic acid, and vitamin B, it is particularly good as a nutritional supplement in winter.
Tip from the author: “If the soup is too spicy or the flavor is too intense, simply let the soup simmer for a while longer.”
Growing your own garden cress: Garden cress can be grown year-round. You can normally find garden cress seeds in garden nurseries and larger supermarkets. Then simply plant the seeds in soil or even on damp cotton and place on the windowsill. They grow best in a warm place and need a lot of water.
Vegetable broth or stock: In place of the water, you can also use low-salt vegetable broth. A recipe for a good vegetable broth can be found under the following link: Vegan Broth. But in any case, garden cress by itself has such an intense taste that it usually works fine to just use water.
