Here is a basic recipe and some background information
for Canh Xa Lach Xoong, a watercress soup.
I wish Americans would eat more watercress, so
producers would grow it and the price would fall and
the handling and freshness would improve. I am always
surprised at how few Americans have ever even tasted
watercress. If watercress is not available in your
local supermarket, you can check an Asian market if
one is nearby and they will probably have it - sold
loose rather than tightly bunched, withered, and badly
damaged.
This soup is not so much a Single Soup as a category
of soups. Watercress soups are typically made with
chicken stock and then bits of chicken or pork or tofu
or seafood, usually shrimp. At home, some people make
it from a too-weak shrimp stock - they neglect to use
the shells, and make the stock by mincing and
overcooking the shrimp in water for far too long.
Inland, away from the coast, some Viets make this soup with freshwater fish.
When this is served as a communal dinner soup, the
watercress stems are left whole and fulfill the role
of a vegetable. For a soup served in individual bowls
with spoons, Western style, the watercress has to be
chopped, and the quantity of watercress and proteins
can be increased.
The same soup is also made with (edible) chrysanthemum
leaves, which is too strongly (and unpleasantly)
flavored for most Americans.
I will give a recipe for basic Watercress & Shrimp
Soup, then explain after the changes that I made for Christmas Eve.
FYI, this is an uncredited recipe from AsiaRecipe.Com,
but it is also the one that gets reprinted in English
in Vietnamese publications. :-)
* 1 shallot
* 3 Tablespoons nuoc mam (fish sauce)
* 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
* 1/4 pound large shrimp (about 12), peeled and
deveined, shells reserved for the broth
* 6 cups Vietnamese chicken stock (or regular chickenstock simmered with a 1-inch piece of smashed ginger root)
* 1-1/2 bunches watercress, chopped into manageablepieces for eating (it's traditional to leave whole,but what a mess!)
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Pound the shallot into a paste, then mix in the nuoc
mam and the pepper. Toss in the shrimp and pound the
paste into them--they should stay whole.
Heat the stock in a large saucepan to a boil, then
stir in the reserved shrimp shells, reduce to medium
heat, and cook for about 8 minutes. Fish out the
shells with a strainer spoon.
When ready to serve, reheat the stock to a boil. Addthe shrimp and cook for 1 minute. Toss in the
watercress, and cook for another minute. Ladle into bowls and serve immediately
For my Christmas Eve version, which was about double
the quantity above, I already had some good shrimp
stock on hand, so
I just added slices of ginger to it
and let it simmer about 20 minutes to pick up the
flavor. (Remove the ginger before adding other
ingredients.)
Add nothing to the soup until you are ready to serve
it, because the watercress and seafood both cook
within moments of hitting the hot stock.
Instead of shrimp, I used bay scallops, which are very
small, and some tautog cut into very small pieces.
And I chopped the watercress because you can't
*cleanly* eat spoonfuls of the soup if the watercress
stems are left whole. And I increased the amount of
watercress overall because I wanted a soup that was
thick with both seafood and greens. Just a small
amount of cornstarch dissolved in water and added at the end of cooking gave the soup a nicer texture.
Serving
Suggestions
Slurp!!
Originally Submitted
4/2/2008
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