Feeling heaty? How about a bowl of hot piping watercress soup? Watercress Soup (西洋菜汤) is a cooling soup suitable for hot and dry months. It’s one of the soups I grew up with. And now I cook this quite often as watercress is easily available and is one of B’s favorite soups. Best of all, I can share the watercress with my syrian hamsters. Oh, and they like the red dates and wolfberries I add to the soup too.

Watercress is loaded with iron, calcium, folic acid, vitamins A & C. The westerners use watercress in their salads. So I thought they must have taste good raw. So while preparing food for my hamsters, I pick a stalk of leaves and stuff them into my mouth and munch. Eww.. it’s bitter and weird for my liking. I can take arugula(wild rocket), red coral leaves which are of peppery taste but not watercress. They probably taste better tossed with the right salad dressing. I guess I better not attempt to eat like my hamster. lol

Here’s a tip when using pork ribs for all your soups or dishes. You need to blanch them before hand for a good 5 to 10 mins. This will get rid of all the dirt and awful grey-colored foam which you will find floating on top of the water. Then you rinse the pork ribs before putting them into your soup.

If you do not like pork, you can replace them with chicken pieces with skin removed. Else the soup will be too oily with the chicken skin on. If you want to go meatless, then replace the water with chicken or vegetable stock. You may want to omit the salt then. And if you like your watercress crunchy like I do, follow the steps below. Else just throw in all the watercress in step 4.

Watercress Pork Rib Soup
Serves 2
Watercress (西洋菜), one bundle
800ml water
200 gm spareribs, rinsed and scalded with boiling water
½ tbsp dried wolfberries (枸杞)
6 dried red dates (红枣)
Salt to taste

1. Wash and rinse watercress, cut off the stems and separate them from the leaves.
2. Wash red dates and wolfberries.
3. Pour water into a pot and bring to boil.
4. Add red dates, wolfberries, pork ribs and watercress stems into the pot.
5. Simmer over low heat for about 30 to 40mins.
6. Add salt to taste
7. Before serving, add the remaining watercress into the soup for about 5 to 10 mins.
8. Serve hot with rice.

There will be MORE soup recipes coming up.