April: three ways with watercress, and two with service
On Friday, when I was gathering together the ingredients for this post, I had two very different experiences of service that I wanted to share with you.
I’d decided to make crabcakes with watercress mayonnaise and watercress salad. So, first things first, I headed to a fishmonger’s in Chinatown on my way home from work. In Dutch (and my Dutch is pretty reasonable these days) I asked the fishmonger if he sold crab. When asked which type of crab, I said I didn’t much mind but I only wanted the claws. Only I didn’t know the word for claws, having not had to use it much before, so I said it in English and mimed a pincer action. At which point, the fishmonger started speaking to me in English while I persisted in Dutch. He then got all grumpy with me and asked whether we were speaking Dutch or English. I was extremely proud of myself at this point, because I managed – for the first time in five years – to say in loose translation: “Just because I don’t know ONE word in Dutch does not mean that the entire conversation now has to switch to English!” I think it worked, because he was considerably less grumpy after that. And so was I.
Crab bought, Asian supermarket raided, watercress found, I headed to my favourite wine shop to buy a crisp white to go with it all. I say it’s my favourite wine shop, but for various reasons that I don’t quite understand myself (I suspect pure laziness), I realised that I hadn’t been there for nearly a year. I’ve always thought I have a rather forgettable face, so I reckoned that after I year I would walk in and be treated more or less as a stranger.
I was joyously wrong. “Miss Victoria! Hoe is het met je?” I was greeted as soon as I descended the steps into the Wijnkelder. My wine connoisseur then proceeded to ask me all about my business, my dinner that night, my wine wishes… He even advised me not to buy a bottle I’d picked up (I remembered liking it before) because this year’s vintage “tastes like lemonade” compared to last year’s. Now THAT, dear Amsterdammers, is what I call service.
So, on with the cooking bit. Watercress mayonnaise is surprisingly easy to make: you just blend watercress leaves with oil (you’re supposed to blanche the leaves first and then squeeze out the excess water, but I failed to do either of those things without it appearing to cause any emulsification problems later) and then use that oil to drizzle into your usual egg yolk base. I added a touch of mustard and some lemon juice at the end. I turned more of the watercress into a salad, with endive leaves and a honey dressing. Peppery meets bitter meets sweet – a perfect balance. And my crabcakes worked out pretty well too: just flaked crab (claws!), mashed potato, lemon zest, mustard, seasoning and egg white. We ate the dish with a Rueda that the nice wine man let me taste in the shop. What a gent.
I still had watercress left over, so I decided to go out on a bit of a limb and invent a kind of Asian pesto. I toasted off some peanuts, and blended them with garlic, coriander, the remaining watercress, lime juice and ginger. Then I substituted pasta for soba noodles. Surprisingly good and very quick to make. And didn’t go badly with the Rueda either…
