Anne Morgan On a grey summer’s day, Delia Smith’s watercress soup goes to the table hot, and on a sunny one it’s ladled into chilled bowls with ice cubes. Watercress, leeks and potatoes sweat gently in butter before the stock goes in, then it’s all blended and finished with crème fraîche, enough for 8 in about an hour and 20 minutes.
It opens the Summer Lunch or Supper menu in Delia’s How to Cook Book Three (2001), a meal for 8 that works whatever the British weather does. A whole salmon baked slowly in foil comes next, with her potato salad with shallots and vinaigrette and a chunky green salad, then a gooseberry crème fraîche tart.
A year later she printed the soup again, with the same amounts, in Delia’s Vegetarian Collection (2002). In the salad leaf guide of How to Cook Book Two (1999), she finds watercress too strong to eat on its own, yet says nothing else gives soups and sauces quite the same flavour.
Here the leeks and potatoes calm that peppery bite. What you get is pale green and flecked with leaf, smooth and soft, with just enough pepper at the back of each spoonful.
Delia Smith’s Watercress Soup
Course: StarterCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy8
servings20
minutes1
hour245
kcalSmooth and pale green, with a gentle peppery bite and a swirl of crème fraîche on every bowl.
Ingredients
- For the soup:
250g (9oz) watercress, stalks removed and chopped, a few leaves kept for garnish
110g (4oz) butter
the white parts of 5 leeks, about 400g (14oz), cleaned and roughly chopped
4 medium potatoes, about 700g (1lb 8oz), peeled and roughly chopped
1.75 litres (3 pints) hot vegetable stock, made with Marigold Swiss vegetable bouillon powder
4 heaped tablespoons crème fraîche
salt and freshly milled black pepper
Directions
- Sweat: Melt the butter in a large, heavy-based saucepan and stir in the leeks, potatoes and chopped watercress until everything glistens. Season with a little salt, cover, and leave over the lowest heat for about 20 minutes, giving it one good stir halfway.
- Simmer: Pour in the hot stock, bring it up to a simmer and cook, covered, for 10 to 15 minutes, until a piece of potato crushes easily against the side of the pan.
- Blend: Take the pan off the heat and leave it for about 10 minutes to cool a little. Liquidise the soup in batches until smooth, then pour it back into the pan.
- Finish: Stir in 3 tablespoons of the crème fraîche, taste for seasoning and warm it through very gently. Don’t let it boil.
- Serve: Ladle into hot bowls and top each one with a few of the saved leaves and a swirl of the remaining crème fraîche. For a cold soup, cool it, chill it well and garnish it the same way.
Notes
- Hot soup can push the lid off a liquidiser, so fill the jug no more than half full and hold the lid down with a folded tea towel.
- For the chilled soup, cool it quickly in a wide bowl, have it chilling within 2 hours of cooking and eat it within 2 days.
FAQs
Can I use double cream instead of crème fraîche?
You can, and it works well. Her older Watercress Cream Soup in the Complete Cookery Course (1983, and again in 1992) is finished with 150ml of double cream. It’s a smaller pot for 4 to 6, with 2 bunches of watercress, 3 large leeks, 2 potatoes, 50g butter and 850ml of very light chicken stock or water.
She liquidises that one gently rather than hard, which I find leaves it with a bit more body. To my taste, crème fraîche gives a slightly sharper, fresher finish than cream, which suits the pepper in the leaves.
How do I keep the soup bright green?
Long cooking dulls watercress, which is why this soup, with its leaves sweated and simmered, comes out a soft pale green. Her watercress and buttermilk vichyssoise in The Delia Collection: Soup (2003) keeps half its watercress raw, bruised with the end of a rolling pin to release its oil, then blended into about a third of the cold soup just before serving.
Those raw leaves make it much greener too. For this hot soup, my own trick is to hold back a big handful of leaves and blend them into a ladleful of soup with the crème fraîche, then stir it back in and only warm it through. That vichyssoise is a chilled cousin of her potato and leek soup.
How can I make it faster?
Her lazy summer soup in Delia’s How to Cheat at Cooking (2008) does away with peeling potatoes. About 10 discs of frozen mashed potato simmer for 20 minutes with a leek, spring onions, 425ml stock and 150ml milk, then a 110g bag of watercress, spinach and rocket goes in off the heat.
She blends it only briefly with a stick blender, so bits of leaf still show, and it serves 2 to 3, or 4 as a starter. Like this one, it can go to the table hot or well chilled.
Can I make it the day before?
Sure, and for a cold soup it’s the easiest way. Her watercress vichyssoise is chilled overnight, covered, which she calls ideal, and I’d do the same here, stirring in the crème fraîche once the soup is cold.
For a hot soup the next day, my own way is to stop after blending and chill it. Then bring it to the boil, turn the heat right down and stir in the crème fraîche, keeping it just below a simmer.
Which watercress stalks need to come off?
Only the thick, tough lower stalks, which can stay stringy even after blending, in my experience. The thin stems near the leaves are tender and disappear into the soup, so there’s no need to pick off every leaf.
