Glass noodles come with a warning, but no sharp implements

This evening was a bit of a slow TV night, nothing to watch, grumpy grumpy grumpy. The fridge is also looking a bit sad and sorry tonight. Just the remains of a massive wine/cheese/antipasto platter I had for Eurovision (crud, all my chopping boards and knives are all filthily strewn about the apartment), a bottle of tomato juice and some leftover takeaway Chinese roast duck. Oh yeah, some random vegies rattling around in there too. Hmm, glass noodles in pantry. A-ha!
Wok on, ingredients in (in this order):
Shredded duck meat and skin by hand
A splash of olive oil
Green beans snapped into pieces
A bunch of watercress torn into short segments
Soy sauce
Dry sherry
Black pepper
Glass noodles (which I soaked in cold water at the start of the wokking)
Enoki mushrooms
The remainder of the takeaway plum sauce (I seem to have no sugar at all in my apartment at the moment)

Heat off, stir stir stir

Mmmmmmmm

Except I could not for the life of me convince myself to not have a third helping, even thought I KNOW that glass noodles swell up in my stomach and render me incapacitated with a mild bellyache for the rest of the night.

Ah, it was worth it. Yum yum yum!

Watercress... it's the best!

(Backdated entry)

I've been going to the exact same fruit'n'veg stall at the markets since forever. A scavenge and a scrounge recently unearthed the fact that they don't stock watercress! Disaster. My balcony used to be my sole supplier of watercress for my many salads, soups and sandwiches cravings... in fact, I need to get my Dadsy's Chinese Watercress Soup, that reminds me...

Anyway, a walk across the way and I suddenly discovered the neighbouring stall, previously overlooked, has watercress in abundance! At only 1.99 per large box!

If you've never used watercress before, it's a peppery, crunchy treat raw in salads and sandwiches - in particular the tender baby leaves; or a beautiful, tender treat in soups and stews with a milder, robust "Chinese vegie" nommage to its stems and base leaves.

The markets that day had the most luscious looking rare roast beef I've ever seen just down "meat alley" as the other half calls it, as well as the standard olive bread, so here's what became of that (slathered with Philly cream cheese):



My all-time favourite is smoked trout, watercress, boiled potato & goat cheese salad. Here was my first attempt, well before the great balcony aphid plague of 2010:



Let me know if you have any other inspired watercress recipes!