Thotakura Vepudu - aka Land Cress

It was a cold grey and wet morning, with only me in the house!  I didn't really feel like cooking as there was some leftover rice, rasam and cauliflower poriyal in the fridge.  I was feeling a bit restless wanting to take a little walk in the garden despite the wetness.  On the pretext of empyting out the compost bin, I ventured out with a plastic bag tucked into my jeans - hopeful that I may find something of interest in the garden!
I found a few plants of landcress which were doing brilliantly!  They were in fact getting ready to set seed by sending up flower spikes.  The leaves were massive and glossy, much bigger than what I had collected over the summer, and were a bright deep green.




I got busy grabbing them in handfuls and headed back to the kitchen giving them a thorough wash in 3 changes of water.  Rather than tediously draining them I gave them a quick spin in the salad spinner and roughly chopped them up.




I found three cubes of frozen chopped spinach remaining solidly frozen even though they were the remmants from what I had used to pack my sons lunch last night.  I also found a small container of sliced onions which made my job so much easier.






I love garlic with any kooraku - greens, so sliced a few cloves of these and quickly did a tadka using mustard seeds, and 2 red chillies; adding the onions and garlic, followed by the cleaned cress and the frozen spinach.
It took about five to maybe seven minutes to get ready, at which point I threw in  a  handful of grated coconut that I keep handy in the freezer door, and my kooraku was ready for eating.


I am not giving a recipe here as I didnt measure the amount of land cress I collected.  At a rough estimate on chopping it would have provided about three big cups at least. Onions used would have been about a half cup.

It was gorgeous with the peculiar flavour of the land cress and the pepperiness of it which makes it one of my favourite greens!  The next time I will add some crumbled goats cheese instead of the coconut and let you know how that turned out!