Whenever I’m in Marche Oriental, our local (as in nearby, not Locavore) Vietnamese-owned Asian market, I’m always amazed by the fresh herb section. Most grocery stores always carry a few basic herbs, though they usually look somewhat wilted and abused. Marche Oriental’s herb section is another animal entirely. For one, most of their bagged herbs are filled with air (like herbed balloons!) so they don’t get squished or soggy. And the selection is wonderful. They have mint, cilantro, dill, tia to (perilla), holy basil, Vietnamese balm… the list goes on. Last week I picked up a package of pennywort, which I had heard of, but never tried.

In Vietnam, pennywort is often used to make a deep green drink called nuoc rau má, which is usually sweetened. It is supposed to be very healthy, being good for reducing hypertension and detoxification among other things, but I can’t verify any of that. You can read more about Centella asiatica (pennywort’s scientific name) here on Wikipedia!

So, I piled the leaves (there is one leaf per stem) without their stems into my food processor (a blender would work better!) and whirred them up into this lovely cocktail:

I used Wandering Chopsticks’ recipe for Nuoc Rau Ma as a guideline. It seems that you can make it as watery or as sweet as you like, of course. I didn’t make mine very sweet. I’m not going to include a recipe here, because it was very easy: wash one bunch of pennywort (wash well, it’s a swamp-growing herb) in lots of running water, remove stems and put the leaves in your blender. Add enough water to cover the leaves (or more, if you like) and about a teaspoon of sugar or other sweetener (I used chicory syrup. Again, sweeten to your taste). Blend well, the water will turn a very dark green. Then, strain the juice into glasses or a pitcher and drink! Add ice, if you like. I didn’t, but would in the summer.

How did the pennywort juice taste, you ask? It was delicious. It was actually a pretty subtle herbal quality; with such a dark green colour I was expecting a bold flavour, but it was mildly herbal and very refreshing. I thought it tasted a bit like the way carrot tops smell, if that makes any sense.

For the sake of comparison, I also tried the canned variety of pennywort juice. It was much sugarier than the one I made, and also lacked the bright herbal quality of the fresh version. I still liked it okay, but it had a bit of a swampy taste. If you’re trying pennywort juice for the first time, definitely try it fresh if you can. Here’s the canned drink:

Have you tried pennywort juice?
I’m looking forward to experimenting with other fresh Vietnamese herbs!

love,
meg

Tags: herbs, Treats, Vietnamese

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Plants, Treats. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.