Berros y Verdolagas: Watercress and Purslane Salad

Verdolagas are a quelite. That word does not translate cleanly into English, and that is part of the problem. Quelites are the edible wild and semi-wild greens that grow alongside corn and beans in the milpa, the traditional planting system of central and southern Mexico. Puebla, Tlaxcala, the State of Mexico, and the eastern edge of the Valle de Mexico are the heart of quelites country. This salad lives there.

Verdolagas (purslane) are succulent, lemony, with a faint mineral tang from the soil they grow in. Berros (watercress) are peppery and clean, the kind of green that wakes up the palate. Together, with romaine to give the bowl body, they form the kind of salad that a campesino family in Cholula or Texcoco would recognize as a Wednesday lunch. Nothing fancy. Just what came in from the field that morning.

The mustard vinaigrette is not French. Mustard has been cultivated in Mexico since the colonial period and the sharp, vinegary dressing on quelites is a Poblano habit, not an import. The queso panela goes on at the end because it is mild and fresh and lets the greens do the talking. If you want to make this with queso fresco instead, do it. Both belong in this bowl.

My mother kept a verdolagas patch on the rooftop of our building in Colonia Roma. She would pick them in the morning and rinse them three times in cold water before lunch. She used to say that verdolagas are the most generous green in Mexico because they grow where nothing else will. La cocina no es decoración, es trabajo.