Watercress and Red Dates Soup is my wife’s favourite soup. It is a popular soup among the Chinese and is another one of those really simple soup to cook. You can either cook it over the stove, slow cooker or even double boiled. The ingredients used are also pretty simple and the cooking steps are suitable for beginners whilst the nutritional benefits are aplenty. Though some restaurants use the older shoots for cooking this soup, I prefer the younger shoots as they are more tender and chewable-friendly 
To cook this soup, I actually boil the meat (pork) for about 1 to 2 minutes and removed the scum appearing on the surface of the boiling water to get rid of potential “unpleasant” taste. The water is thrown away and the meat is then cooked into the soup. I prefer using bony pork parts (eg. ribs, shoulder, back) for this soup but you can also use chicken parts.
As for the watercress, I will pluck the tender shoots / stem with its leaves intact and discard the main longish stems. The shoots will shrink in size upon cooking by at least 70% in volume. Hence, you might have 3 soup bowl volumes of watercress shoots but upon cooking, you will be left with approximately 1 bowl or less.
This is my recipe for Watercress and Red Dates Soup
Ingredients
Method
Bring water to boil. Add bony pork parts and allow to boil for 1 to 2 minutes. Skim off scum which appears on surface of water. Remove pork parts and set aside. Throw away the water.
Bring to boil 1 litre of water in a clean pot. Return pork parts and add honey and red dates. Once water begins to boil again, reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 to 3 hours to enable the ingredients to impart its full flavour.
15 minutes before serving, increase heat to high, add watercress and boil it for about 5 minutes. Then reduce to medium heat and boil for another 10 minutes before serving. Add salt to taste prior to serving. Usually a pinch of salt would do.