Savoring the Greens of Winter

When the days are not as long as we'd like them to be and there's still a chill, if not snow, billowing in the air, many of us start craving all things green. Summer salads and dainty asparagus tips aren't yet in season, but we can still enjoy the freshness of greens. Winter greens, that is.

Kale, Swiss chard and collards are just some of the lovely, verdant bunches that await in the produce aisle and farmers markets. Unlike spinach, which most cooks can toss, sauté and stew with ease, winter greens can be a bit confounding.

"One thing I hear so many times is that people look at a bunch of kale and say 'I don't know where to start,'" says Carolyn Cope, a former corporate-lawyer-turned-food-writer and author of the UmamiGirl blog. "It looks very intimidating."

So, to demystify these leafy beauties, here is a primer on how to savor nutritious leafy greens, plus two easy recipes.

1. You don't have to eat the stems. Really. Many greens, including kale, collards and mustard greens, have tough, fibrous stems. Just get rid of them. "I'm a big fan of kale," says Cheryl Sternman Rule, author of the upcoming cookbook Ripe: Satisfy Your Lust for Fruits and Vegetables. "But it has a woody stem that you don't want to eat, so you kind of unzip the leaves. Grab the leaves with one hand, and then pull the leaves down from the stem. Then roughly chop the leaves and add them in the last minutes of cooking soup or stew or chili, anything that has liquid already. With lentil soup, it's especially good."

2. Start mild -- with kale. Tuscan kale -- the one with the dark leafy greens -- is actually mild in flavor. You can add it to pastas, soups or other hot dishes, but you also can toss it into salads, especially those made with an acidic vinaigrette. Curly kale -- the one with curly leaves -- is a bit more bitter. One technique Cope employs is to freeze the chopped leaves. "When you defrost it, it becomes tremendously more tender, and it will also cook faster," Cope says.

3. Add a colorful burst to your plate with Swiss chard. It comes in rainbow (gorgeous red) and white varieties. Rule calls chard "the friendliest nonspinach green." As with kale, the stems are tougher than the leaves, but unlike kale, they're not so woody that you won't want to eat them. "Cut out the hard rib and slice it thinly; then sauté it in some olive oil, garlic and onion, and then you can add a bit of liquid and chopped-up leaves," Rule says. "Then everything will be done at the same time. If you're using rainbow chard, it might turn things a little bit red, but that's okay." Serve over pasta or polenta, with lots of garlic, some crushed red pepper and just a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil at the end, Rule suggests.

4. You don't have to braise collard greens to enjoy them. Cope says that you can use collards interchangeably with any kale recipe. "Most people are used to seeing collards long-braised, but I just did a recipe that involves a Brazilian preparation that is extremely delicious," Cope says. (The recipe is below.)

5. Garlic and olive oil can tone down the bitterness of winter greens. Turnip, mustard and radish greens have a bit more bite or bitterness to their leaves, and you can easily sauté them or add them to another dish for a nutritious boost. "Those three -- greens, garlic and olive oil -- make a great companion to chicken," Cope says. "You can also toss greens into a batch of meatballs or meatloaf. They don't have to be the star of the show."

6. Make kale chips for a healthy snack. Take whole Tuscan kale leaves, toss them with olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roast them in a hot oven (about 375 degrees F) until crispy, about 10 or 15 minutes. "Some people swear by these kale chips," Rule says. "It might be easier for a green-phobic child to try these chips than a big bowl of sloppy, wet greens."