Why Winter Greens Taste Better Than They Look

By late January an allotment can look distinctly unpromising. Kale stands with its leaves shredded by wind, chard sulks in the wet, and the purple sprouting broccoli is nothing but a bundle of grey-green stalks. Yet this is precisely the moment the kitchen starts to earn its keep. Cold weather pushes sugars into the leaves, and a touch of frost turns curly kale almost sweet. A plant that survives a British winter has earned the right to be cooked properly.

The three crops worth planning a winter around are curly kale, cavolo nero and rainbow chard, with purple sprouting broccoli arriving as the reward in early spring. Each has a different structure and therefore needs a different hand in the pan. Get that right and greens become the best thing on the plate rather than the worthy pile at the side of it.

Blanching: Water, Salt and a Bowl of Ice

Blanching is the step most home cooks skip, and it shows. Done well, it sets colour, softens tough fibres and takes the raw, slightly soapy edge off chard stalks. Done badly, it produces grey, waterlogged leaves.

Use a large pan of water — at least four litres — and bring it to a rolling boil. Add a generous tablespoon of salt for every two litres. Salt in the water seasons from within and helps the greens hold their colour. Work in small batches so the water never drops below a boil.

• Curly kale: strip the leaves from the tough central ribs, tear into pieces and blanch for 60 to 90 seconds.
• Cavolo nero: the leaves are sturdier and take two minutes; the ribs need three or four on their own.
• Chard: separate leaves from stalks. The stalks want two to three minutes, the leaves barely twenty seconds.
• Purple sprouting broccoli: two to three minutes for the spears, depending on thickness.

Have a bowl of iced water ready and plunge the greens straight in. This stops the cooking dead and locks in the colour. Drain thoroughly, then press gently between a clean tea towel. Wet greens will never sauté properly, and this is the single most common mistake I see.

Sautéing So the Stems Keep Their Bite

Once blanched and dried, greens need only a few minutes in the pan. Heat a wide frying pan over a medium-high flame, add a good glug of olive oil with a knob of butter, and wait until the butter stops foaming. Add the greens in a single layer without crowding — cook in two batches if your pan is small.

Leave them alone for a minute to catch a little colour, then toss. Add the aromatics late: sliced garlic, a pinch of chilli flakes or a couple of chopped anchovy fillets need only thirty seconds before they burn. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and a twist of black pepper.

Chard stalks deserve their own treatment. Sauté them first with sliced onion for five or six minutes until they soften, then add the blanched leaves at the end just to warm through. Purple sprouting broccoli is excellent roasted at 200°C for twelve minutes, tossed with oil, chilli and lemon zest, which gives the florets crisp edges while the stalks stay nutty.

Dressings That Stand Up to Bitterness

Kale and chard carry a bitterness that a plain vinaigrette cannot handle. What they want is fat, salt and acidity in roughly equal measure.

A dressing of tahini, lemon juice, a crushed garlic clove, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and enough cold water to loosen it is thick, savoury and excellent over warm blanched greens. Equally good is thick yoghurt with grated lemon zest, olive oil and a little salt, spooned over roasted purple sprouting broccoli. Brown butter with capers and lemon is the richer option for a Sunday plate.

Dress greens while they are still warm. They absorb far more of the dressing that way, and the residual heat softens the sharpness of raw garlic and lemon.

Growing Notes for a Steady Supply

Kale and cavolo nero: sow in modules from May to June, plant out in July at 45cm spacing. Pick outer leaves only and leave the crown intact; a healthy plant will crop from October right through to April.

Chard: sow April to July and cut leaves about 5cm above the base. It regrows again and again, often giving you nine months of picking from a single sowing. Rainbow chard is prettier, but white-stemmed varieties are more robust in wet soil.

Purple sprouting broccoli: sow April to May, plant out in July at 60cm apart. Harvest from February to April, taking the central head first to encourage sideshoots. These are tall plants, so stake them before the winter gales arrive.

Net everything against pigeons, which will strip a young kale plant in an afternoon. Water well in dry spells, mulch with garden compost to keep the soil cool, and pick little and often rather than letting leaves grow huge and woody. The best greens are the ones you cut an hour before dinner.