Eat your greens: A guide to leafy green veggies

Greens are not only for the salad bowl. There’s a variety of hearty leaves to chop, sauté, steam and bake up into flavourful new dishes. Here’s a quick introduction to what’s on today’s market shelves.

Baby bok choy
These small heads of bok choy have mild crunchy stems and spinachlike leaves that are more tender than the larger variety.

Broccolini
A trademarked cross between broccoli and Chinese kale, this is a slender stalk topped with tiny buds that resemble little broccoli florets. It is sweet, delicate, more tender and less fibrous than broccoli.

Curly endive
Curly endive grows in a voluminous loose head with lacy leaves that curl at the tip. The inner leaves are more tender and milder than the slightly bitter outer leaves.

Escarole
Escarole has broad, slightly curved, pale sturdy leaves and mild slightly bitter flavour.

Kale and collard
Collard has wide, heavy, long-stemmed flat leaves. Kale has long stems with curly-edged leaves. Both members of the cabbage family, collard and kale are interchangeable in cooking. Collard has earthy flavour, while kale has a sharper, more pronounced cabbage taste.

Rapini
With thin stalks, serrated leaves and some stems with clusters of floral buds, rapini (also known as broccoli rabe) tastes slightly bitter and is very tender.

Savoy cabbage
This cabbage has a loose, full head of dark to pale green crinkled leaves and a milder flavour than ordinary cabbage.

Swiss chard
With broad glossy leaves, Swiss chard has wide stems that are usually white or red but sometimes yellow, pink or multicolour. When cooked, the leaves are similar in flavour to spinach but more sour.

Cleaning your greens
Leafy greens can be quite gritty. To clean, plunge them into plenty of cold water. Swirl around to loosen and remove any grit; let stand for one minute. Lift greens out of water and drain. Repeat two or three times, depending on amount of sand and grit. Then use a salad spinner to dry them.

See next page for 7 new recipes!