In cooler weather, some greens are at their best

Cabbage is sweet, creamy-tasting and crunchy when raw; buttery-tasting, earthy and unctuous when cooked. For salads, look to savoy and Napa varieties, whose ruffly leaves keep a tight hold on dressings and retain their texture even as they wilt. (Napa, with its high water content, tends to slump more quickly.) Or cook any variety — slowly, in a little oil with a few tablespoons of water — to concentrate its flavors and keep its leaves plump.

Collard greens, like most winter vegetables, produce more sugars after they’ve been nipped with frost. Finely shred the leaves for salads or coleslaw, or use whole leaves as a wrap. Alternatively, steam the shredded leaves just until tender, drain, and gloss them with a sharp, garlicky dressing. Cooked, collards become tender and succulent. Very fresh, young leaves need no more than a few minutes on the stove; more mature leaves should cook a little longer, and more slowly.

Chicories — radicchio, catalogna chicory, curly endive or frisee, sugarloaf chicory and escarole — have sweet, lettucelike leaves tinged with a compelling bitterness. In salads, their complex flavor is best matched with sharp vinaigrettes and citrus-based dressings. Adding them to brothy soups or braising them lightly cuts their bitterness by half, renders them silky and tender, and brings out an earthy richness. A compromise: Remove the outer leaves for cooking and reserve the more delicate inner leaves for salad.

Kale usually has deeply colored leaves that are mild and sweet, but there’s enough variation among varieties that it’s worth trying them all. Lacinato (also called Tuscan kale or cavolo nero) has crinkly, tender, almost black leaves, ideal for salads; ruffly redbor, its sturdy greens a purplish-rose, is a good choice for soups and stews. For sauteing, try any of the Siberian or Russian kales, whose large, fine-grained leaves wilt quickly into meltingly tender heaps.

Mustard greens have an intense, wasabi-like bite that varies in intensity depending on the variety. Classic varieties with large, curled leaves will hit your sinuses the hardest and are ideal for cooking, which will mellow their spice and accentuate their nutty sweetness. Red, flat-leaf varieties and varieties with delicate, frilly or spiky leaves are milder-mannered and brilliantly feisty in salads, and they pair well with dressings incorporating ginger, miso or avocado.

So often when we talk about salads, we apologize. If we bring a salad to a potluck, we play down our contribution. If we serve salad for dinner, we regret that it isn’t more substantial. If a co-worker asks what we ate for lunch and the answer is leafy, green and dressed with vinaigrette, we say, “Oh, just a salad.”

We take salads for granted, as cooks and as eaters. We undervalue them for their potential for sustenance and satiation, but also for the care they require in the making, a trend no doubt encouraged by our dependence on bottled dressings and preprepped greens.

We can do better. So with fall’s dropping temperatures, I’m adding ever more salads to the menu, wielding the season’s frost-sweetened, intensely flavored greens – collards, cabbage, mustards, chicories and, yes, kale – to restore some glamour, and perhaps some respect, to the salad course.

I suspect that many cooks would judge me a season off, salads being what we run to when the heat chases us toward something lighter. But warm-weather leaves, when you can find them, are often aggravated versions of themselves. Their bitter, pungent or spicy undertones can be aggressive, their texture brash. The cold is what brings their flavors into alignment.

Bitter chicories take on a mellow, buttery glow; collards turn bright-tasting and sweet, their stems juicy enough to eat raw; mustards, tasting of hazelnuts and wasabi, are irresistible.

“I really look forward to selling our greens this time of year because the flavor is so good,” said Mike Nolan, who grows a variety at his Earth Spring Farm in Carlisle, Pa.

But while you could certainly apply heat to these greens, it’s gratifying to capture them as they are, framing them, along with a few garden companions, as a moment in a season. Maybe it’s a ruffly head of savoy cabbage, juicy-sweet daikon radishes and garnet-skinned carrots; or a head of spiky-leaved, ruby-streaked mustard greens with a plump, crisp kohlrabi. To enjoy them fresh and vibrant is a privilege. With that in mind, make your salads soon after you buy their star ingredients, before they have anything to hide.

Numerous cookbook authors have devoted chapters entirely to the art and methodology of making salad well: Paul Bertolli in “Chez Panisse Cooking,” Judy Rodgers in the “Zuni Cafe Cookbook,” for instance. If you are a disciple of deliberate saladmaking, you know that the subject is worth the meditation.

Making a salad, their philosophy goes, should be a thoughtful and measured process, as much about preparing its components as about assembling them. Although you could apply that rhetoric to other types of cooking, it is critically important with salad, because rarely is there a next step in which to coax out flavors or veil flaws.

Cal Peternell, writing in “Twelve Recipes,” has just added a contribution of his own. Although Peternell, chef at the Berkeley, Calif., restaurant Chez Panisse since 1995, hinges his focus on vinaigrettes, he touches on some of the basics that home cooks tend to miss because the steps seem painstaking or because, having grown up on iceberg, we never learned.

There’s rinsing the leaves in a bowl of cold water, not under the faucet, so the grit falls away from the leaves and the rushing water doesn’t bruise them. (If your greens have lost a little life, make sure the water is extra cold; a short bath will revive them.) There’s lifting the greens out of the water and into a colander rather than pouring them, along with all the grit you’ve carefully dislodged. There’s drying them, because spending the better part of twilight carefully filling a salad bowl, whisking up a dressing with your best olive oil and then diluting it with too-moist leaves is heartbreaking. Use a salad spinner or a couple of tea towels, again aiming not to bruise those leaves, which under the weight of dressing will turn soggy and limp faster than an unbruised leaf will.

For dressing those carefully prepared greens, look to your hands, which will coat the leaves more effectively than any utensil. Dress them at the last minute before you serve, because they cannot wait to begin wilting. Sturdier greens like chicories, dandelion and collards will buy you a little extra time, cabbage even more. Then, for the sake of economy, dress only as much as you think you’re going to eat, because unlike stew, a leafy salad rarely improves the next day. As Peternell points out, “You can always dress more.”

Working with sturdier leaves requires just slightly altered attention. Heartier, fuller-flavored greens, such as mustards, chicories or everything-but the-kitchen-sink mixes can take burlier dressings than you might use for a salad of delicate spring lettuces, which can turn sodden without much provocation. Ingredients like Dijon mustard, cream, pounded nuts and honey add a heft and texture that encourages the dressing to cling to the leaves.

For salads of collards or kale, Peternell prefers to cook the greens first, boiling them briefly in salted water just until tender before dressing the drained, chopped greens with a pounded-garlic-and-anchovy vinaigrette and serving them over toast.

“The dressing drips into the toast, and it gets all delicious. It makes a great snack or a light lunch,” he said.

So much of making salad is in the preparation that it seems wise to learn to enjoy it. Rodgers, in the “Zuni Cafe Cookbook,” puts it this way: “I love the feeling of scooping up the leaves and sliding them between my fingers, coating each surface with dressing.”

Even if you don’t find anything meditative in that, your care will come through on the plate. It will be more than enough.

Cabbage Salad With Winter Roots and Popped Mustard Seed

4 servings

Turn this salad into a vegetarian main dish by folding 1/4 cup of red quinoa, cooked and cooled, into the finished salad and scattering cubed extra-firm tofu around each plate. MAKE AHEAD: The salad can be made 30 minutes before serving.

1 medium head savoy cabbage or Napa cabbage

2 medium carrots, scrubbed well

3 medium watermelon radishes or other winter radishes, such as the Hilds Blauer or China Rose varieties

1 small red onion

3 tablespoons peanut oil

1 tablespoon brown mustard seed

2 small dried arbol chili peppers, torn into 2 or 3 pieces (reduce to 1 or omit for less heat)

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Cracked black pepper

1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves (from about 10 sprigs)

Cut the cabbage in half through the stem end, then cut each half through the stem end to yield four quarters. Slice off the core and discard, then cut each quarter crosswise into thin ribbons. You should have about 9 loosely packed cups. Transfer the cabbage to a bowl.

Cut the carrots into matchstick-size strips (julienne), and halve and thinly slice the radishes; transfer those ingredients to the bowl of cabbage.

Cut the onion in half crosswise, then slice it thinly lengthwise. Add the onion to the bowl.

Heat the oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Once the oil shimmers, add the mustard seed and arbol chili pieces. Cover and cook for about 4 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally, until the seeds begin to pop. Remove from the heat; let cool for 5 minutes (covered).

Dissolve the salt in the lemon juice in a small bowl, then pour over the cabbage, along with the oil and mustard seed. Use your hands to toss the cabbage and vegetables with the dressing until they are well coated and slightly wilted. Taste for salt, and season lightly with the black pepper.

Fold in the parsley, and serve.

Per serving: 170 calories, 4 g protein, 16 g carbohydrates, 11 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 470 mg sodium, 7 g dietary fiber, 7 g sugar

Collard Green, Potato and Chickpea Salad With Spiced Lemon Dressing

2 to 4 servings (4 appetizer or side-dish servings or 2 main-course servings)

If your collards are not particularly tender, blanch or steam them first, just until tender, then drain them thoroughly before tossing with the dressing. MAKE AHEAD: The cooked potatoes and chickpeas can be dressed and refrigerated 2 days in advance; bring to room temperature before serving. The spices can be toasted and ground 3 days in advance and held in an airtight container at room temperature.

Kosher salt

1 pound fingerling potatoes, scrubbed well

1 bunch collard greens (about 1 pound)

5 pitted oil-cured black olives, coarsely chopped

1 teaspoon cumin seed

1/2 teaspoon caraway seed

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes

1 clove garlic

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon plus 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup cooked or canned, no-salt-added chickpeas

1/3 cup packed cilantro leaves, for garnish

Freshly cracked black pepper

Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add a generous pinch of the kosher salt, then add the potatoes. Reduce the heat to medium; cook uncovered just until the potatoes can be easily pierced with the sharp tip of a knife, about 15 minutes. Drain and cool.

Cut the ribs from the collards by slicing along both sides of the stalk from the top of the leaf to the stem end; discard or reserve the ribs for another use. Stack the halved leaves and cut them into thin ribbons. Rinse in a bowl of cool water, spin dry and transfer to a medium bowl. Add the chopped olives.

Heat a small skillet over medium-low heat. Add the cumin and caraway seeds; cook for about 3 minutes, until lightly toasted and fragrant. Let cool for 5 minutes, then grind to a coarse powder using a mortar and pestle. Transfer to a small bowl and add the crushed red pepper flakes (to taste).

Use the same mortar and pestle to reduce the garlic to a paste. Add the lemon juice and the 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt; mix until the salt has dissolved. Transfer to a bowl; slowly whisk in the oil to form an emulsified dressing.

Once the potatoes are cool, cut them into bite-size chunks. Add to the bowl, along with the drained chickpeas.

Add 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons of the dressing to the bowl of collards and olives; use your hands to toss gently until well incorporated. Pour the remaining dressing over the potatoes and chickpeas, along with the remaining 1/4 teaspoon of sea salt. Use a spatula to fold it in until well coated.

To serve, scatter the potatoes and chickpeas over the bottom of each plate. Mound the collard-olive mixture on the top, and garnish with cilantro leaves. Season lightly with the black pepper. Serve right away.

Per serving (based on 4): 240 calories, 10 g protein, 37 g carbohydrates, 8 g fat, 1 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 520 mg sodium, 10 g dietary fiber, 5 g sugar

Chicory With Grapefruit, Avocado and Pepitas

4 servings

Catalogna chicory, sometimes sold as Italian dandelion, is also the variety cultivated for its heart and inner shoots and sold as puntarelle. In cooler months, its deep green leaves are sweet and crunchy and only moderately bitter. MAKE AHEAD: The dressing can be made and refrigerated up to 3 days in advance. Bring to room temperature and shake to re-emulsify before serving.

1 bunch Catalogna chicory, or Italian dandelion greens (may substitute regular dandelion greens, escarole, curly endive or sugarloaf chicory; see headnote)

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon finely minced yellow onion (may substitute shallot)

3/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon champagne vinegar

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper, plus more as needed

2 tablespoons raw, hulled pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

2 small ruby red grapefruit, supremed (see NOTE)

Flesh from 1 large or 2 small ripe yet firm avocados, cut into long, quartered slices or bite-size pieces

Trim off and discard the stem ends of the chicory. Chop the leaves into 2-inch pieces. You should have about 8 cups, lightly packed. Rinse in a bowl of cool water and spin dry, then transfer to a mixing bowl.

Combine the onion, salt and vinegar in a small bowl, stirring to incorporate. Let the mixture sit for 10 minutes, then whisk in the oil to form an emulsified dressing. Season with the 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

Toast the pepitas by warming them in a skillet over medium heat, tossing occasionally, for about 5 minutes, until fragrant and just lightly browned. Cool completely.

Toss the chicory with all but 2 teaspoons of the dressing, gently using your hands to combine. Mound the chicory onto individual plates, and nestle the grapefruit sections and avocado among the greens.

Drizzle with the remaining 2 teaspoons of dressing. Sprinkle the toasted pepitas over the top; season with more black pepper, if desired.

NOTE: To segment the grapefruit into supremes, slice off the bottom and the top. Stand the fruit on a cutting board with one of the cut sides down. Use a serrated knife to cut the peel and the pith away from the fruit, top to bottom. Then, holding the fruit in your hand, cut the segments away from the membrane. (The idea is to leave behind all of the membrane and white pith.)

Per serving: 280 calories, 5 g protein, 18 g carbohydrates, 23 g fat, 4 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 430 mg sodium, 8 g dietary fiber, 9 g sugar

Mustard Greens, Kohlrabi and Carrots With Ginger Dressing

4 servings

Make boiled cider by reducing fresh cider on the stove to about 1/7th of its original volume. Maple syrup is an acceptable substitute, but the resulting dressing will be lighter-bodied and milder in flavor.

8 cups lightly packed mustard greens (from about 2 small bunches, or 1 large; about 12 ounces)

1 large carrot, scrubbed well

1 bulb green kohlrabi

2 teaspoons white sesame seeds (unhulled, if possible)

One ¾-ounce piece young ginger root

1 clove garlic

¼ teaspoon plus ⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt

1½ teaspoons apple cider vinegar

1 tablespoon boiled cider (see recipe online; may substitute pomegranate molasses)

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Cracked black pepper

Tear the mustard greens into large, bite-size pieces; rinse them in a bowl of cool water, then spin dry. Transfer to a large bowl.

Trim the carrot. Trim and peel the kohlrabi; cut each into matchstick-size strips (julienne) and add to the mustard greens.

Toast the sesame seeds in a small skillet over medium-low heat, shaking the pan occasionally, until the seeds are lightly browned; this should take about 5 minutes. Transfer to a small plate to cool.

Cut the ginger and garlic into small pieces. Use a mortar and pestle to pound the garlic and ginger with 1/8 teaspoon of salt to form a pastelike mixture. Transfer to a bowl.

Alternately, smash the garlic and ginger with the flat side of a knife, then mince.

Add the vinegar, the boiled cider and the remaining ¼ teaspoon of salt to the bowl, then gradually whisk in the oil to form an emulsified dressing. Pour it over the greens; use your hands to gently toss the salad. Taste, and add salt and/or cracked black pepper as needed.

Divide evenly among individual plates; garnish with the toasted sesame seeds. Serve right away.

Per serving: 170 calories, 5 g protein, 15 g carbohydrates, 11 g fat, 2 g saturated fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 250 mg sodium, 6 g dietary fiber, 7 g sugar