A sweet finish for winter vegetables

At the end of a fireworks display, it always seems like they just take everything that’s left over and throw it up in the air. And weirdly, it all works. Everything pops and blows and crackles and you feel fully satisfied that, yes, you can go home.Right about now, I’m feeling the same way about all the vegetables of winter. The beets and the kale and the chard and the leeks are still going to be there, all through the summer, of course. But they’ll take a backseat to things I pull from my own garden or that I gather from farm markets, CSAs and generous friends.I do feel like a fair-weather veg lover, just abandoning all those winter foods as soon as my own baby heads of lettuce begin to poke up from the dirt in my garden boxes. Because (yes, here it comes) all those winter vegetables are really good for you. They’re not as full of cancer-fighting antioxidants as the more brightly colored fresh edibles of summer. But they have other benefits — and for some reason, many of the nutrients they provide are particularly good for your eyes and can help you avoid macular degeneration, which is the leading cause of blindness among the elderly in America today. The American Macular Degeneration Foundation actually recommends that you eat more winter vegetables — specifically, anything with lutein and zeaxanthin — to help protect your eyes. The site quotes the amusingly named D. Max Snodderly, Ph.D., head of the laboratory at The Schepens Eye Research Institute in Boston, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, as saying, “The traditional thinking is that as age increases, visual sensitivity decreases. But what we are saying is, maybe that’s not inevitable. Improved nutrition could help to retard the loss of visual sensitivity with age. Perhaps the gradual loss of vision in many older people is not an inevitable consequence of the aging process.”Spinach, chard, kale and all the other dark green leafies are famously good sources of lutein and zeaxanthin. According to the generally useful website www.whfoods.com, beets are also an excellent source of both nutrients (they’re technically phytochemicals). They recommend that you eat the peel. I recommend that you don’t.This salad is the edible equivalent of one of those end-of-the-fireworks displays. It has a little bit of all the vision-protective winter foods. And it’s actually super tasty. End of winter saladServes twoOne bunch of Swiss chard, one bunch of kale, butter and olive oil for roasting the greens, three biggish radishes, two to four small beets (depending on how fond you are of beets), two slices of bacon, a bundle of watercress, juice of a quarter of a lemon, 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts, coarse salt and pepper to tasteYes, this is another one of those weeks when it’s not really a recipe but more of a technique. Trust your instincts, have some fun and you’ll end up with a dish that’s beautiful, tasty, tender and sweet.First thing to know: You can use denser greens in place of the chard or kale. I made one version with chard and Chinese napa cabbage; it was excellent. You could also use standard cabbage or perhaps radicchio. Just slice it nice and thin, into a chiffonade or a julienne. If you use chard or kale, trim the center stems away before you chop.First thing you’re going to do is preheat the oven to 425 degrees and roast your beets (wrap them in foil; they should take about 30 minutes. You can do this two or three days ahead of time). Roast the whole radishes in a wee bit of olive oil; this should take less than five minutes.To roast the greens, you’ll also want the oven at 425 (I made this with the oven on the lower of my two broiler settings; if you have an adjustable broiler, give it a try but keep checking on your greens so they don’t turn into black ash before you have a chance to rescue them). Chop up your bacon and toss it in the hot oven in a large, deep baking dish. After you chiffonade/julienne your greens and, after the bacon has had a few minutes to crisp up, toss the greens on top. Add about two tablespoons of butter and about a tablespoon of decent olive oil. Sprinkle some coarse salt and then grind some pepper over the whole thing. Stir it up and let it roast. Stir it a couple times more. Moister greens (such as the chard) will shrink a lot and get kind of crispy. Denser greens (such as cabbage or napa cabbage) will soften and possibly get a little brown around the edges. When they’re done, remove them from the oven. Put them in a serving bowl (with the butter/oil from the roasting pan). Slice the radishes and add them to the bowl (with the oil from the roasting pan). Trim and clean the watercress (arugula or butter lettuce or other greens will work, too) and add to the salad. Squeeze the lemon juice on top and add the Dijon mustard. Toss it all together. Sprinkle with the walnuts. Add the beets (peeled). Taste. Adjust the seasonings if you need to. Serve.