Eat your greens: easy ways to boost your vegetable intake

T he universal order to eat your greens tended largely to fall on deaf ears when I was a child, but it’s a different story now. I have seen young children – not mine, mind you – wolfing into kale at birthday parties as though it was popcorn, and although such youthful displays of good eating habits can sometimes be depressing if your own child is clinging on to a pack of jellies, at least everyone’s trying, which is half the battle.

Greens have never been so fashionable, and as our understanding of nutrition is changing, they’ve also taken their rightful place as outright hoggers of the base of the revamped food pyramid, along with other brightly coloured vegetables such as squash.

So, if you didn’t know it already, greens are most definitely in favour. Even more than other vegetables, in fact, because greens are generally packed with nutrients that are the ultimate multi-taskers for the body, cleansing internal organs, pumping energy into cells and keeping your gut in rude health.

I say generally because, of course, not all greens were created equal. Salad leaves, sadly, unless they’re watercress or raw spinach, are probably the least nutritious, relatively speaking.

Further up the ladder are things such as cabbage and broccoli, but the king of them all is kale – which is rightly known as a superfood because it is dense in vitamins A, C, K and B6, as well as rich in calcium and magnesium.

We Irish have a sort of love-hate thing going on with all things cabbage-related, perhaps because so much of it was overcooked when we were kids.

But kale really deserves to be your friend, not just because it is good for you, but because it tastes sensational if cooked correctly.

Try it gently steamed, served on toasted sourdough that’s been rubbed with raw garlic and drizzled with your best olive oil. Bake it in the oven with a little oil to make kale crisps, or stir-fry it quickly with garlic, ginger and soy sauce as a side for lamb chops.

My recipes this week showcase the joys of eating your greens.

The baked spinach (you can also use chard when it’s in season) is rich but nutritious and also versatile, being lovely on its own with, say, crusty bread, or as a dinner companion to a roast chicken. The key here is not to fret too much when you see that the bechamel sauce is the texture of cement-like porridge; it all comes right in the end.

The leek carbonara is a clever example of how to minimise carbs by substituting them with greens, in this case, leeks sliced into ribbons and quickly blanched to become a kind of linguini, which is then dressed in a tasty mixture of cheese, bacon, onion and egg – just like the pasta equivalent.

dkemp@irishtimes.com