Kale

This recipe was created by chef Traci Des Jardins of San Francisco's Jardinière. It's part of a special menu she created for Epicurious's Wine.Dine.Donate program.

Gently pickling the shallots mellows them and also adds hints of sweetness and acidity. Tossing them with some earthy, quick-cooked kale makes for a pleasing contrast in flavors.

This dish has been one of my family's favorites for years; the secret to its enduring popularity is the caramelized onions. I cook them long and slow until they are meltingly tender and deep golden brown. Their rich sweetness rounds out the earthy flavor of the lentils and kale.

This speedy version of the long-cooked classic is light and brothy, but it's still substantial and flavorful enough — thanks to lamb, kale, and barley — to be a great winter meal.

Inspired by an antipasto that's popular at New York City's Lupa, this substantial salad takes a hearty, rich green that's usually cooked and proves how delicious it can be when served raw.

Hearty ingredients load this quick Italian dinner with spicy, cheesy flavor.

Here's a hearty vegetable soup that doesn't take as long to make as the classic but is much better than what you'll find in a can.

A crisp potato cake would be tempting enough—even without the surprise of garlicky kale sandwiched between its layers.

Verbiak, who learned how to make charcuterie at L&M's Kitchen and Salumeria, in Oxford, Mississippi, pairs this rich side dish with braised veal cheeks or rabbit. It would also be good with chicken or fish.

This dish — the result of a conversation between two food editors who had just returned from opposite parts of the country — almost made itself. Paul Grimes came back from Charleston talking about the creamy stone-ground grits, shrimp, and collard greens of chef Kevin Johnson at Anson, and Kemp Minifie returned from Seattle to tell us about the scallops over braised cabbage with foie gras vinaigrette that Johnathan Sundstrom serves at Lark. We loved the idea of both dishes so much, we met somewhere in between, with this simpler recipe.

When garlic is cooked very slowly in olive oil, the result is two delicious ingredients — soft roasted garlic and garlic oil — that give this soup an Italian feel and great flavor.

Shredding the kale allows you to cook it for a shorter period of time, so it retains an appealingly bright color and is gentler in flavor than if it had been slow-cooked.

We used strongly flavored wild greens because a mild salad would get lost with the rest of the menu. The dressing is a simple and classic vinaigrette.

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.