Winter Leaves with Kale, Watercress and Brussels Sprouts

January. The garden is bare and the light goes at four o'clock. The market stalls are stacked with roots and brassicas and not much else. This is when you need a salad most, not the pale, apologetic sort that comes in a plastic bag, but something with backbone. Something green and raw and sharp enough to remind you that the year is still turning.

Brussels sprouts, shaved thin and separated into pale, delicate leaves, are a different thing entirely from the boiled specimens of Christmas memory. Raw, they're nutty and crisp and almost sweet. Mixed with young kale and a handful of peppery watercress, dressed with lemon and good olive oil, scattered with almonds toasted until they smell like warm marzipan, this becomes the kind of salad that earns its place at the centre of the table. Not beside something. Not underneath something. The thing itself.

I make this through the cold months whenever the sprouts at the market are tight and small and look like they've come off the stalk that morning. It's the sort of dish I write down in the notebook with a single line: green salad, January, sharp and good. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract. Use what you've got, adjust the dressing to your taste, and eat it before the leaves lose their nerve.