Throughout the eastern Mediterranean, you’ll find cool cooked greens sprinkled with olive oil and doused with lemon. Every green you can cook is used in this way, from spinach to wild greens I’d never heard of. It’s great with collards, dandelions, mustard, broccoli raab . . . you get the idea. If you know you’re cooking greens one night, make a double batch and prepare these the next day. Juicy, tart, and refreshing, this is the ideal summer vegetable dish.

　　

Ingredients

makes 4 servings

　　Salt and black pepper

　　1 pound or more greens, any type, like spinach or collards, trimmed of thick stems (or at least 2 cups cooked greens)

　　Extra virgin olive oil to taste

　　Fresh lemon juice to taste

　　Lemon wedges

　　

Step 1

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and salt it (or you can steam the greens over an inch or so of boiling water). Cook the greens until tender, from about 3 minutes for spinach to up to 15 for the stems of tougher greens like collards. Drain well, then wrap in plastic or place in a covered bowl and refrigerate (you can leave them in the fridge for up to 2 days). Or cool by plunging them into ice water or running under cold water.

　　

Step 2

Squeeze excess moisture from the greens, then chop them coarsely. Toss with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper, then taste and add more of anything necessary. Serve immediately, with lemon wedges.

　　The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman. © 2005 by Mark Bittman. Published by Broadway Books. All Rights Reserved.MARK BITTMAN is the author of the blockbuster The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway, 2005) and the classic bestseller How to Cook Everything, which has sold more than one million copies. He is also the coauthor, with Jean-Georges Vongerichten, of Simple to Spectacular and Jean-Georges: Cooking at Home with a Four-Star Chef. Mr. Bittman is a prolific writer, makes frequent appearances on radio and television, and is the host of The Best Recipes in the World, a 13-part series on public television. He lives in New York and Connecticut.