Every week we get Down & Dirty, in which we break down our favorite unique seasonal fruits, vegetables, and more.

1. Remove endive’s core if you'll be eating it raw -- read why below.
2. Endive’s sturdy cupped leaves are the perfect edible spoon. Get ready to dip!
3. Look for spears that are mostly milky white with pale yellow-green tips.
4. The ghost arrow: we bet you want to learn how to really pronounce these beauties, right? Look here.

Endive is one of the classiest vegetables we know, with a fussy reputation well-earned -- after all, how many vegetables do you know that need to be grown twice before harvesting? It's a bit of a diva, yes, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t earn a spot in your kitchen.

Every week we get Down & Dirty, in which we break down our favorite unique seasonal fruits, vegetables, and more.

This week we’ve got fronds on the brain. We’ll go over what to look for when selecting fennel, how to store it, and how to use every part of the plant from (1)bulb to (2)stalk to (3)fronds -- and more! Licorice haters fear not, there might be hope for you and fennel yet.

Every week we get Down & Dirty, in which we break down our favorite unique seasonal fruits, vegetables, and more.

Today: A carrot of a different color, plus how to use them, where to find them -- and how to store them once you do.

Carrots are an underrated bunch. There might even be a mostly full package of them languishing in the crisper drawer of your fridge right now. We get it, you bought a bagful for a mirepoix and then neglected the rest, so they were left to wither away.

That wouldn’t have happened if they were purple. 

Last week, we talked all about citrus, from simple navel oranges to elegant bergamots. Today we're scaling down to talk about a whole range of tiny citruses, from the quotidian (lemons and limes -- what's the difference between them, again?) to the fantastical (calamondins). Pucker up and get ready -- we have so much to cover!

Citrus are winter's glory, the bright spot of sunshine amongst a cellar's worth of dirt-covered root vegetables. There's a fantastically wide array of them, too -- so many that we're taking two weeks to cover them all. Stay tuned for tiny citrus next Friday, because today it's all about the big guns: orange clones, grapefruit's meaty predecessor, hard-to-find Bergamot, and everything in between. (Bonus points if you correctly identify all 8 varieties in the above photo. No peeking!)

We'll be focusing on more glamorous cold-weather produce in the coming weeks -- citrus, anyone? -- but today it's all about winter's root vegetable workhorses. Turnips and rutabagas are both in the brassica family (along with broccoli and cauliflower, brussels sprouts, cabbage, and more) and are as hardy as root vegetables can be -- although telling them apart can be tricky!

It seems so obvious that quinces are close cousins to apples and pears -- that is, until you bite into one. Astringent and sweetly bitter (very similar to persimmons, in fact), they're not easy to love. But with proper handling, some seed-saving, and the right recipes, you'll be stocking up on quinces all winter long.

With tan, green, and yellow skin that yields to bright orange insides, winter squash provide a cold-weather splash of color at farmers' market. Though they're closely related to melons and (of course) summer squash, winter squash have unique characteristics -- their tough skin, delicious seeds, and sweet flesh make them kitchen staples from the beginning of autumn until spring.

Persimmons -- have you submitted your recipe to this week's contest yet? -- are a winter fruit easy to overlook. They're sold unripened, to start, which can be confusing. But your patience in ripening them is rewarded with silky, gently jellied, intensely sweet flesh that can be used in everything from salads to baked goods.

The last time we talked about potatoes, Marian Bull helped us figure out how to match recipes to the potatoes that suit them best -- starchy Russets for mashing, waxy red potatoes for salads, and more. Today we're digging underground to learn even more about the potato: we'll talk about how they're actually the stems of the plant, what exactly a potato fruit looks like, and what it really means when their skin turns green after storage.