This pomegranate salad recipe will brighten any table, any time of the year.

As holiday talk builds to a festive pitch, and the cold darkness moves to embrace you, don’t sleep on pomegranate season. It’s on, and ready to sneak back into your life.

With a fresh pomegranate in your palm, you have magic at your fingertips. Wave your hand, and food becomes more beautiful, more delicious and more exciting. Toss those juicy rubies on salad, soup, steak, linguine al funghi, Brazilian black bean soup, granola and yogurt. The flavor added by these fleshy seed packages, called arils, matches the color: sharp and sweet.

Those arils don’t just make a garnish with pizzaz, they can be used as the substance of a meal, as one would use rice or pasta: a plate of fried arils with eggs on top, for example, or a bowl of arils and salad. So can a bowl of plain arils, which looks like a bowl full of jewels and tastes like an unparalleled luxury.

To the uninitiated, it won’t be obvious how to extract the arils. This technique comes from Turkey, where one fall day a food writer named Robyn Eckhardt sat down with a group of women, 100 kilos of fresh pomegranates and some pieces of plastic pipe. They spent the day liberating the arils inside.

Here is Eckhardt’s technique: “Gently squeeze one pomegranate half, cut side down, over a wide deep bowl to loosen the seeds. Place it cut side down in your nondominant hand. Spread your fingers to create a ‘sieve’ through which the seeds can fall. With the handle of a wooden spoon or spatula, tap the pomegranate all over; dislodged seeds will fall, with the juices, into the bowl (the bits of bitter white membrane will remain in your hand). Continue tapping, turning the pomegranate in your hand, until most of the seeds are dislodged. If any white membrane has fallen into the bowl, pick it out. Strain the seeds from the juice; you can reserve the juice for another use.”

The first time I tried this method, my open hand was powerless to stop the flow of arils, as if a floodgate had opened. But at least I had a bowl to catch them.

That day, Eckhardt and her friends were preparing nar eksisi, or Turkish pomegranate molasses. When made with 100-percent pomegranate juice and no additives, she says, it has as delicate and eye-opening a flavor as a fine balsamic. Among brands that an American could easily order online, Eckhardt’s favorite is Mymoune.

There is a recipe in Eckhardt’s book, Istanbul & Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey, that calls for both the arils and the syrup. The salad is an exciting ride, with many strong personalities balancing one another in spectacular fashion. Each bite is a different little drama, with spice, fat, herbs and salty chunks of cheese, all splashed with tangy pomegranate juice. It will brighten any table, any time of year.