Eat Cabbage Like A Sultan With Daniel Newman

 

Who are you, where are you really from and what do you do? 

I’m Daniel Newman. I’m an Arabic scholar, food historian, and percussionist.

@medieval_arab_cooking

eatlikeasultan.com

Professor Daniel Newman

Mixed cabbage / كرنب ممزّج / kurunb mumazzaj

This is a dish from a 13th/14th-century Egyptian cookery book, and is entitled ‘mixed cabbage’. Essentially, it is sweet-and-sour cabbage leaves.

  1. First boil some cabbage leaves (whole).

  2. Then, mix honey with vinegar in which saffron has been dissolved.

  3. Add a medieval spice blend (known in Arabic as ‘atraf al-tib’ and comprising spikenard, betel leaf, bay leaves, nutmeg, mace, green cardamom, cloves, rosebuds, elm tree seeds, long pepper, ginger, and black pepper)

  4. Also add some toasted coriander seeds, hazelnuts, and caraway.

  5. This mixture serves as the dressing for the leaves.

Daniel’s dish

My version, made with the atraf al-tib that Daniel sent me

How should it be eaten?

I would eat it either as a starter, or a side.

Who will you invite to eat your slaw?

The Abbasid caliph Ibrahim Ibn al-Mahdi (d. 839), the most famous Arab gastronome of his age, and beyond.

For more recipes by Ibrahim Abn al-Mahdi, check out Pomegranate Glazed Chicken on Daniel’s website.

The start of a London-Durham Silk Road spice exchange…?

 
Jenny Lau