Name: Spring Cabbage with Cumin
Cuisine: Italy
Ingredients: 500 g spring cabbage; 2 tbsp olive oil; freshly ground black pepper; a handful of coriander leaves, chopped; 2 tsp roasted and ground cumin seeds; salt to taste or 1–2 tbsp fish sauce; 2 tbsp sweet wine; 1 small leek, thinly sliced and briefly steamed or boiled

Preparation info

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Cooking Apicius

By Sally Grainger

Published 2006

About

Remarkably, this recipe for simply-cooked cabbage has no fish sauce but requires salt instead. At 3.9.3 the same recipe (with a few added garnishes) is repeated but this time with fish sauce. From these two variations, we can see how effective the use of fish sauce can be but also see that some Romans clearly didn’t use it as much as we imagine. This is an exceptionally good and simple dish that refutes the accusation that the Romans abused their food with spices.