Spiced Cabbage Salad

If you live in a wintry climate as we do, then you know that a cook can never have too many good recipes for cabbage and/or potatoes: It’s just an age-old fact of life. This simple and tasty recipe called gova mallung comes from tropical Sri Lanka. It makes a mound of tender, pale green, and mildly chile-spiced shredded cabbage, aromatic with curry leaves and cumin, and bright tasting with lime juice.

The curry leaves we buy fresh all winter from a Sri Lankan grocery in our n