[Sca-cooks] Spinach- Miscellany- redaction questions.

[Philippa Alderton]

Last night, we cooked a couple dishes from the
Miscellany. I'll let Margali tell you about the
Medieval Lasagna, since that was her project, but I
did the Isfanakh Mutajjan, from al-Baghdadi, p 206/12.

Translation reads:

Take spinach, cut off the lower roots, and wash: then
boil lightly in salt and water and dry. Refine sesame
seed oil, drop in the spinach, and stir until
fragrant. Chop up a little garlic and add. Sprinkle
with fine-ground cumin, dry coriander and cinnamon,
then remove.

Cariadoc's redaction reads as follows:
1 lb spinach
1 T sesame oil
1 clove garlic
1/4 t cumin
1/8 t coriander
1/2 t cinnamon.

Boil spinach in salted water about 2 minutes. Chop
garlic. Fry spinach in oil briefly; add garlic and fry
a bit more; add spices and serve.

Upon discussion, we decided to omit the boiling step,
because we felt that it might be inappropriate under
the circumstances. Our first question was, was Spinach
the actual green mentioned? The instructions seem more
appropriate for a tougher leaf, such as, perhaps,
arugula. Second, boiling for two minutes seems
excessive- rather than discrete leaves, as the recipe
seems to imply, with the drying and then frying, you'd
have a soggy mass. We were thinking that if this did,
in fact, refer to spinach, it might refer to older,
tougher leaves than we had gotten from the grocery,
and a quick blanching might be more appropriate than a
boiling- soggy mass, again.

As done, I stir-fried a couple of lbs of spinach, in
batches appropriate for our frying pan, and was a bit
light on garlic on the later batches because Margali
had to go to work this AM, and didn't necessarily want
to be garlic flavored all day ;-) Added the spices as
suggested, using a bit of chopped garlic to test the
heat of the (light sesame) oil- didn't measure, used
the pinch and experience method. Used whole cumin
because that's what we had, and I didn't feel like
digging for the morter and pestle.

Result was a very tasty, bright green spinach dish,
with discrete leaves.

Cariadoc, anyone else, may I have some input on the
translation of the "spinach" word, and thoughts on the
toughness and parboiling of spinach leaves in general.

Phlip

=====
Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....

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