An ancient Roman recipe featuring their cabbage, lettuce, grapes, goat’s cheese and just about whatever else you fancy
Now that the trattoria in the corner of our building is back working almost as it should, so is the smell of cabbage and other sulphurous vegetables. Back and hanging around the courtyard. I’m so happy for this smelly sign that there is momentum again, that things are working at almost full tilt for locals, and visitors returning to Rome like colour to cheeks. Then, in our stairwell, between 10am and noon, the smell of momentum meets the smell of roast chicken from the canteen-like tavola calda below our flat. Wonderful! Also demanding, and even though they are two of my favourite things, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to eat roast chicken and cooked cabbage after meeting them, like a difficult neighbour, on the stairs.
The feeling never lasts long. Roast chicken with wedges of cabbage, boiled or steamed until just tender, its ribs fleshy, shiny with enough butter to hold specks of black pepper, is too good a thing. Just cabbage is a good thing, too, especially since rediscovering Sally Grainger’s Cooking Apicius. This slim green book, published by Prospect, is a selection of recipes adapted by her from an ancient Roman cookery book called Apicio, which makes great use of cabbage, and of which the Romans were fanatically fond as both food and medicine. A favourite of her recipes is spring cabbage with cumin, for which you pan fry shredded cabbage, sprinkle with cumin and a splash of wine, then serve with fish sauce, steamed leeks and coriander. This recipe, like all the rest, serves as an ideal introduction to the ancient Roman flavours, a combination of elements from all over the globe used in varying proportions, depending on dish: olive oil, garum (fish sauce), old wine, sweet wine and sour grape verjuice, date syrup, honey, grape syrup, cumin, coriander, savory, rue, bay, pine nuts, asafoetida …
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