13th C Arabic spinach recipe.
Take spinach, cut off the roots, and wash: then boil lightly in salt and water and dry. Heat sesame-oil, drop in the spinach, and stir until fragrant. Chop up a little garlic, and add. Sprinkle with fine-ground cumin, coriander seed, and cinnamon: then remove. – al-Baghdadi
My Version
I took spinach and removed the stems and par-boiled it in salted water, then removed it and let it drain in a cloth until dry. I then fried the spinach and some chopped garlic in sesame oil. Seasoned it with cumin, coriander and cinnamon after removing it from the heat.
Sources
– al-Baghdadi = al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) by Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Karim al-Katib al-Baghdadi, the thirteenth century author of a surviving cookbook. [selected recipes translated by David Waines in In a Caliph’s Kitchen and complete text in “A Baghdad Cookery Book”, trans. by A.J. Arberry, notes by Charles Perry, in Medieval Arab Cookery]