Isfānākhiyya (Spinach Stew with Rice and Meatballs)

History

Isfānākhiyya is a spinach stew: al-Baghdadi browns fatty meat in rendered tail-fat, simmers it with soaked chickpeas and pounded fresh spinach, seasons it with coriander, cumin, pepper, mastic, cinnamon and garlic, thickens it with rice, and finishes it with small fried meatballs (kubab). The name carries the vegetable's history — isfānākh is the Arabic borrowing of Persian aspanākh, and spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is generally held to have originated in ancient Persia, cultivated there roughly two thousand years ago. From that Iranian homeland it travelled east, reaching China around 647 CE by way of Nepal, where it was known as the "Persian vegetable," and west through the medieval Islamic world: it is recorded in a tenth-century medical treatise by al-Rāzī and, by 827 CE, was carried to Sicily by Arab settlers. In al-Andalus the Sevillian agronomist Ibn al-ʿAwwām (late twelfth century) prized it as raʼīs al-buqūl, "the chieftain of leafy greens." The word entered Europe from Andalusian Arabic isbinakh through Medieval Latin and Old French espinache, reaching England by the fourteenth century. Al-Baghdadi's recipe is thus a late witness (1226) to a dish built on a Persian-derived green long at home in Abbasid cooking.

Ingredients

• fatty meat
• fresh tail-fat
• salt
• handful peeled chickpeas
• fresh spinach
• dry coriander
• cumin
• ground pepper
• mastic
• cinnamon
• garlic
• rice
• red meat

Instructions

1. Cut fatty meat into medium pieces; render fresh tail-fat and discard the cracklings.
2. Brown the meat in the fat, cover with pre-heated water, add a little salt, boil and skim, then add a handful of soaked peeled chickpeas.
3. Wash fresh spinach, trim the lower roots a finger's length, cut it, pound in a stone mortar and add to the pot.
4. Near doneness, add dry coriander, cumin, ground pepper, mastic, thin cinnamon sticks and a little finely pounded garlic; add lukewarm water as needed.
5. After boiling about an hour, add cleaned washed rice and cook until it sets and turns smooth; rest on a gentle fire an hour, then lift off.
6. Form finely pounded red meat into small meatballs and fry them in fat with the usual spices.
7. Top the dish with the fried meat and its fat, dust with finely ground cinnamon, and serve.