Roasted Pointed Cabbage

The oven here is doing something a kazan or an open flame can't: even, enclosed, dry heat that cooks the wedge through while browning the surface, without you touching it. That's the whole case for roasting over frying cabbage in a pan — in a pan you'd need to turn it, baste it, watch it, and a wedge this shape doesn't sit flat, so half of it never touches the metal. In a dish in the oven, heat comes from all sides at once. Your domestic oven won't get the ferocious top heat of a professional one, so don't expect deep char in the time given — expect browning at the edges and tips, softening everywhere else. If your oven runs hot or cold against its own dial, that matters more here than in most dishes, because 15 minutes and 20 minutes make a real difference to a vegetable this size.

Pointed cabbage, specifically — because the leaves are more loosely packed than a ball-head cabbage, the heat and butter actually get in between layers instead of just sitting on the surface. If you can't find it, use the smallest, lightest round cabbage you can and cut it into thinner wedges, six instead of four, so the heat has less to travel through. You're compensating for density, not following a rule for its own sake.

Butter, melted, isn't just fat for crisping. It's the carrier — without it the grated Parmesan and chopped thyme would just sit loose on the leaf and either fall off or burn dry and bitter before they've done anything. The butter wets them onto the surface and lets them brown instead of scorch. Any fat that browns without smelling of itself works here — a light olive oil at a push — but butter's dairy sugars are what help the Parmesan and the leaf edges go properly golden rather than just dried out. 1 tsp more butter for greasing the dish stops the cut side of the cabbage sticking and tearing when you lift it out, which is a small thing until you've torn one in half trying to serve it whole.

Parmesan, freshly grated, not the pre-grated kind from a tub — pre-grated has anti-caking starch on it that stops it melting properly, it just goes gritty and sits there instead of turning into a crust. Freshly grated melts, browns, and binds slightly to the thyme and the leaf surface. If you've no Parmesan, any hard, salty, aged cheese that melts to a crust rather than a stretch does the same job — a mature Pecorino, an aged Cheddar even, though it'll taste rounder and less sharp.

Thyme, fresh and finely chopped, because the leaves are small enough to catch in the butter and cling rather than falling straight to the bottom of the dish. Dried thyme works in a pinch, use about a third of the amount, since drying concentrates it — but you lose the slight grassiness fresh thyme brings against the richness of butter and cheese.

This isn't a dish you can rush by turning the oven up. Twenty minutes is roughly how long it takes heat to travel through a quarter of a cabbage and soften the core without cremating the tips, and no amount of impatience changes the physics of that. Check it with a knife through the thickest part of the stalk — it should go in with a little resistance, not slide through like butter and not fight you either. That resistance is the cabbage still being a vegetable and not soup.