Soffritto

One of the keys to good dishes is a base of sweated vegetables such as onion, celery carrot and garlic which when cooked in olive oil, is called a Soffritto in Italian cookery. In other parts of the Mediterranean and Latin America where Europeans settled this base to dishes may include other vegetables such as peppers, tomatoes and mushrooms, and have other names such as mirepoix (/mɪərˈpwɑː/ meer-PWAH); but the idea is the same to give a base flavour to soups, sauces, risotto and stew type dishes.



Although not called the same thing this is also replicated in Asian cookery where spices and other aromatics are included such as ginger, lemon grass, chillies, cumin and coriander seeds.

While it is not obligatory to start dishes in such a way if you do use a base of flavours like this when cooking you will find that the finished dish has a more complex and deep flavour at the end, so if you don’t do this already, give it a try.

A simple starter is to make a tomato sauce for pasta using a base of finely chopped onion, celery, carrot and garlic soften all the vegetables in a pan with some olive oil, add a tin of tomatoes or jar of passata (sieved tomatoes) reduce for 10-15 minutes until all the flavours combine towards the end of the cooking season with salt and pepper to taste. Use as a sauce over pasta adding grated cheese if you want.

For a link to my Hacker Public Radio podcast on this topic visit:

http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=2735