Familiar to anyone who has diced vegetables for mirepoix or simply sweated sliced onions…
battuto e soffritto
Battuto, literally ‘beaten’, in a culinary context means chopped so fine as to appear pounded. A battuto, consisting traditionally of chopped pork fat and/or pancetta, onion, garlic, parsley, celery and carrot, is the starting point for most Italian recipes for sauces, meat dishes and soups. The traditional lardo – pork fat – is now often replaced by lighter types of fat, olive oil being the most popular. […]
Soffritto means ‘underfried’: the battuto is subjected to a slow, careful underfrying, as a result of which ‘a cook achieves part of that unmistakable taste which can be identified as Italian,’ as Marcella Hazan so aptly puts it.
From Amaretto, Apple Cake and Artichokes : The Best of Anna Del Conte
And so for day 2474
21.09.2013