Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking - Marcella Hazan [4]
SOFFRITTO
When a battuto is sautéed in a pot or skillet until the onion becomes translucent and the garlic, if any, becomes colored a pale gold, it turns into a soffritto. This step precedes the addition of the main ingredients, whatever they may be. Although many cooks make a soffritto by sautéing all the components of the battuto at one time, it makes for more careful cooking to keep the onion and the garlic separate. The onion is sautéed first, when it becomes translucent the garlic is added, and when the garlic becomes colored, the rest of the battuto. The reasons are two: one, if you start by sautéing the onion, you are creating a richer base of flavor in which to sauté the battuto; two, because onion takes longer to sauté than garlic, if you were to put both in at the same time, by the time the onion became translucent the garlic would be too dark. If, however, your battuto recipe calls for pancetta, cook the onion and pancetta together to make use of the pancetta’s fat, thus reducing the need for other shortening.
An imperfectly executed soffritto will impair the flavor of a dish no matter how carefully all the succeeding steps are carried out. If the onion is merely stewed or incompletely sautéed, the taste of the sauce, or the risotto, or the vegetable never takes off and will remain feeble. If the garlic is allowed to become dark, its pungency will dominate all other flavors.
Note A battuto usually, but not invariably, becomes a soffritto. Occasionally, you combine it with the other ingredients of the dish as is, in its raw state, a crudo, to use the Italian phrase. This is a practice one resorts to in order to produce less emphatic flavor, such as, for example, in making a roast of lamb in which the meat cooks along with the battuto a crudo from the start. Another example is pesto, a true battuto a crudo, although, perhaps because it has traditionally been pounded with a pestle rather than chopped with a blade, it is not always recognized as such. Yet there are many Italian cooks who, in referring to any battuto, might say they are making a pestino, a “little pesto.”
INSAPORIRE
The step that follows a soffritto is called insaporire, “bestowing taste.” It usually applies to vegetables, inasmuch as, in Italian cooking, vegetables are the critical ingredient in most first courses—pastas, soups, risotti—and in many fricassees and stews, and often constitute an important course on their own. But the step may also apply to the ground meat that is going to be turned into a meat sauce or meat loaf, or to rice, when it is toasted in the soffritto as a preliminary to making risotto. As you become aware of it, you will spot it in countless recipes.
The technique of insaporire requires that you add the vegetables or other principal ingredients to the soffritto base and, over very lively heat, briskly sauté them until they have become completely coated with the flavor elements of the base, particularly the chopped onion. One can often trace the unsatisfying taste, the lameness of dishes purporting to be Italian in style, to the reluctance of some cooks to execute this step thoroughly, to their failure to give it enough time over sufficient heat, or even to their skipping it altogether.
SAUTÉING WITH BUTTER AND OIL
A soffritto is sometimes executed with olive oil as the only fat, but on those occasions when one might find the flavor of olive oil intrusive Italian cooks use butter together with neutral-tasting vegetable oil. Combining the two enables one to sauté at a higher temperature without scorching the butter or having