Sofrito
All recipes provided by Louisa Chapman-Andrews from Cook Folk
This is my riff on the Italian/Mediterranean classic of onions, carrots and celery. However it’s a great veg box use up as you can freestyle with whatever you have, within reason. What you are creating is a concentrated flavour base that can be frozen in little pots, (almost like your own homemade stock cube), and used to make anything from soups, casseroles, pasta dishes, and it’s a great way to get some more vegetables into your children’s food too.
• To make enough sofrito to use over the course of a week take 3/4 sticks of celery (outer green sticks are perfect), 3/4 carrots, an onion, 2 garlic cloves and a small head of fennel and chop everything to a very fine dice – you want everything to be a similar size so it cooks at the same time
• Take your largest widest, ideally heavy based, frying pan and set it over a low/medium heat and gently sauté the chopped vegetables in enough cold pressed extra virgin olive oil to generously cover the bottom of the pan (this is low temperature cooking so olive oil is fine – besides the olive oil flavour is a key component of the final sofrito)
• Throw in some chopped herbs like thyme and parsley, if you have them, to the pan too
• Cook this way, gently moving the vegetables around the pan for around 15 minutes, until everything has cooked down and become caramelised and you are left with a soft flavourful and aromatic rubble
• Use immediately as a base for your next creation or pot and store in the fridge under a film of oil for a week, or, freeze in smaller pots for a later date. Don’t forget to label and date your pots
