[Sca-cooks] Battuto/Mire Poix, was: Interesting food article by Charles Perry

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach <kingstaste at mindspring.com>:
>Thanks for this article, it was a great read.  Something did catch my eye
>that made me wonder, though.
>
>"In particular, Martino apparently invented
>battuto, the mixture of onions, carrots and
>celery fried together that is the foundation of
>so many Italian dishes."
>
>	This sounds like mire poix to me, and I'm sure the French 
>would sputter at
>the thought of an Italian inventing it, although frying it may be the
>difference there.  Does anyone know off the top of thier heads (or hard
>drives) when this classic mixture starts showing up in French cookbooks?
>	Christianna

I had asked a similar question; I'm not sure if it got through. 
Mirepoix in its original form, and Battuto, appear pretty similar, 
but when you cook battuto, it becomes soffrito (remember those 
Catalonian recipes for "sub-frying" things before the main cooking 
process?). Today sofrito (made the same way, but now, normally, some 
kind of sweet capsicum is included) is usually associated with 
pan-Latino cookery, but there seems to be this common building block 
for much of French, italian, and Spanish-based cuisines.

Mirepoix is allegedly named for the 18th-century field-marshall, the 
Duc de Levis-Mirepoixe, whose cook supposedly came up with the idea. 
Of course, he may have been an Italian or a Spaniard cooking battuto 
or sofrito, respectively...

So. Anybody have their copy of Martino handy?

Adamantius
-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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