Bouchon’s Cod with a Stew of Sweet Peppers Pt 1: Soffritto

Cabillaud et Pipérade

For my first attempt at Bouchon, I scoured through the book for something manageable but still impressive. A photo of garlic and thyme infusing olive oil caught my eye. Cabillaud et Pipérade. I’ve never tried poaching cod in oil before and it sounds simple, yet elegant. The list of ingredients is also relatively short; I only needed to buy some cod because I have the other things such as extra virgin olive oil, chicken stock, parsley, thyme, garlic around the kitchen already. I decided to go for it and make it my first Bouchon experience.

Oh yes, the recipe also required something called “Piperade” (page 314). “No biggie, I’ll just make that first”, I thought nonchalantly. When I scanned through the Piperade recipe, the ingredients are just as simple and familiar: some red and yellow bell peppers, salt, oil, vinegar… wait. And something called “Soffritto”.

My stomach turned as I read through the Soffritto recipe. Yes, it only has five ingredients but I didn’t realize it can take over 5 hours to make!! So much for making this cod dish for dinner tonight. So, I broke the recipe down into two days. On the first day, I made the Soffritto to go into the Piperade, which I simultaneously prepared. I finished the dish up the next day by poaching the cod and making the Piperade stew.

So please kindly bear with this three part post: Soffritto, Piperade, and finally, the complete cod dish.

Soffritto is one of Thomas Keller’s “building blocks” and according to him, is commonly used in Italian, Spanish, and Catalonian cooking. Essentially, it is a dense base of severely cooked down tomato and onion that adds richness to many sauces and dishes. While it takes a long time for the onion and tomato to reduce, the actual active cooking time is quite short. Also, Soffritto is submerged in oil so it can keep in the fridge for weeks.

Ingredients
Spanish onions
Olive oil
Kosher salt
Plum tomatoes
Minced garlic

Directions

First, I diced up several Spanish onions and added it to a saucepan containing a cup of olive oil. I salted it, stirred it, and brought the mixture up to a simmer. The whole idea of this recipe is to keep the oil at a constant simmer to stew the onion and tomato. I let the onion cook down for 2 hours, stirring the sides and bottom from time to time and watched the volume reduce and the caramelization intensify.

While the onions cooked, I pureed the plum tomatoes according to Keller’s instruction. In the food processor? Immersion blender? Not quite. After de-seeding the tomato halves, I grated them on a grater over a bowl, leaving only the skin behind.

If you don’t grate your hand in the process, you will obtain a juicy bowl of pureed tomato flesh.

When the onions were ready, I added the tomato, stirred it down, and let the two mingle in the oil bath for an additional two hours until the mixture began to fry. I could tell when little bubbles rose all over the surface. When the oil separated from the mixture when I drew my spatula through, it was ready.

The last step was adding the minced garlic and another pinch of salt. Step one: Soffritto complete. C’est très belle, n’est-ce pas?

When I tasted it on its own, I wasn’t immediately blown away, partially because my tongue was coated in oil but also because this has much more to do with flavour than taste. It is a bit sweet and caramelly, quite fragrant, with a hint of natural smokiness. I can imagine how it will provide depth to the upcoming dishes. In fact, it’s something that’s been enriching our dishes all along and we may not have even known it!