9 April, 2020
The Big Three
Almost all cuisines start with a few basics. And the basics seem to come in threes. Each cuisine has its own “trinity” of vegetables that is used as a basis for most recipes. These vegetables become the base for sauces and get cooked into dishes to give them a distinct regional flavor.
You can’t cook french food without mirepoix (meer-pwah) the common combination of onions, carrots, and celery. You usually have twice the amount of onions as the other two. So the classic combination is made up of 1/2 onions, 1/4 carrots, and 1/4 celery.
Italian Soffritto is the same as mirepoix but in some cases they substitute fennel (root) for the celery.
The Cajun version is called the Holy Trinity. You still use onions and celery. But in Cajun cooking you substitute green bell pepper for carrots. And you keep the same 2:1 ratio of onions to the other two ingredients.
In Spanish cooking, the trinity is called sofrito, a mixture of onion, garlic, and tomatoes gently sautéed in olive oil. Cuba sofrito is made of garlic, bell pepper and Spanish onion.
Germany’s version is called Suppengrün and consists of carrot, celeriac, and leeks. Celeriac is also called “celery root” or “knob celery.” It is a root vegetable that kind of looks like a turnip but is not related.