How to Make Red Pepper Soffrito

Brian: One of the great pleasures of being a chef at a Cake Bread Cellars
is the vegetable garden at Dolores’s Cake bread overseas and it’s a
great joy to be able use to produce, it’s coming out of that garden.
This month’s recipe is to create and try and utilize the beans as
well as the nice peppers that Dolores has growing out there.

I’ve got blue like beans. I’ve got yellow wax beans. You got a nice
contrast to colors and then we’re going toss them in a red pepper
soffrito. Very simple but it’s very flavorful. Middle of winter,
you’re not going to get very excited about beans but during the
summer when beans are in season. They’re really sweet and what
we’re trying to do just bring out their natural sweetness.

Soffrito is a Mediterranean term. It’s the basic they start so many
of their dishes whether it’s a pasta sauce or a ragu, a payee soup
and we do a lot of cooking classes at the winery. And it’s one of
the things that people are always really curios about is knives and
how to utilize their knives.

And when you’re cutting an onion, you just want to cut off the
very top of it so that you still have that core keeping it all together.
What I'm doing is I'm cutting through and I’m sort of stopping
before I get to the end there where that core is that keeps all the
layers together. And then same thing, I’m going to make cuts all
the way across the onion.

Also notice, I’m using my fingers actually as a guide. I know your
first inclination is to move your fingers as far away from the blade
as you can but in this instance, it’s actually safer to use the knife as
a guide and you don’t have your fingertips out like that.

Everybody ask what’s the secret to chopping onions without crying
and the secret is to do it quickly. People also ask me if it’s okay to
chop it in their food processor, the machine, just the way to
operates, it’s going to bruise the onion a lot more and one of the
things that’s going to happen is as you bruise the onion, you're
releasing a lot more of the juices and the juices also tend to get
stronger as they’re exposed to air.

And Peppers, cut them in half, just grab the seeds out of the center
and pull them out. Tap them against your hand; not should get
most of the seeds out. And then again, just like the onions, I want
to mince this as finely as possible. We want to create something
that’s going to distribute its flavor and coat the beans really well
when we’re finish.

So, we’re going to warm up our saucepan. Put a little bit of olive
oil until it’s enough to coat the vegetables. Equal parts of finely
minced onion and peppers, pinch of salt, again, that’s going to help
pull out a little bit of moisture out of the onions and the peppers.
So, they start stewing their own juices and that’s really what we’re
trying to accomplish here. It is not the cook this at such a high
heat. The things are going to brown really quickly.

It’s very simple but the whole secret is taking your time. Letting it
cook down slowly, vegetables getting really, really soft and also,
the sort of really concentrating the natural sweetness that they have
in them. This is going to take a good 15 - 20 minutes, just keeping
an eye every once in a while, giving a stir but this cooking it down
until those juices are released.

We get to the finish point. You're going to wind up with about a
quarter of the volume of what you started with. I am going to
blanch some of these off in boiling water. You want to get a big
pot with lots of water. Bring it to a rolling boil, add some salt, so
it’s well seasoned and then throw enough of the vegetable in so
that the temperature of the water may drop down but it comes back
up to a boil fairly quickly.

Sooner, you can get them cooked tender and out, the more
flavorful for your beans are going to be. It’s going to keep really
nice color on them. People also ask, “How long do you cook the
beans” You take one out then you taste it. So, I’m going to drain
this into a colander and run plenty of cold water over it just to stop
them from cooking and it also helps to set the color a little bit so
that they stay nice and bright and vibrant.

As you get closer to it being finished, probably weltered down by
half, I want to use a large skillet. I am going to add my soffrito.
Shake off all the moisture, water off of your beans, toss them in
there. A little bit of freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of salt.
And now, we’re just heating everything through and we’re making
sure that the beans are really well-coated. A great way to showcase
the best of what summer has to offer. And this becomes a great
side dish for a steak, pork chop. And actually today, I’ve got a nice
piece oh, no?

Julianne: Anderson Valley is considered a cool climate. It’s actually very
warm during the day but then it has foggy, cool evenings, and also
foggy mornings. On the nose, it has really pretty dried rose, a little
bit of hints of leather, some black cherry plum.

On the flavors, it’s very rich and deep blackberry, black cherry. A
little briery and wild characteristic to it and it has a really nice
depth in the mid-palate and it’s just a beautiful wine, very balanced
and very expressive of the varietal.

Brian: The sweetness in the vegetables helps to bring out, you know, the
nice, red fruit characteristics I think.

Julianne: The beans I have -- do have natural sweetness to them and along
with the soffritos, that also is a sweet but it also has a little
spiciness to it. And I think it really helps to bring forward the
sweetness of the fruit and also, to bring up the acidity of the fruit.