Where Flavor Starts

My Italian-English dictionary translates insaporire as “make tasty,” which renders the meaning if not the native force of the word. The expression insaporire comes up in Italian oral or written recipes dealing usually with vegetables that are tossed with sautéed onion or garlic or both during the first cooking stage. Examples are:

• The sauce known as primavera. In such a sauce one sautés chopped onion in butter and vegetable oil until it becomes translucent, then adds a variety of vegetables diced small, and cooks over very lively heat, turning them again and again in the onion until every part of their surface is coated with flavor. Only then does one add cream and reduce it. If the vegetables are not first “made tasty” in this manner, they will have that boiled-in-cream flavor that is exactly what most restaurants’ vegetable sauces on pasta taste like to me.
• A risotto with artichokes. Chopped onion is cooked in butter and vegetable oil until translucent gold, then the artichoke is tossed with the hot fat and onion. When you determine that sufficient flavor has been passed on from the sautéed onion to the vegetable, you add the rice and make the risotto.
• Smothered cabbage, in the Venetian style. First chopped onion is sautéed in olive oil until it becomes colored a deep gold, then shredded cabbage is tossed with it over lively heat for a few minutes. After that the heat is lowered, the pan covered, and the cabbage allowed to cook down slowly until very tender.
• Spinach and rice soup. In this case, whole spinach is first cooked briefly in its own moisture, squeezed dry, added to chopped onion sautéed in butter, and tossed over high heat for a few minutes. Only after that step does one combine it with broth and rice and make the soup.
• Also see the Vegetable Lasagne.