Many, many dishes start with frying chopped-up vegetables in fat. There are two such mixtures canonical
in French cooking, mirepoix and duxelles; one in Italy, a soffritto; at least one in Spain,
also called sofrito; and numerous others across the globe. I'm calling this mixture a sofrito because
I hope it will be a recognizable term for at least some readers and useful for others to learn (and 
I'm
using the Spanish spelling because Spanish is way heck of a lot more a world language than Italian). 

Many
   people like to fry the shallot or onion in a sofrito just till it's transparent.  
I like to cook it brown.<br>