Italian Aosta Valley Broad Bean Soup | Favò di Ozein
Favò is the dish of a single hamlet. Ozein sits at about 4,600 feet (1,400 m) on a terrace above Aymavilles, in the Valle d'Aosta, and the soup that carries its name is built from the four things a mountain household could count on through winter: dried broad beans, dark rye bread, Fontina from the summer alpine dairy, and a piece of cured pork. Pasta joined later, when it could be bought rather than grown. Nothing in it is decorative and nothing in it is optional.
It is usually described as a soup, which undersells it. Properly made, favò is thick enough that a spoon stands up slowly in the bowl, because the rye bread breaks down into the broth and the Fontina melts into strings through it. It tastes exactly like what it is: savoury, deep, faintly bitter from the rye, sweet from the beans, held together by cheese.
The version below keeps the whole structure and fixes the two things that usually go wrong at home: broad beans that stay chalky, and Fontina that seizes into a rubbery lump. The beans get a long soak and their own gentle cooking, and the cheese goes in off the heat, cubed and cold, in two stages.
Yield: 4 main course servings. Soak: 12 hours. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: 1 hour 40 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 5 minutes plus soaking. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo, in practice a full meal. Region: Valle d'Aosta, Ozein in the commune of Aymavilles.
The Story
Ozein is a scattering of stone houses on a sunny shelf below the Gran Paradiso, reached by a narrow road that climbs out of Aymavilles in switchbacks. The land there is too high and too steep for much beyond rye, potatoes, a little barley and broad beans, and those crops plus the animals on the summer pastures defined what anyone ate. Favò is the sum of that list, and the recipe survives because for a very long time there was nothing else to make.
The name comes from the beans themselves, fava in Italian, and the dish belongs to a wider family of alpine soups built on legumes and bread that runs along the western Alps. What makes the Valdostana version distinct is the pane nero, the dense sourdough rye that every household baked once or twice a year in the communal oven and stored for months, and the Fontina, made in the high pastures of the valley since the fifteenth century and the one genuinely rich ingredient in a frugal pot. The bread had to be usable when rock hard, and this soup is one of the answers to that problem.
Ozein still holds a sagra del favò in summer, cooking the soup in enormous pots for anyone who makes the climb, and that festival is the main reason a dish from one hamlet is known across the region at all. What is served there is the domestic version, unchanged: beans, pasta, bread, cheese, sausage, sage butter. There is no refined restaurant reading of favò, and there is no need for one.
Ingredients
For the beans and the broth
Dried broad beans, split and skinned, 10 oz (285 g)
Cold water for soaking, 6 cups (1.4 L)
Light meat or vegetable broth, 7 cups (1.65 L)
Bay leaf, 1
Fresh sage, 4 leaves
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), added late
For the soffritto and the meat
Unsalted butter, 3 tbsp (45 g)
Yellow onion, finely diced, 5 oz (140 g)
Garlic clove, finely chopped, 1
Pancetta or local lardo, cut in small dice, 3 oz (85 g)
Fresh pork sausage, coarse, casing removed, 5 oz (140 g)
Dry white wine, 1/4 cup (60 ml)
For the bread, pasta and cheese
Stale rye sourdough, pane nero, cut in 1/2 inch (1 cm) cubes, 4 oz (115 g)
Short dried pasta, ditalini or small maccheroni, 5 oz (140 g)
Fontina Valle d'Aosta DOP, rind removed, cut in 1/2 inch (1 cm) cubes, 7 oz (200 g)
For finishing
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (30 g)
Fresh sage, 8 leaves
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 2 tbsp (12 g), optional
Preparation
Soak the broad beans
Rinse the split beans and cover them with the cold water, leaving two inches above them because they roughly double. Soak 12 hours or overnight at room temperature. Old beans need longer, and one still hard in the centre after soaking will still be hard after two hours of cooking, so break one open before you drain. Discard the soaking water.
Cook the beans to softness
Put the beans in a heavy pot with the broth, the bay leaf and 4 sage leaves, bring to a bare simmer and cook uncovered for 50 to 60 minutes. Do not salt yet: salt added early to legumes slows the softening of the skins. Skim the grey foam that rises in the first ten minutes. They are ready when they crush against the side of the pot under light pressure.
Build the soffritto
While the beans cook, melt the butter in a wide pan over medium low heat and add the onion with a pinch of salt. Cook 10 minutes until translucent and sweet with no colour, then add the garlic for a minute. Butter rather than oil is the Valdostana signature and it matters: it carries the sage and softens the edge the rye brings later.
Render the pancetta and brown the sausage
Raise the heat to medium, add the diced pancetta and cook 5 minutes until its fat runs and the edges catch. Crumble in the sausage meat and brown it properly in that fat, breaking it up, about 6 minutes. Pour in the wine and scrape the base of the pan clean while it boils away, then tip everything into the bean pot.
Season the pot and add the bread
Add the salt now that the beans are soft, taste the broth and adjust, remembering that Fontina and pancetta are both salty. Stir in the cubed rye bread and simmer 10 minutes. It does not have to dissolve, but it should lose its edges and start thickening the liquid, which is the whole reason it is there.
Cook the pasta in the soup
Add the pasta directly to the pot, not to a separate pan of water, and cook it for the packet time minus 2 minutes, stirring often because the thickened base catches easily. The starch it releases goes into the soup rather than down the drain. If it tightens too far, loosen with hot broth, never cold water.
Melt in the Fontina in two stages
Take the pot off the heat and wait a minute, until the surface stops moving. Stir in half the cubed Fontina, let it melt in the residual heat, then add the rest and stir gently. Cheese added over direct heat splits and goes rubbery, so the pot must be off the flame. You want visible strings and some cubes still half whole.
Make the sage butter and rest
Melt the finishing butter in a small pan over medium heat with the sage leaves. Let it foam and go lightly nut brown at the edges while the sage crisps, about 90 seconds. Let the soup stand covered for 5 minutes, which lets the bread finish absorbing and the cheese set into strands, then check the consistency once more.
Plating
Favò is served in deep bowls, hot, and it wants a warm bowl under it because it is thick enough to cool fast. Ladle from the bottom of the pot so every serving gets beans, pasta, bread and pieces of sausage rather than whatever floated to the top. The right consistency is one where the ladle leaves a slow closing trench in the surface: if it closes instantly the soup is too loose, and if the trench holds open it needs a little hot broth.
Spoon a little of the sage butter over each bowl with two crisp leaves, grind black pepper generously over the top and add the grated Parmigiano only if the Fontina was mild. Nothing green goes on it, no oil drizzle, no cream. This is a mountain dish and it looks like one, brown and gold and dense, and the only visual interest it needs is the pull of the cheese when the first spoon lifts.
Professional Technique
The controlling technique here is the melting of the Fontina, because it is where almost every failed favò fails. Fontina is a washed rind cow milk cheese with high moisture and a fat content around 45 percent, and it melts at a low temperature into long strands. Above roughly 175°F (80°C) the protein network contracts and squeezes the fat out, and once that separation happens it cannot be reversed by stirring. Taking the pot fully off the heat, waiting for the surface to still, and adding the cheese in two stages keeps every cube below that threshold while the residual heat does the work.
The second is the use of pane nero as a thickener rather than an accompaniment. Rye sourdough has a very different starch and pentosan structure from wheat bread: it absorbs several times its weight in liquid and breaks down into a smooth body instead of turning to mush. Ten minutes of simmering softens and disperses it while leaving small pieces intact, and those pieces are what give favò its texture.
The third is cooking the pasta in the pot. This is standard practice for Italian minestre and it is not laziness: the pasta gives its surface starch to the broth, thickening it as much as it thickens itself, and it absorbs the flavour of the bean broth rather than plain water. The trade off is that it keeps softening in the residual heat, which is why it comes out two minutes early.
Texture and Moisture Control
The target texture is thick but still spoonable, with four things distinguishable inside it: soft collapsing beans, pasta with a little bite, softened bread and strands of melted cheese. The beans decide the base. Split skinned broad beans cook to a creamy state and partly break down, giving body without blending, but if they are old or were salted early they stay chalky and extra time will not fix it.
Liquid management runs the whole recipe. Start with more broth than you think you need, since bread, pasta and beans all keep drinking, and adjust downward by simmering rather than upward at the last moment. Any liquid added late must be hot, because cold broth dropped into a pot that already holds melted Fontina will make the cheese tighten and clump immediately.
Temperature at service decides whether the cheese behaves. Serve it hot but not scalding, with the soup somewhere around 160°F (70°C), which keeps the Fontina soft and stringy. Held too long over a flame it separates and an oily film appears on the surface; served too cool it sets and the strands turn to rubber. If you must hold it, keep the pot covered off the heat and rewarm it very gently rather than leaving it over a low burner.
Professional Mise en Place
This is a long dish with a short finish. Everything up to the pasta can be done ahead, and the last eight minutes, pasta then cheese then sage butter, decide the result.
Equipment and tools
Heavy bottomed pot of at least 5 quarts (4.7 L), thick enough not to scorch a thick soup
Wide sauté pan for the soffritto, pancetta and sausage
Small pan for the sage butter
Wooden spoon, ladle and a fine skimmer for the bean foam
Digital scale and a thermometer if you are unsure about the cheese
Prepared ahead
Beans soaked overnight and drained, up to 1 day before cooking
Beans cooked in their broth, up to 2 days ahead, refrigerated in the liquid
Soffritto with pancetta and sausage, up to 2 days ahead, refrigerated
Rye bread cubed and left uncovered so it dries further
Fontina cubed and kept cold until the moment it goes in
Service setup
Bean base and meat combined and held hot, with extra broth simmering beside it
Pasta added only when people are seated, since it keeps softening
Pot moved off the heat before any cheese touches it
Sage butter made last so the leaves stay crisp
Deep bowls warmed, pepper mill and grated cheese on the table
Chef Tips
Use real Fontina Valle d'Aosta DOP if you possibly can. Fontal, Swedish Fontina and the various supermarket imitations are pasteurised, blander and firmer, and they melt into a flat sauce instead of the long strands the dish depends on. Toma di Gressoney is the honest local alternative if Fontina is unavailable.
Buy split skinned broad beans rather than whole ones. Whole dried fave need their tough outer skin removed one by one after soaking, which is an hour of work that adds nothing, and skins left on give a bitter papery texture through the finished soup.
Let the bread be genuinely stale. Fresh rye is too wet and turns gluey; bread that has dried for two or three days on a rack absorbs broth cleanly and holds its shape for the ten minutes it needs. If your loaf is fresh, cube it and dry the cubes in a low oven for 15 minutes.
Make the soup the day before if you want it at its best, but hold the pasta and the cheese back. Refrigerate the bean and bread base, then reheat it with fresh hot broth, cook the pasta in it and melt the Fontina off the heat exactly as written. Reheating a favò that already has cheese in it is a compromise every time.
Common Mistakes
Adding the Fontina over the heat. The cheese splits, the fat separates into an oily film and what is left goes rubbery. Take the pot off the flame, wait a minute for the surface to still, and add the cubes in two stages.
Salting the beans at the start. Salt added to the pot early slows the softening of the bean skins and leaves them chalky after an hour of cooking. Season only once the beans crush easily, and remember the pancetta and cheese are still to come.
Using wheat bread instead of rye. White or wheat sourdough turns to paste and the soup loses both its body and the faint bitterness that balances the Fontina. Dense rye pane nero is doing structural work, not just filling the pot.
Cooking the pasta separately. Boiled in water and added at the end, the pasta brings none of its starch to the soup and tastes of nothing. Cook it in the pot, two minutes short, and stir often so the thickened base does not catch.
Letting the soup boil after the cheese goes in. Even a brief return to the boil undoes the melt completely. If it needs loosening at that point, use hot broth and stir off the heat.
Serving it straight away from the pot. Five minutes covered off the heat lets the bread finish absorbing and the cheese set into strands. Ladled out immediately, it is looser and thinner than it should be.
Wine Pairing
Valle d'Aosta Petite Arvine: The white that handles this soup best. Grown on terraces at high altitude, it keeps a sharp saline acidity and a grapefruit and rhubarb bite that cuts straight through melted Fontina and rendered pork fat. Its weight is greater than its acidity suggests, so it does not vanish against a dish this dense.
Valle d'Aosta Enfer d'Arvier: From the amphitheatre of terraces at Arvier, a few miles down the valley from Ozein, and geographically the closest red on this list. Petit Rouge grown in that heat trap gives a wine of medium body with red berry fruit and a dry stony finish that suits the rye bread. Serve it at around 59°F (15°C).
Valle d'Aosta Cornalin: A rarer indigenous red with dark cherry fruit, a black pepper note and firm but fine tannin. The pepper runs with the sausage and the sage butter, and the tannin does the work of scraping the fat of the cheese off the palate between spoonfuls, which a softer red cannot manage.
Valle d'Aosta Fumin: The most structured wine of the valley and the one to pour if the sausage is heavily spiced. Deep, tannic and smoky, with violet and black fruit behind it, it can stand up to a bowl this rich without being flattened. Give it air, since young bottles are tight and unforgiving.
Valle d'Aosta Donnas DOC: Nebbiolo grown at the bottom of the valley, lighter and more austere than its Piedmontese relatives, with tar, rose and a dry grip on the finish. That austerity is exactly what a fatty cheese soup wants, and its acidity keeps the palate clean where a fruitier red would cloy.
Storage & Reheating
Favò keeps in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 3 days and thickens considerably as it sits, because the bread and pasta go on absorbing overnight. Cool it to room temperature before it goes in, and expect to need a cup of hot broth to bring it back to a spoonable consistency. The flavour is genuinely better on day two; only the cheese suffers.
Reheat in a heavy pot over low heat with hot broth stirred in from the start, moving it constantly so the thick base does not catch, and stop as soon as it is hot through. Never let it boil, since the Fontina already in it will separate, and a microwave overheats it in patches and does exactly that. A small handful of fresh cubed Fontina stirred in off the heat restores some of the stringiness reheating costs.
Freezing works, with a caveat. Freeze the bean, bread and meat base before the pasta and cheese go in, for up to 3 months, then thaw overnight in the refrigerator, reheat with fresh broth and cook the pasta and melt the cheese as though from scratch. A finished favò frozen with the Fontina in it thaws grainy and no reheating recovers it.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 main course portions:
Calories: 780 kcal
Total Fat: 38 g
Saturated Fat: 19 g
Trans Fat: 0.6 g
Unsaturated Fat: 16 g
Cholesterol: 105 mg
Sodium: 1320 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 72 g
Fiber: 14 g
Total Sugars: 7 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 40 g
Lactose: 1.5 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, folate, iron, magnesium, zinc, vitamin B12, vitamin A
These figures are estimates. Sodium in particular varies widely with the broth, the pancetta and the age of the Fontina, and the fibre figure depends on whether the beans were skinned.
Comments