Italian Walser Bean and Rice Soup | Fesillsüppu di Issime
Fesillsüppu is what the Walser of Issime eat when the Lys valley turns cold, and the name tells you exactly where you are standing. It is Töitschu, the German dialect that has survived in this one Alpine village for close to seven hundred years, and it means nothing more than bean soup. What arrives in the bowl is more than that suggests: borlotti cooked until they begin to fall apart, rice brought up from the Piedmont plain below, potatoes, cabbage, and mountain cheese beaten in at the end.
The dish sits between a minestra and a risotto and belongs to neither. The rice cooks inside the soup, absorbing bean starch as it goes, and the pot is finished as a risotto is, off the heat with cold butter and grated toma worked in until the surface turns glossy. Done correctly it holds the mark of a spoon for a second and is still loose enough to eat as a soup.
Nothing in it is expensive and nothing in it is optional. Throw away the bean cooking liquid and the soup loses its body, add the rice too early and it breaks into paste, melt the cheese over direct heat and it strings. What follows sets out the salting and the timings that separate a good bowl from a heavy one.
Yield: 4 main course servings. Soak: 12 hours. Prep: 25 minutes. Cook: 1 hour 40 minutes. Rest: 5 minutes. Total: about 2 hours 10 minutes plus soaking. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: Valle d'Aosta, Issime in the Lys valley.
The Story
The Walser crossed the Alps from the Swiss Valais during the 12th and 13th centuries and settled the high heads of valleys nobody else wanted, where the growing season lasts a hundred days. On the Italian side they took the upper Lys valley, and they are still there. Issime, Gressoney and a few smaller settlements kept their German speech and their kitchen intact while Romance dialects took everything around them. Issime speaks Töitschu, different enough from the Titsch spoken a few kilometres up the valley that both villages notice it.
Rice has no natural business in a mountain kitchen, and this is where Issime stops looking like the rest of Valle d'Aosta. The Lys valley opens at its foot onto the Piedmont plain and the rice fields of Vercelli and Novara, the largest stretch of rice cultivation in Europe. Men from Issime went down for seasonal work as masons, carpenters and pedlars, and came back with grain. Rice entered the soup by that road and stayed, which is why the neighbouring valleys thicken their bean soups with barley or rye bread and this one does not.
Everything else came from within a short walk: borlotti dried at the end of summer, potatoes from the same ground, lard from the family pig, cabbage that survives frost, and toma from the high pastures above Gressoney. The soup was cooked in quantity and eaten hot on the first day, thicker on the second, reheated with a little broth each time. Nothing about that has changed in the houses where it is still made.
Ingredients
For the beans
Dried borlotti beans, 1 1/4 cups (250 g)
Cold water for soaking, 6 cups (1.4 L)
Bay leaf, 1
Fresh sage leaves, 3
Garlic clove, unpeeled, 1
Fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp (3 g), added late
For the soup
Lardo or unsmoked pancetta, finely diced, 3 oz (85 g)
Unsalted butter, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Yellow onion, finely chopped, 1 medium
Leek, white part only, finely sliced, 1 small
Carrot, finely diced, 1 small
Celery stalk, finely diced, 1
Waxy potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes, 10 oz (285 g)
Savoy cabbage, finely shredded, 2 cups (140 g)
Light meat or vegetable broth, 5 cups (1.2 L)
Arborio or Vialone Nano rice, 3/4 cup (150 g)
Fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
For finishing
Toma di Gressoney or young Fontina, coarsely grated, 3 oz (85 g)
Unsalted butter, very cold and cubed, 2 tbsp (28 g)
Grated Parmigiano Reggiano, 1/4 cup (25 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, a thread per bowl
Rye bread, thinly sliced and toasted, 4 slices
Preparation
Step 1
Soak the beans and cook them unsalted. Cover the borlotti with the cold water and leave them at cool room temperature for 12 hours. Drain, put them in a heavy pot with fresh water to cover by two fingers, add the bay leaf, sage and garlic and bring them to the barest simmer. Salt goes in only in the final 15 minutes: added at the start it firms the skins and the beans stay chalky however long you cook them. They are ready after 60 to 90 minutes, when one crushes to cream between finger and thumb.
Step 2
Keep the cooking liquid and split the beans. This is the step most people skip and the one the soup depends on. Lift out the aromatics, strain the beans and keep every drop of the starchy liquid: it is the thickener and replaces part of the broth later. Set aside a third of the beans whole and pass the rest through a food mill with a ladle of their liquid into a loose purée. Whole beans give texture, the purée gives body.
Step 3
Render the lardo and build the base. Put the diced lardo in a wide heavy pot over low heat with a tablespoon of butter and render it slowly for 6 to 8 minutes without colouring it. Add the onion, leek, carrot and celery with a pinch of salt and sweat them 12 minutes, stirring often. They should turn translucent and sweet, never brown: a browned base gives a roasted flavour that fights the dairy finish.
Step 4
Add the potatoes and the cabbage. Stir in the potato cubes and let them take on the fat for 2 minutes, then add the savoy and turn it through until it wilts. Pour in the bean purée and about 4 cups (950 ml) of broth mixed with the reserved bean liquid, bring to a gentle simmer and cook 20 minutes uncovered. The potato starch will cloud the soup: some cubes should stay intact and some should dissolve.
Step 5
Season the broth before the rice goes in. Taste and correct the salt carefully, remembering that toma, Parmigiano and lardo all carry salt of their own. Aim for a broth that tastes slightly under seasoned. The rice is about to absorb a large share of this liquid, and whatever is in the pot now ends up inside every grain.
Step 6
Cook the rice directly in the soup. Add the whole beans back, rain in the rice and stir once. Simmer uncovered 14 to 16 minutes, stirring every couple of minutes so nothing catches, with the remaining warm broth beside the pot to loosen the soup as the rice drinks it. Start tasting at 13 minutes. You want the grain cooked through with a firm point at its heart, the same al dente you take a risotto to, because it carries on cooking in the residual heat.
Step 7
Finish off the heat, the way a risotto is finished. Pull the pot off the flame and let it stand 60 seconds so the temperature drops below a simmer. Only then beat in the cold butter, the toma and the Parmigiano in rapid strokes until fat and starch come together and the surface turns glossy. Grind in black pepper. Over direct heat the toma separates and strings instead of emulsifying. Cover and rest 5 minutes.
Plating
This is a mountain soup and it should be served like one, in wide deep bowls warmed in a low oven. Cold ceramic stiffens the cheese within seconds and the surface loses its shine. Check the consistency before it leaves the pot: it should fall from the ladle in a slow thick ribbon, not in lumps and not in a stream. If it has set while resting, loosen it with two tablespoons of hot broth and beat it again.
Ladle it in, tap the base of the bowl once on the bench so the surface settles flat, then finish with a thread of olive oil, a grind of pepper and a little grated toma. Serve the toasted rye alongside rather than on top, where it goes soft. Eat it at once: a bowl that stands ten minutes is a different and much heavier dish.
Professional Technique
The technical spine of this soup is a double starch system that has to be built in the right order. The first comes from the beans and is already dissolved in their cooking water, which is why that liquid is an ingredient and never poured away. The second comes from the rice, released in the last quarter hour directly into the pot, with no rinsing beforehand. Because the rice cooks in the soup rather than in separate water, every gram of amylopectin it gives up stays in the bowl. That is what makes Fesillsüppu creamy without a drop of cream.
The finish is borrowed wholesale from risotto technique and it obeys the same physics. Butter added cold to a pot below a simmer emulsifies with the starch in suspension and gives a stable glossy bind. Butter added to boiling liquid melts and floats. Toma behaves the same way but less forgivingly, since its proteins knit into strands the moment they meet real heat. Sixty seconds off the flame before the fat goes in is not caution, it is the whole method.
Texture and Moisture Control
Three textures have to be readable in the same spoonful: whole beans that yield, potato that has half surrendered into the liquid, and rice with a firm centre. They come from staggering the cooking rather than cooking everything together. The beans arrive fully cooked and only warm through. The potato goes in twenty minutes before the rice so its edges break down and its core does not. The rice goes in last and comes off while it still has resistance, because a thick soup keeps cooking it in the bowl.
Moisture moves fast here and in one direction only. The rice keeps absorbing liquid after the pot leaves the stove, so a soup that looked right on the burner can be stiff by the time it reaches the table. Take it off slightly looser than you mean to serve it and keep half a cup of hot broth nearby throughout service. Correct with hot broth rather than water, which dilutes the seasoning, and never with cold liquid, which shocks the emulsion. Temperature matters at both ends: the bean simmer must stay below a rolling boil or the skins burst, and the finish must happen below 180°F (82°C).
Professional Mise en Place
The beans carry the long lead time and everything else is quick, so the work splits across two days. Cook the beans the day before and leave only the last twenty minutes for service.
Equipment and tools
Wide heavy based pot of at least 5 quarts (4.7 L)
Saucepan for the beans and another for the broth
Food mill with the medium disc for the bean purée
Flat edged wooden spoon for the finish, and a ladle
Fine grater for the toma and the Parmigiano
Prepared ahead
Beans soaked and cooked up to 2 days ahead, stored in their own liquid
Soffritto vegetables diced and refrigerated, 1 day ahead
Bean purée made and kept apart from the whole beans, 1 day ahead
Cabbage shredded on the day, covered and dry
Cheeses grated and held cold, rye bread sliced
Service setup
Broth held hot on a back burner, never boiling down
Reserved bean liquid warm and within reach
Cold cubed butter and grated cheese portioned at the pass
Bowls warming in a low oven, rye toasting at the last minute
A tasting spoon beside the pot once the rice goes in
Chef Tips
Buy borlotti from the most recent harvest and check the date on the packet. Beans that have sat in a warehouse for two years never cook evenly however long you soak them, and you end up with half the pot cream and half still chalky. Old beans are the commonest reason this soup fails before it has begun.
If you cannot find Toma di Gressoney, use a young Fontina rather than Gruyère or Emmental. Fontina has the lactic sweetness and low melting point this soup is built around, while the Swiss cheeses are firmer and thread far more readily.
Cook the beans a day ahead and let them cool in their liquid. They reabsorb what they lost, the skins stay intact, and the liquid thickens overnight into something closer to a light stock.
Resist blending the whole pot smooth. Every time this soup is modernised somebody purées it into a pleasant but anonymous cream. The point is the contrast between what has dissolved and what has not.
Common Mistakes
Salting the beans at the start. Salt added at the beginning toughens the skins and leaves the beans chalky at the centre however long they simmer. Add it only in the last 15 minutes.
Discarding the bean cooking liquid. That cloudy water holds most of the dissolved starch, and replacing it with plain broth gives a thin soup no amount of cheese will rescue.
Adding the rice too early. Rice put in with the potatoes gets thirty five minutes instead of fifteen and disintegrates. Add it in the final quarter hour only.
Finishing the cheese over the flame. Toma and Fontina separate and string above 180°F (82°C), leaving a greasy film. Take the pot off the heat, wait a full minute, then beat the butter and cheese in.
Boiling the beans hard. A rolling boil bursts the skins and turns the batch to mush before the insides are cooked. Keep the surface barely trembling throughout.
Wine Pairing
Valle d'Aosta Petite Arvine: The most complete white answer to this soup, made within sight of the valley it comes from. Petite Arvine keeps a saline finish and a grapefruit edge even at high ripeness, and that salinity meets the toma and the rendered lard without giving ground. Its acidity cuts through a bowl carrying real fat, with enough weight to stand beside the beans.
Valle d'Aosta Prié Blanc: Grown on ungrafted vines above Morgex at some of the highest altitudes in Europe, and about as light as a serious white gets. That is the point: taut, low in alcohol and sharply acidic, it cleans the palate between spoonfuls of a dense starchy soup. Choose the still version and serve it cool but not iced.
Valle d'Aosta Donnas DOC: Nebbiolo grown on terraces at the mouth of the Lys valley, a few kilometres from Issime. Mountain nebbiolo is paler and leaner than its Piedmont cousins, with fine drying tannin and notes of dried rose and tar, and that grip handles the butter and cheese in the finish while its acidity keeps the soup from settling heavily.
Valle d'Aosta Petite Rouge: The everyday red of the central Aosta valley, light bodied and peppery, and the bottle most likely to be open in a house where this soup is cooked. Serve it at 57°F (14°C), where its bright red fruit and low tannin refresh rather than compete and its peppery note runs alongside the pepper ground over the bowl.
Valle d'Aosta Fumin: The choice for a winter pot made with a generous hand on the lardo. Fumin is the darkest and most structured of the local reds, with firm tannin, black fruit and a smoky character that picks up the cured pork directly. Keep it for the richer version, and open it half an hour before pouring.
Storage & Reheating
Fesillsüppu keeps well and was designed to, but it changes as it sits. Cooled quickly and stored airtight it holds 3 days in the refrigerator, during which the rice goes on absorbing liquid and the soup sets almost solid. That is normal, and it is how it was eaten in Issime on the second day. Never let it cool slowly in the pot, since a thick starchy soup holds heat for hours and that is the window in which it spoils.
Reheat gently with a splash of hot broth stirred in from the start, keeping the spoon moving so the base does not scorch. Bring it just to serving temperature and no further: a second boil overcooks the rice and splits the cheese emulsified into it. If the surface looks dull, beat in a knob of cold butter off the heat.
It freezes for up to 1 month but not well, since the potato turns grainy and the rice loses its bite on thawing. For a freezer version, make the base through the potato stage, freeze that, and add fresh rice and the cheese finish on the day. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, never in a microwave.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 main course portions, bread not included:
Calories: 610 kcal
Total Fat: 28 g
Saturated Fat: 14 g
Trans Fat: 0.4 g
Unsaturated Fat: 12 g
Cholesterol: 62 mg
Sodium: 780 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 68 g
Fiber: 12 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 22 g
Lactose: 1.1 g
Principal micronutrients: calcium, phosphorus, iron, folate, potassium, vitamin K, vitamin B1
These figures are estimates. Fat and sodium move considerably with the amount of lardo and the saltiness of the toma.
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