As the name suggests, Valpelline Soup originates from a small village in the Aosta Valley called Valpelline. It’s a very tasty dish, suitable for warming up during winter evenings, with stale bread, fontina cheese, and broth as its main ingredients. Like many recipes, everyone has their version, in the original one, rye bread was used, a little cinnamon was added to season the broth, and in some versions, a bit of lard was added between the layers of ingredients to make it even richer. Today, I’m presenting my version; I used whole grain croutons instead of stale bread, but of course, you can use the dry bread you have at home.

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Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Cheap
Preparation time: 40 Minutes
Portions: 6 People
Cooking methods: Oven
Cuisine: Italian
Seasonality: Autumn, Winter, All Seasons

Ingredients

21 oz cabbage (a small cabbage)
9 oz fontina cheese
2.5 cups vegetable broth
2 pinches coarse salt
to taste olive oil
to taste black pepper (ground)
to taste ground cinnamon (optional)
1.75 oz lard (optional)
10 bread croutons (whole grain about 0.4 oz each or slices of stale bread)

Steps

Start by cleaning and washing the cabbage: remove the tougher stalks and outer leaves if they are a bit wilted. Now put some water in a pot and as soon as it boils, add the coarse salt and cabbage leaves. Cook them for a few minutes; they should remain crisp, not too soft.
Drain them in a colander, arranging them all around the edges.
Now take a baking tray with a diameter of about 10 inches, cover it with parchment paper, lightly oil the bottom, and make a first layer of cabbage leaves, with a little less than half of the leaves overlapping. Lightly salt and pepper.
Now place the stale bread on top, I used whole-grain croutons, but you can use any hard bread you have at home. If desired, you can also toast it first in the oven to make it crunchier and more flavorful.
At this point, make a layer of fontina cheese cut into not too thin slices, using about half of the quantity.
Put another layer of cabbage leaves, finish the remaining ones, and season with a little oil and pepper.
Finish everything with another layer of fontina cheese, using all that is left. To add flavor, if you like, you can add pieces of lard before covering the surface with fontina cheese. Now add the broth, meat or vegetable, depending on your taste, to which you will have added a little cinnamon, if you like.
Bake by placing the tray at the bottom of the oven at 350°F for about 25 minutes. Check that the broth doesn’t dry out too much, or the bottom might burn.
Allow it to brown on the surface and enjoy hot!