Swiss Federal Fast Soup

We Valaisians have a healthy mistrust for governmental authority. The national hero of Valais, Farinet, was a counterfeiter shot down by the Federal police. His life and times are still celebrated in Valais a hundred years later. If Valaisians were French, they would be Corsicans. If British, they'd certainly be Irish. Or Sicilian. Or Texans.

Although I've never seen one Swiss not eat on that day, I assume there must be some who do, as an act of respect for our Federal government. It will then be little surprise to hear that in my Valaisian family, we meet every year on Swiss Federal Fast Day, the third Sunday in September, to eat soup at my uncle Harvey's. But this year, I offered him to help out with the soup and take a few pictures for you guys. The recipe for this peasoup encore is found in the serious pea soup article.

I arrived on Saturday night at uncle Harvey's chalet. Years ago he had bought a tiny traditional barn we call here mazot and converted it into a large chalet. Harvey likes to invite people for parties and has a large outdoor kitchen and covered gallery - the whole thing is designed to receive guests. If he were an American gentleman, this would be called a club house. But the original building is centuries old and in Valais most families have one were they retire on the week end. They just call it le chalet.This is not a sign of special wealth, as 50 years ago most Valaisians had a nomadic lifestyle in the sense that they spent the warmer part of the year up there in the mountains with their cattle and wintered down in the valley. Nowadays very few people do that, but the same moutain shacks have been turned into places of leisure to get away from the town's hustle and bustle.

Aunt Danielle had cooked up foie gras and fondue bourguignonne, the one with the vats of boiling oil on the table where you dip pieces of meat. This barn has come a long way!

Under uncle Harvey's intense gaze, ...

... we started peeling the root vegetables carrots, potatoes and celeriac with my aunt Danielle.

Then the most important part, washing and rewashing the split peas until the water comes clean. We used 3 kg (6lbs) of peas and we have to leave the water running for a good 30 minutes before it became clear. We left the peas soaking for the whole night, which is not really necessary. But the washing rids them of the acquae fartorum, and that is not an option. You need to discard the soaking water too.

The next day, we woke up early to start our soup. Guests were due for noon, soup would be served at 1PM and it needs to cook for at least 3 hours.

Uncle Harvey always makes his soup into an old converted copper wash boiler. He had the inside lined with tin to avoid any copper poisoning, and somebody made him an oil bath in a false bottom between the burner and the soup, to prevent any hotspots that might burn the food. Capacity : 80 liters / 20 gallons. We positioned the cooker back against a huge moss-covered rock right outside his chalet, and we started cooking with the gentle ring of cowbells from the cattle grazing next door - a very peaceful kitchen.

After adding a glass of oil into the hot cooker, I direct uncle Harvey to start making some serious pea soup. In go a kilogram of onion and 3 leeks.

We toss them for about 10 minutes untilt they are soft and start to brown.

Harvey adds the carrots, potatoes and celeriac we prepared the night before...

... filling up the pot slowly ...

... until a shower of split peas covers everything.

Water from the garden hose generates clouds of steam.

Sage, savory, tyhme and parsley. Half of it was neatly tied into the washed outer leaves of leeks, making little bundles that could be easily plunged into the soup and later removed. 15 minutes before serving I snipped the other half and added it to the soup.

We tie all four herbs-and-leeks parcels to a single string before they are plunged into the pot...

... and then add the cook-in ham bone with its meat on. A much larger ham will come later, but as it is already cooked we'll cook that one only for an hour. This here ham will be overboiled and liquefied with the soup to add taste and body.

Uncle Harvey turns the heat up until, half an hour later, the soup starts to boil.

We boil 500grams (1 pound) of Parmesan with the soup to improve its body.

Uncle Harvey being a fiend for garlic, I bought him fresh garlic from Lautrec, the best we find in Europe. We put 2 whole heads, peeled and crushed, into the boiler.

While the soup cooks, we prepare the starter. As a starter we prepare 40 beignets de Vinzel, those delicious Swiss cheese fritters I wrote about last year. That's two fritter per guest on average. I had spent quite some time the day before at the cheesemonger's to select a four kinds of unpasteurized milk cheeses from alpine meadows that would melt nicely. We use 1.6kg of cheese (3 pounds). The cheesemonger grated them coarsely, otherwise it will jam our machine, he had said. We add 12 eggs ...

... then some nutmeg, white pepper, flour, baking powder and a good dose of kirsch (cherry brandy).

A local baker made me some circular toast bread on special order, much better than the wrapped crap you buy in the supermarket.

I enlisted my father's twin sister's help to make the cheese fritters, under my watchful eye. Christiane - that's her name - protested as I sent back most fritters for lack of cohesion. You can't have a single crack between cheese and bread, or they will break up during frying, I said. There you go, it's a privilege to work with skilled apprentices, I added. Christiane had a restaurant for 30 years and we all laughed.

We started frying the beignets de Vinzel in Uncle Harvey's built-in deep fryer (he really has everything but a tandoor up there), and served then by batches of four every five minutes. Kids only ate one, but my father had four pieces and came back for more. Very tasty.

Next page see uncle Harvey with the gigantic 'chopper' mixer and the soup served with garlic bread and smoked ham.

When I realized that the only blender we had was a smallish house Bamix, I called my father up. He went by his brother Regis, who owns a restaurant down in the valley and came around 11h30 with this huge, professional soup blender. Uncle Harvey is very confortable working with this. They all grew up in the family restaurant that Regis now runs. As Harvey starts working the soup, my father explains: One day my brother Regis was making soup for the restaurant. We tasted it, and it was a bit light, watery. I told Regis it needed more body. He took a hockey glove, cut out the washer with a pair of scissors, and threw it in. I asked him what the client who will get the glove will think, and he answered that with the helo, nothing will show. This is the helo, he said, showing the giant blender Harvey was operating. Now I don't think this ever really happened, but it's a joke he's been telling so many times I was really surprised to see that there really was such a thing as uncle Regis' helo.

My uncle had removed the herb-and-leeks wraps and the ham bone before blending. We deboned the ham and returned the meat for liquefaction.

Once the soup - meat, peas, vegetables and parmesan - has been turned into a smooth cream, Harvey tastes it. Divine. Time to add the real meat.

The day before, I had bought a whole smoked ham, the famous jambon de la borne, first cooked, then left hanging for weeks above a cheesemaker's wood fire to preserve and flavor it in smoke. In it goes, to warm it up and and flavor the soup with its extraordinary smoky taste.

While the 25+ guests devour the cheese fritters, Harvey mixes the finely snipped herbs into the soup. Savory goes especially well with pea soup.

I leave my camera for a minute to congratulate my uncle Harvey on a job well done.

To the cries of A la soupe!, the guests start congregating around the pot, with the kids in front, a first when soup is concerned.

Uncle Harvey tries to remove the huge bone-in ham from the soup alone, but suddendly the string breaks and the ham falls into the soup, splashing soup over the assistance.

He enlists the help of his son, my cousin Erik, to try and fish the ham out. No way, the ham stays hidden in the warm, at the bottom of the pot.

Finally, a third fisher comes and they succeed in bringing out the monster. A line has formed behind them, waiting for the soup.

First in line for the soup is Harvey's granddaughter. I think my soup must be working if kids rush to the front of the line - usually soup-eating is a chore.

The line goes on, as more of my cousin's kids come filling their plates at uncle Harvey's.

Harvey owns a company that restores your house after a disaster occurs. What disaster exactly is the client's prerogative - fire, water, mudslide, and then some. But the real client is the insurance company. So, whenever I meet somebody new at uncle Harvey's, like the gentleman above, well, he always ends up working for an insurance.

My cousin David's wife serves the garlic bread we just made - butter, fresh garlic from Lautrec all pounded with fresh thyme and savory. We made two platters like this and it disappeared within minutes.

A guest skilled in the art of the knife starts to cut very regular slices from the ham. Guest come and place each a slice in the soup, then go find a place around one of the tables.

A fisheye view from the slicer's heart. Gorgeous, juicy Swiss smoked ham.

Ever since uncle Harvey started his soup tradition, the dessert was provided by the guests. We make a pie contest, says uncle Harvey when he invites you. Back in the days when I was as little as the diners gathered around the table above, I took this seriously. But once my father bought the nicest pie in town from his favorite baker, stripped it of any shop telltales, and brought it in a homey tray. Clearly, this was the best pie in the contest, but for some reason he didn't win. Instead a little girl stole the show with her cute but clumsy pie. This day I understood there was no justice under the sun and stopped participating in uncle Harvey's pie contests. The dices are loaded, that's all there is to say.

But our little contestants, still unaware of the ways of the world, were very excited to be asked to sample each pie and then cast their vote!

In Valais people tend to like their families and are always happy to have a gathering. Conversely, cousins and even second degree cousins (picture) know one another. Since the canton is made of the Rhone valley and a few side valleys, and population is small at around 300,000, people behave towards strangers in a very different way than in more populated areas. Whomever you meet on the street is likely to be on first name basis with at least one person you know, cousin or otherwise. This means that you are always nice to strangers and cannot start rambling or bitching like you could in a larger city, as you might well bump into the same person at some wedding or funeral or family gathering in the future. This is nice. I like it.

As the party came to an end, guests started pulling out freezer bags, tupperware and plastic cans. This is not common in Switzerland, but given the size of uncle Harvey's boiler, there is always waaaaaay more soup than people can eat. So over the years my uncle started asking his guests to bring little containers to take some soup home if they wished. Some widowers are really pleased as this makes for a delicious meal for a couple more nights, but most people are just happy not to have to cook on the next day, the Federal Fast Monday, a non-working day in most of Switzerland.