Erica De Mane

I’d sure love to have one of these nice red mortadella trucks. Italians do understand high style.

Recipe: Neapolitan Potato Gattò

If you’re looking for something really rich, really Neapolitan-tasting, and really calorie-packed, this gattò is it. It’s like a pizza rustica, but made with mashed potatoes instead of ricotta, and much, much easier, since there’s no crust, just a nice coating of breadcrumbs to cradle its soft insides.

Most people don’t associate potatoes with Southern Italian cooking, since pasta rules down there, but Puglia, Calabria, Basilicata, and Campania all have their cucina povera potato creations, some, like this gattò, much less povera than others. Anything filled with meat, cheese, and eggs is a rich man’s dish by typical Southern Italian standards, but this dish is often fashioned with odds and ends—leftover slivers of various cheeses, often including some smoked mozzarella, salami ends, fatty prosciutto chunks. I happened to have a thick slice of mortadella in the refrigerator, so that became the guiding theme for this particular gattò.

Often I layer a gattò, putting down half of my potato mixture and then a thick layer of mozzarella or caciocavallo, or sometimes a layer of crumbled sausage. This version is a lazy version, where I just tossed all the ingredients together and patted them into a well-buttered and -crumbed baking dish.

The name gattò derives from the French gateau, and the dish was no doubt invented, or at least named, in the late nineteenth century, when Southern Italian nobility were in love with all things French, even importing French chefs or sending their local ones to train in France and earn the title “monzu,” a Neapolitan pronunciation of monsieur.

Potatoes highbrow or lowbrow, when mixed with traditional Southern Italian flavorings like sausage, mozzarella, artichokes, or anchovies, produce some really fine, solid offerings. This gattò is one of my favorites. It’s meant to be a first course or a side dish, but I prefer serving it more as you would a quiche, with a side of green salad. Try it for brunch. You can easily double the recipe, or even triple it, if you’d like to serve a small Neapolitan army.

Neapolitan Potato Gatto

(Serves 6)

Salt
3 pounds all-purpose potatoes, peeled
1½ cups grated grana Padano cheese
5 tablespoons butter
¼ pounds mortadella, cut into very small cubes
½ pound caciocavallo cheese, cut into small cubes (if you can find Sicilian Ragusano, that will be the best)
1 garlic clove, minced
2 large eggs
⅓ cup milk
A few large sprigs of Italian parsley, the leaves chopped
4 sprigs of marjoram, the leaves chopped
A few big scrapings of nutmeg
Freshly ground black pepper
¾ cups dry breadcrumbs, not too finely ground
Extra-virgin olive oil

Boil the potatoes in abundant salted water until they’re very tender, and then put them through a potato ricer (a food processor will make them gummy).

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Add the grana, 3 tablespoons of the butter, the mortadella, caciocavallo, eggs, milk, nutmeg, garlic, parsley, marjoram, black pepper, and a little more salt to the potatoes, and mix just well enough to distribute everything evenly.

Use a tablespoon of the butter to coat a 10-inch round pie pan or cake pan, and then coat the pan with about ¾ of the breadcrumbs.

Add the potato mixture to the pan, and smooth it down. Decorate the top by making a pattern with the tines of a fork (Southern Italians love to decorate with the tines of a fork). Sprinkle with the remaining breadcrumbs, dot with the last tablespoon of butter, and drizzle with olive oil.

Bake, uncovered, until the top is browned, about 20 minutes

Serve warm, cut into wedges.