Potatoes are not commonly used in Sicilian cooking. For my nonna, there were two exceptions: her insalata vastasa and a main dish called gattò di patate.
The name gattò comes from gâteau, the French word for cake. The rich dish was created in the late 18th century by French chefs who served at the Bourbon court. These so-called monsieurs or monzù were brought to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by Queen Maria Carolina of Habsburg, wife of King Ferdinand IV of Bourbon and Marie Antoinette's sister.
I recently stumbled on a recipe for a gattò created by Letizia Mattiacci, a Rome-based food writer, cookbook author, and Madonna del Piatto cooking class instructor. While Letizia uses ham, this potato cake can easily be made vegetarian by substituting spinach.
Letizia and I spoke about her winding path from entomologist, a biologist who studies insects, to agriturismo owner and then cooking class instructor. She told me about her gattò recipe and shared tips and tricks for achieving the perfect gattò structure.
What is your background?
I was born in Perugia, but my mother was from Librizzi, Sicily. She moved to Perugia in the 1960s for work, and there, she met my father, who was a local in Umbria. So, I spent my youth there.
Then, I started a Ph.D. program in insect ecology. I didn't speak a word of English, and I had never been anywhere. In the second year of my Ph.D. program, I took a plane for the first time to move to the United States for six months of lab work. And that was the first big adventure of my life.
I worked in a couple of labs in Washington, D.C. I worked in Beltsville, Maryland, at the USDA lab, and then I worked at Texas A&M University. I loved it so much that I went back in the second summer to finish some of the experimental work I had done there.
After that, I started traveling for work. I found my first postdoc in the Netherlands. I met a lovely, tall, and skinny Dutch guy who, at some point later, I married. He's also an entomologist.
We worked as scientists in the Netherlands for three years and did some field work in Zimbabwe. I worked with the United Nations in Vienna and then got a job as an associate professor in Switzerland.
By then, we both had jobs in Switzerland and spent five years there. But then we discovered that an academic career with all the politics involved was not really our calling. So we did the romantic thing: We bought a farmhouse back in Umbria, in a beautiful place above the hills of Assisi.
We bought this place in '97, and it took us five years of hard work in Switzerland to finance the renovation. Then we went back to Umbria, had our baby, whose name is Tea, and started the adventure of innkeeping and cooking classes.
We had friends everywhere, and I've always loved to cook. I discovered that people always ask you for a recipe when you are Italian.
I always cooked with my mom or with my family. My Sicilian family mostly lived in Perugia, so we always had big Sicilian parties.
We had an agriturismo for more than 22 years, and it was marvelous, but we had to stop for many reasons. We sold it, and we moved it to Rome.
Tell me about your gattò recipe.
In the south of Italy, you won't find many recipes with potatoes. The original gattò was made with some sausage there, probably some salami. But my mother made it with cheese and ham because when we grew up in the 1960s, the concept that you should have had lighter food started to come in slowly. By the mid-70s and 80s, food had probably started to be less oily and less rich, while between the 1960s and the 1970s, it was very rich.
My mother made this lovely potato puree. She cooked the potatoes and then riced them with a vegetable mouli. She then added eggs, a bit of olive oil, and quite a bit of Parmigiano. She then layered it in an oil pan with breadcrumbs and put some cheese and some ham in it. When you cut it in the middle, you have this sort of melting cheese that comes out of it.
My daughter is also very fond of the dish, so this is a tradition. I probably make it once every three weeks or so in the winter.
Can you speak to the 18th-century history of this dish?
In that period, a lot of things happened. There is a dish called sartu, a rice dish. This is another dish that comes from French chefs and has been adopted in southern cooking. For a very long time, rice was not especially popular in Italy, and it was considered a food for the sick.
Then, the French cooks at the Bourbon court elaborated on these exotic ingredients. They realized they had to offer them in a way that reflected the local tradition. Most likely, the French wouldn't have made a rice casserole with tomato sauce, but they put tomato sauce in it, which made it more palatable for the local court.
What are some other Sicilian potato recipes you would recommend?
While in the past, potatoes were indeed not common in Sicilian cuisine, there are a handful of recipes that might be nice to consider. My grandmother Rosaria made whole-baked potatoes stuffed with meat and cheese.
Here are a couple more examples:
What are some important tricks for achieving the right gattò structure?
It's important to cook the potatoes just right so they don't absorb too much water, and it's important to have good-quality potatoes. Your equivalent in the U.S. would be Yukon Gold potatoes. If you have floury potatoes, they will absorb too much water, and your gattò will not have the right texture because you want it to be fluffy. In recent years, I have microwaved the potatoes because they do not absorb any humidity except their own.
If you boil your potatoes, do so with the peel on so they don't absorb too much moisture. If you feel they've gotten a little bit overcooked, you could put them in the oven and dry them a bit after that.
It's important to do a good job with the ricing. Just smashing will not give you a good structure. The easiest way is actually using a vegetable mouli.
Then, you beat the eggs in there quite soon while the potatoes are still warm. You beat all the ingredients together, but what matters is the eggs because they will hold it together.
After that, you can just put it in a bowl so it doesn't stick and let it cool off. This is the most important part. It's also important to taste it for seasoning because it has to be sweet. If you use ham, it is sweet; if you use some melting cheese, it is also sweet. If you don't give it a little bit of salt and pepper and maybe a dash of nutmeg to contrast, then you will have something that is a bit bland.
The rest is very easy. Oil or butter your pan and sprinkle it with breadcrumbs—good breadcrumbs, not store-bought. [Get Letizia's breadcrumbs recipe here.]
To keep the shell whole, take two spoons and spoon the potato all over the top. Then, wet one of the spoons and very lightly push it down. If you start moving your potatoes around, the crust will break.
For my recipe, I normally make three layers of potatoes, so you also have to decide how many potatoes to use for that size of pan. I like to use a Pyrex circular pan, but it works in many different pans.
Then, I layer my cheese and ham. I like to use Scamorza, but it's not easy to find in the United States. A good-quality cow's milk cheese that melts easily without becoming watery is ideal.
I make two layers and then sprinkle again with breadcrumbs, a little bit of Parmigiano, and a few dots of butter.
What do you hope at-home cooks will take away from your gattò recipe?
This is an easy family food. It is good the day you make it and gives you good leftovers. You can make it for a party. It is a very easy, practical, and inexpensive dish to make nowadays. And it makes children very happy.
After a certain age, we worry about calories and blah blah. But it is good food; I don't know anybody who doesn't like it.
>>Get Letizia's gattò recipe here!<<
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