Chef's pick
Pasta e patate with smoked mozzarella
Pasta e patate is a dish that looks like a mistake on paper and tastes like a hug in person. Pasta. Potatoes. Together. It sounds like the kind of thing a tired flatmate would cook at 1am on a Thursday and call it cucina povera, and in fairness it probably is. But in Naples, where this dish is taken very seriously indeed, they'll tell you that the secret is a piece of smoky cheese that melts into long strings and turns the whole thing into something much bigger than the sum of its parts.
Our introduction to pasta e patate happened in a little restaurant in the Vomero district of Naples, where we'd wandered in on a rainy Wednesday because the place across the street had a forty-minute wait. We ordered what the waiter recommended, which turned out to be this dish served in a terracotta pot at a temperature normally reserved for welding. We burned our mouths immediately. We didn't care. We scraped the bottom of that pot with a piece of bread and looked at each other and said we are making this at home. We made it the next week, and the week after, and the terracotta pot has never quite let us go.
The traditional Neapolitan version uses provola affumicata, a specific smoked cow's milk cheese you can only find reliably in southern Italy. Outside of there, smoked mozzarella or scamorza affumicata (usually stocked in the Italian section of bigger supermarkets) does the job beautifully. It needs to be smoky, it needs to melt into strings, and it needs to be stirred in off the heat at the very end so the residual warmth pulls it into glossy ribbons instead of a tough rubber layer. Pair this with a bottle of something cheap, red, and slightly cold, and you will understand why Neapolitans never leave Naples voluntarily.
- Prep 10 min
- Cook 30 min
- Serves 2
- Cost €€
Method
- 1
Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the pancetta and render until lightly golden.
4 min
- 2
Add the onion, carrot, and celery with a pinch of salt. Cook until soft and starting to colour.
7 min
- 3
Add the garlic and chili flakes if using, stir 30 seconds.
1 min
- 4
Add the potatoes, tomato passata, and parmigiano rind. Stir so the potatoes get coated in the sauce.
2 min
- 5
Pour in enough hot stock to just cover everything. Bring to a simmer, lid cracked open.
2 min
- 6
Cook until the potatoes are tender and starting to fall apart at the edges.
10 min
- 7
Add the pasta and more hot stock or water as needed to keep it soupy. Cook until the pasta is al dente, stirring often so nothing catches.
10 min
- 8
Kill the heat. Fish out the parmigiano rind. Stir in the smoked mozzarella and the grated parmigiano.
1 min
- 9
Put the lid on and leave for 2 minutes so the cheese melts into strings.
2 min
- 10
Stir gently. Serve in deep bowls with a crack of black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil. Eat carefully, it is seriously hot.
1 min
Variations
For a vegetarian version, skip the pancetta and start the soffritto with an extra tablespoon of oil. For a cheesier, richer version, double the smoked mozzarella. If you can't find smoked cheese, use regular fior di latte mozzarella plus half a teaspoon of sweet smoked paprika stirred into the soffritto. Leftovers thicken overnight into something closer to a bake; loosen with a splash of water when reheating.