So will the real torta di patate reveal itself …………..

Now this is torta di patate, or so I thought it was.

We have always just called it Italian potato pie, which goes nowhere near a translation other than it includes potatoes.

It has been a mainstay of my cooking since the early 1980s and is made by layering cooked potatoes, mozzarella and black pepper with a tomato sauce topping, and comes out of the oven with that crisp reddish surface before collapsing into a gooey cheese mix on the plate.

On a cold winter’s night it is one of those comfort foods which stand along side mashed potatoes, mushy peas and bubble and squeak, and is not for those on a diet.

I found it in the first Italian cookbook I bought which was one of a series published by Marks and Spencer.*

I bought into the lot from Mediterranean Cooking, Christmas Cooking and The St Michael All Colour Cookery Book.  

They were cheap to buy, simple to read and made good food, and I still use them today long after I went up market with some of Marks’s posher food books and before  branching out to the well-known celebrity cooks from Floyd, to Delia and Claudia Roden.

And I now cook  Torta di patate for the Italian side of the family, but here I ran into a mystery, because none of them have ever eaten it, or certainly not as torta di patate, which my Italian wife makes and consists of mashed potato, cheese and for those of us who are not veggie comes with a selection of meats including prosciutto as well as eggs.

It too is a firm favourite with our kids and is always an option on the table at Christmas.

Of course, when you look at the ingredients of both dishes it is easy to see that what we are dealing with are variations on peasant food, filling, cheap and replicated across the world.

They walk along side my favourite aubergine dish, Parmigiana di melanzane which Rosa who is from Naples makes a mean version, while my Greek friends continue to sing the praises of moussaka.

Today we are comfortable with these and many other dishes, but I always reflect on my own journey which now embraces aubergines which I came across for the first time in my 30s.

But then I spent my early years with dripping, sugar sandwiches and the exotic Vesta curries of which there is nothing wrong with.

Location; our cook books

Pictures; Torta di patate, 2022 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and cover of Italian Cooking, 1982

*Italian Cooking Anne Ager, 1982