To many people the idea of pairing pasta and potatoes comes as a shock. Carbs with carbs? And in these carb-phobic times, it’s not only unheard of, it sounds down right unhealthy. Well, healthy or not, this iconic Neapolitan dish in true cucina povera tradition was born out of the most extreme kind of frugality: typically you make it with leftover odds and ends of dried pasta, just a bit of tomato or tomato paste—the amount that you might also have leftover from making sauce—and the ultimate poor man’s vegetable, the potato. A tribute to the Italian belief that you should never food away. And to the Italian talent for making something delicious out of the humblest of ingredients.
Ingredients
Serves 4-6
- 250g (1/2 lb) pasta (see Notes)
- 500g (1 lb) yellow-fleshed boiling potatoes
- 100g (3-1/2 oz) pancetta, guanciale or lardo (see Notes)
- 1 medium onion, peeled and chopped
- 1 stalk of celery, chopped
- A few sprigs of parsley, chopped
- 3-4 tomatoes, fresh or canned, roughly chopped
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- A parmesan rind (optional)
- Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese, to taste
Directions
In a large pot, preferably made of terracotta or enameled cast iron, sauté the chopped cured pork in the olive oil until the fat is translucent and the edges are just beginning to brown. Add the chopped onion, celery and parsley to the pot and give it all a stir, then season lightly with salt and pepper. Sauté these aromatics—known in Italian as a soffritto—until the onion is quite soft and translucent. Add the tomato and let it simmer. If using the Parmesan rind, add it to the pot.
While the tomatoes are simmering, peel the potatoes and cut them into smallish cubes, adding the potato cubes to the pot as you go. When you’re done, give everything a good turn, add a ladleful of water to moisten things, and cover. Let the potato cubes simmer for 1o minutes or so, until they are almost tender. In a separate pot or kettle, bring some water to the simmer.
Add the pasta to the pot, along with enough simmering water to cover the pasta entirely. Season with a generous pinch of salt, stir and cover the pot again. Let the pasta simmer over a moderate flame, stirring from time to time to prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pot, until done al dente. Ladle in more simmering water as needed to keep things loose and liquid.
When things are just about done, add nice handful or two of grated cheese, and taste and adjust for seasoning. Add another ladleful of simmering water to the pot if it needs it—your pasta and potatoes can be served quite soupy or dry, or somewhere in between, as you prefer.
Notes on Pasta and Potatoes
As mentioned, the most typical pasta for making Pasta and Potatoes is pasta mista, literally ‘mixed pasta’. You know the odds and ends of pasta that are left in the bottom of your packages of pasta, not quite enough for a serving? Well, there’s no need to throw them away, keep them mixed up together in a large container and use the mix for dishes like this one:
Pasta mista
Pasta e fagioli (Pasta and Beans) and pasta e ceci (Pasta and Chickpeas) and pasta con la zucca (Pasta and Winter Squash) are other typical Neapolitan dishes made with pasta mista. When making this kind of dish, you’ll need to cook until the hardest pasta is al dente, so this will probably mean some of the other pasta will already be quite soft, and some may even fall apart, but that’s OK. The different degrees of doneness actually adds some interest, if you ask me.
Also quite common for this and similar dishes is pasta spezzata, or ‘broken pasta’: long pasta shapes like spaghetti or linguini, broken up by hand into short lengths. (Angelina always made her Pasta and Lentils with broken linguini.) Or you can use a stubby ‘soup pasta’ like ditali (the pasta par excellence for Pasta and Peas).
Lardo, by the way, is not lard—called strutto or sugna in Italian—but a kind of cured pork product. It’s hard to find but worth checking out if you can manage to locate a source. Another food tradition that’s bound to shock the uninitiated, lardo is basically pork fat cured with salt, rosemary and spices. The most famous, lardo di Colonnata, has a special flavor, thanks to the acorn rich diet of the pigs. When not used in cooking, lardo is sliced paper-thin and served on top of toasted bread. It quite literally melts in your mouth. Once a poor man’s ham, in this country at least it’s quite expensive, which probably makes it a waste of money to use it for a dish like this.
Like many iconic dishes, Pasta and Potatoes lends itself to many variations according to the cook. My Neapolitan cooking muse, Jeanne Caròla Francesconi, adds carrot to the soffritto, and uses a bit of tomato pasta diluted in water rather than whole tomatoes. For a vegetarian option, just omit the pork, and going in the opposite direction, you could use broth instead of water for more flavor. Like pasta and fagioli, you can make Pasta and Potatoes ahead, and it only seems to get better.
Pasta e patate (Pasta and Potatoes)
Ingredients
- 250 g 1/2 lb pasta
- 500 g 1 lb yellow-fleshed boiling potatoes
- 100 g 3-1/2 oz pancetta, guanciale or lardo
- 1 medium onion peeled and chopped
- 1 stalk of celery chopped
- A few sprigs of parsley chopped
- 3-4 tomatoes fresh or canned, roughly chopped
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- A parmesan rind optional
- Parmesan or pecorino romano cheese to taste
Instructions
- In a large saucepan, preferably made of terracotta or enameled cast iron, sauté the chopped cured pork in the olive oil until the fat is translucent and the edges are just beginning to brown. Add the chopped onion, celery and parsley to the pot and give it all a stir, then season lightly with salt and pepper. Sauté the aromatics until the onion is quite soft and translucent. Add the tomato and let it simmer. If using the Parmesan rind, add it to the pot.
- While the tomatoes are simmering, peel the potatoes and cut them into smallish cubes, adding the potato cubes to the pot as you go. When you're done, give everything a good turn, add a ladleful of water to moisten things, and cover. Let the potato cubes simmer for 1o minutes or so, until they are almost tender. In a separate pot or kettle, bring some water to the simmer.
- Add the pasta to the pot, along with enough simmering water to cover the pasta entirely. Season with a generous pinch of salt, stir and cover the pot again. Let the pasta simmer over a moderate flame, stirring from time to time to prevent it sticking to the bottom of the pot, until done al dente. Ladle in more simmering water as needed to keep things soupy.
- When things are just about done, add nice handful of grated cheese, to taste, and taste and adjust for seasoning. Add another ladleful of simmering water to the pot if it needs it—your pasta and potatoes can be served quite soupy or dry, as you prefer.
Discover more from Memorie di Angelina
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
And you might also like...
Troccoli con cime di rapa e cozze
Mousse di tonno (Tunafish Mousse)
Petto di vitella alla fornara
Timballo teramano
Gulasch triestino
Garofolato (Roman Pot Roast)
Ossobuco di tacchino (Turkey Ossobuco)
Risotto all’Amarone e ciliegie
Romeo Salta’s Easter Salad
Carbonara di carciofi (Artichoke Carbonara)
27 Comments on “Pasta e patate (Pasta and Potatoes)”
Hi Frank,
Tried this dish this evening – scrumptious 😋😋😋 and added some frozen peas 5 minutes from end. Really tasty – thank you
Andrew
Fantastic, Andrew! Glad to hear you enjoyed the dish. It’s a winner.
We tried pasta e patatas e provelo in Naples, and loved it……. this is my take on it when we got back.
50/ 50 pasta pieces and 22mm chunked potatoes.
Put the potatoes on a roasting tray, covered with some olive oil and a clove of garlic, and cook in oven on medium heat, until cooked and a little crisp.
Add pasta to a pan, cover with an extra 25mm of water and a vegetable stock cube, and simmer, adding more water if needed, for a soupy texture, takes about 20 minutes, same as the potatoes.
You can fry a little smoked bacon/ pancetta, with a little olive oil, starting about 10 minutes in, so it’s all done together.
We used mozzarella rather than provelone, because it’s easier to get…… cut the ball into matchsticks, then in a serving dish, stir it all gently together, and you’ll get these lovely strings of melted cheese, in every forkful, sprinkle chopped parsley over the top.
Thanks! Sounds delicious.
I’m Confused. Is the Pasta cooked separate from the potatoes? My Grammy made something like this but started with salt pork and onion drippings, elbow macaroni, a diced potato, and tomato paste, cooked in water or broth till thick and soupy; served with parmesan cheese. I loved it. I would love the recipe for her potato pie, ie, again, always salt pork and onion drippings, mashed potatoes, egg, parmesan and Romano cheeses, baked in a pastry dough. Served cold. My Nona made a rice pie similar.
As presented in this recipe, it’s a one pot dish. You add the pasta to the same pot with the potatoes along with more water. As mentioned, you need to stir from time to time to prevent the pasta sticking to the bottom. There are, of course, many variations on the recipe including ones like your grammy’s with a bit of tomato or tomato paste.
Pingback: Potato Pasta Recipe - Gnocchi I Recipe | Allrecipes
Bolivian cooking have the best recipe for pasta and potatoes.
Google Aji de Fideos, and you can find in English recipe.
It has beef, potatoes, peas,carrots, can it me made hot or not using panca or sweet paprika.
Is delicious.
Sounds very nice. Will have to try it!
What a wonderful recipe!! And the combination doesn’t sound strange at all. In the days when meat was scarce this dish would not only taste marvelous but it would fill tummy’s void. I love your explanations. Buon weekend, Frank!
Grazie, altrettanto!
Yes, carbs do me in. But nothing satisfies better. I have a love for peasant food and actually prefer it over “fussy.” This is soul-satisfying.
Frank, my mother was born and raised in Napoli! Pasta e Patate is a dish I grew up eating and now make for my own children. I also grew-up eating pasta e zucchini,cavolfiore, lenticchie, and many more. I love your recipes and my mom appreciates how authentic you keep the recipes.
Thanks! It’s awesome to get the seal of approval from a true Neapolitan mamma!
Most of my family is from Formia and so many of the recipes on this site remind me of my nonna’s cooking. Pasta e Palate (along with the other options M.Martino mentioned) is a standard in our home 3 generations and another continent later. Love, love, love the recipes!!
You’ll be surprised, but I have never had pasta e patate growing up — it was not part of my mother’s repertory — but I know it’s popular and your describer quite well all its virtues. And speaking of pasta spezzata, my mother made cauliflower soup with spaghetti spezzati.
I *am* surprised, but on the other hand, your mother cauliflower soup sounds divine!
Love all these Napolitan dishes.. Pasta e padane was one I grew up with, along with lentils, chickpeas, cauliflower, broccoli just to name a few.
Love all of them!
Well, I’ve made and eaten pizza with potatoes many times, so why not pasta? I love the frugality of the mixed pastas from the bottom of the box. And that lardo di Colonnata – I’ve eaten it there and it’s special because they put the lardo in marble tubs, mixed with herbs, then season it inside the marble cavi. I’m glad I had the experience, but still, I’d rather have a nice slice of prosciutto di Parma.
I guess I’d say I like each for its own virtues, but for regular consumption, yes, prosciutto would probably be my choice, too.
Carb-phobia begone! This reminds me of my mom and dinner at home. I love pasta and potatoes. Sauce it as you please, and pass a plate my way.
Thanks, Adri! I’m with you, I think this carb thing is a bit overblown. If carbs were that bad for you, rather than having one of the world’s highest longevity rates, the population of Italy (not to mention many East Asian countries) would be in much worse shape.
un piatto tradizionale italiano come questo sono sicura che piacerà anche oltreoceano, ne ho fatto una versione con i fusi istriani tempo fa, un successone a tavola !La prossima volta provo la tua saporita versione, buon weekend Frank !
Mi avessi piaciuto assaggiare quel piatto di fusi e patate, Chiara. Solo l’idea mi fa venire l’acquolina in bocca!
Wow this has brought so many memories for my husband his mother and father loved all this meals, he doesn’t much for an italian not a good pasta man now I make fresh pasta in less than 10 minutes he is having seconds. Thanks for sharing all this,lovely recipes
Cheers
Rosie
That’s wonderful, Rosemary! Buon appetito!