{"id":7695,"date":"2020-07-13T09:00:29","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T15:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/villasentieri.com\/?post_type=recipe&p=7695"},"modified":"2026-09-02T10:58:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T17:58:37","slug":"sformato-di-patate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/villasentieri.com\/index.php\/2020\/07\/13\/sformato-di-patate\/","title":{"rendered":"Sformato di Patate (Italian Potato “Cake”)"},"content":{"rendered":"

July 13, 2020<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I published a photo for this dish on my Facebook feed last week and got so much attention that I decided to actually post the recipe.<\/p>\n

Sformato di Spinaci (spinach sformato or, if you must, spinach casserole) is a dish that garners great reverence in my husband\u2019s family.\u00a0 A while ago, I published my adaptation of the family recipe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I make sformati out of lots of different vegetables besides spinach, including Swiss chard, zucchini, and cauliflower, among others.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I swap out the ground beef in my husband\u2019s grandmother\u2019s recipe for sausage or Calabrese salame, or mushrooms.\u00a0 This is a heretical act in his family but everyone still eats the sformato.\u00a0 This is compounded\u00a0 by the blasphemy of adding besciamella to the mix.<\/p>\n

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Although I make several versions of potato \u201ccakes\u201d I never thought of them as sformati until I stumbled upon the genre while perusing Italian-language food websites.<\/p>\n

Although I had mixed meat, such as salame or prosciutto, and cheese into the potato mixture before baking it, I had never made a layer of filling in the middle.\u00a0 Doing so changes the whole character of the dish.\u00a0 It really feels like a main course (or what would be a secondo in an Italian meal) rather than gussied up potatoes that should be served as a side dish (contorno)!<\/p>\n

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When serving sformato di patate, I often start with soup and end with a salad\u2026 unless it\u2019s a meal for which I developed a new gelato flavor to try! (This happens once, if not twice, per week\u2026 the gelato, not the sformato!)<\/p>\n

This recipe calls for prosciutto cotto (cooked ham).\u00a0 This is not the cured ham that we simply call \u201cprosciutto\u201d in English.\u00a0 It really is just a cooked ham.\u00a0 Typically, it would not be smoked.\u00a0 I have successfully made this with good quality ham from the deli counter as well a fully-cooked lightly-smoked ham from the meat counter.<\/p>\n

Since the cheese is smoked, I find that smoked ham works as well as un-smoked ham though the latter is more traditional.

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Sformato di Patate (Italian Potato \"Cake\")<\/h2>\n
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Italian prosciutto cotto is not smoked so the most traditional ham would be unsmoked but since the cheese is smoky, I\u2019ve occasionally used a lightly smoked ham and gotten fantastic results. If the ham is not sliced very, very thinly, cut it into batons about the size of wooden matchsticks. I\u2019ve chosen to keep this recipe in the metric measures that I use. You can click the button below to change to American measures. Feel free to round the quantities up or down a bit.<\/div>\n
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Prep Time <\/span>30 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Cook Time <\/span>1 hour<\/span><\/span> hr<\/span> 30 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div>
Total Time <\/span>2 hours<\/span><\/span> hrs<\/span> 15 minutes<\/span><\/span> mins<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n
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Servings: <\/span>8<\/span> people<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Ingredients
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