The potato pie or torta de patate in our dialect is one of the dishes of our tradition. Simple and with few ingredients, our grandmothers cooked it in a wood oven and accompanied it with the meats and cheeses that they produced in the family business. Excellent dish to enjoy in company, if you want to try a particular but effective combination, spread the cranberry jam on it, we guarantee!
For a cake tin measuring about 25 cm in diameter:
1.5 kg white potatoes
4 dessertspoons of mixed seed oil
2 dessertspoons of lard
salt and pepper
Turn the oven to static mode and heat to 220°C. Grate the potatoes or slice and blitz for a second or two in a food mixer to give a coarse mixture. Add the salt and pepper. In a copper or non-stick dish, add the oil and lard, (you could also use just oil or just lard) and heat over a low heat.
At this point, pour in the potato mixture, spread it evenly all over the pan and cook for about 3 minutes. Put the dish on the bottom shelf of the oven and bake for about 40 minutes, until it is well-cooked underneath. Then put the dish under the grill and continue cooking for another 20 minutes. Wait about 3 minutes before cutting it.
Excellent with cured meats, cheese and capussi (sliced green cabbage), and also good with redcurrant jam. The pie should be crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. One last piece of advice: if you do not have a dish this size, either increase or decrease the amounts, because the pie must not be neither too thin nor, especially, too thick. Eat just warm to enjoy all its fragrance.