Sila Potato

Patata della Sila is a protected geographical indication granted by the European Union in 2011. It covers potatoes grown on the Sila plateau across the provinces of Cosenza, Catanzaro and Crotone, at altitudes between roughly 1,000 and 1,500 metres.

It is not a variety but a place. The specification permits several yellow and white-fleshed cultivars (Agria and Désirée above all, then Nicola, Marabel, Kennebec) and what defines the product is where they grow, not the name on the sack.

The first thing you notice is the skin: thick, matt, rough and firmly attached, nothing like the flimsy jacket of a lowland potato. Underneath, the flesh is dense and yellow, and the dry matter runs around 21 to 22 per cent against 17 to 18 for an irrigated lowland crop.

Those numbers turn into kitchen behaviour. A potato with less water does not disintegrate when boiled, does not weep in the pan, takes up less oil when fried and survives a long roast intact. The thick skin, which the plant grows as protection against cold, is why the crop keeps in a cellar until spring.

Properly potato-flavoured, which is not a given any more: nutty, faintly sweet, with a chestnut edge that comes through most clearly when they are baked in their skins or cooked slowly in olive oil.

Texture is the real argument. Boiled, the pieces stay whole with a waxy-to-floury middle that holds a dressing. Roasted, the outside goes glassy and crisp while the inside turns creamy. Fried, they brown faster and stay crisp longer than a watery potato, because there is less moisture to drive off before browning starts.

The skin is worth eating. Thick and slightly earthy, it crisps hard in the oven and carries most of the mineral flavour of the granite soil.

The dish to make first is the local one: patate 'mpacchiuse. Slice the potatoes thin, put them in a wide pan with plenty of olive oil, and cook them over low heat for about forty minutes, disturbing them as little as possible, until they stick together into a single golden cake: crisp outside, creamy inside. The dialect word means exactly that: stuck together.

For frying, the low water content does the work. Cut thick, dry the pieces on a cloth, and fry once at 150 C to cook through, then again at 180 C to colour. They brown faster and stay crisp longer than a wet potato.

Roasted, cut into wedges with the skin on, olive oil, rosemary and coarse salt, 200 C for forty minutes. There is no need to parboil and rough up the edges the way you would with a floury lowland potato.

Boiled, they hold their shape, which makes them right for potato salads and for any dish where the pieces must stay whole. For gnocchi and purée the low moisture is an advantage: you need less flour, and the result stays light.

Local pairings are direct: melted 'nduja over roast potatoes, soppressata, porcini from the Sila woods, Tropea onions, melted caciocavallo, eggs. Less obvious and very good: 'mpacchiuse with crumbled dried crusco peppers scattered over at the last second.

Potatoes want dark, cool and airy: six to ten degrees, a paper or hessian sack rather than a plastic bag, and a cellar or a low cupboard rather than a worktop. Condensation inside plastic is what makes the skins go slimy. The fridge is the wrong place for a different reason, since below about four degrees the starch converts to sugar, the potatoes taste sweet and they brown much faster and darker in hot oil. Keep them away from onions, which speed up sprouting when the two share a box.

Over weeks in the right conditions they slowly lose water: the skins wrinkle, the tubers give under a thumb, and the flesh turns denser. Warmth breaks dormancy and shoots push out of the eyes, first as white points and then as long pale sprouts. Light does something separate again, turning the skin and the layer just beneath it green as chlorophyll forms, which is why the sack is kept closed. Anything you want a judgement on belongs to the grower or the shop. Raw potato does not freeze, since ice crystals collapse the texture; blanched chips do.

The bag is where the identification lives: Patata della Sila IGP with the consortium mark, a named variety such as Agria, Bianca, Desiree or Marabel, and the Calabrian highland origin. The tubers are regular and oval with a thin, tight skin, still carrying a little of the grey granitic soil they grew in, and the flesh runs from pale cream to a definite gold. They are grown above a thousand metres and harvested from late summer into autumn, so the freshest bags appear in early autumn.

Outside Italy the useful translation is not the name but the type. These are floury, high dry matter potatoes, the family a British cook knows as Maris Piper or King Edward and an American cook as russet or Idaho: they collapse into flour when boiled, which is why they make good gnocchi and good chips. Waxy potatoes such as Charlotte, red new potatoes or fingerlings behave in the opposite way and will not substitute. Yukon Gold sits somewhere in between. An IGP bag costs several times a supermarket sack of the same weight.

Be realistic: this is a heavy, low-value vegetable and it does not travel. Sila potatoes are sold across southern and central Italy from October through to spring, and almost nowhere else. No serious quantity reaches the US or the UK.

In Italy expect 1.20 to 2.50 euro per kilo at retail, rising late in the winter as stocks run down. The specification requires sealed packaging with a lot number and the words Patata della Sila IGP alongside the EU mark, so loose potatoes sold from crates at roadside stalls on the plateau are not the protected product, however good they may be.

Outside Italy, buy for the characteristics rather than the name: a yellow-fleshed maincrop potato with high dry matter and a thick, matt skin. Yukon Gold, Agria, German Butterball and Kennebec in the US, Maris Piper, King Edward or Désirée in the UK. Expect 2 to 4 dollars per pound or 2 to 4 pounds per kilo for good ones.

Wherever you buy, take unwashed potatoes if you can. Washing removes the natural protective layer and halves how long they keep.

Camigliatello Silano, in the province of Cosenza, holds a potato festival in mid-August and cooks 'mpacchiuse in metre-wide pans in the street. It is the most direct introduction available.

San Giovanni in Fiore, the largest town on the plateau, is the better base for a longer stay: the full mountain kitchen of the Sila is here (potatoes, wild mushrooms, black pork, caciocavallo) plus the Florensian abbey founded by the medieval mystic Joachim of Fiore.

The scenery is the surprise. Three lakes, Cecita, Arvo and Ampollino, sit among pine and beech forest, and the Giants of the Sila at Fallistro are a stand of forty-metre laricio pines several centuries old. It looks nothing like the Calabria of the postcards, and the Ionian beaches are half an hour down the road.

September and October are the best months: the harvest is under way, the mushroom season peaks, and the woods turn. In winter the plateau takes snow and becomes a small ski area.