I was just wondering why, when the city is packed with outlets that home-deliver all kinds of food — Chinese, Thai, Indian, American, Italian, regional Indian — why there’s no French take-away business. Because it doesn’t travel well, and must be eaten tout de suite ? Probably. But what I took away from a recent trip, whose sole purpose had been to ingest the beauty of the country and to eat our way from one point to another, was one very simple concept: eat fresh, eat local. Our last stop before exiting Paris was in Sarlat-la-Canéda in the Périgord region, where we stayed with Thierry, a cook. His home, a renovated farmhouse, is set in a broad, sunbright valley, surrounded by fields and bordered by a dark wood. He keeps donkeys that graze all summer, picks ceps (the mushrooms that Italians call porcini) from the dark shade of the trees, presses walnuts for oil, slow-cooks cassis , blackcurrants, into syrup and adds fresh flowers and leaves to salad. The Périgord is renowned for its foie gras and its truffles — both the goose and the fungus are native.
I had read of the open-air weekly market in Sarlat, and Thierry added his recommendation. The city’s parking meters are switched off on market day and we spent a morning there. There were farmers selling fresh tomatoes — green, orange, yellow, red, long, round, fat and slim. There were radishes, red, white and variegated; all manner of “onions”: white and purple, shallots, pearls and scallions. Two girls were selling local goat cheeses. We bought a few, foolishly packed them in our cabin luggage and had them confiscated at Charles de Gaulle (because they were a security risk?). There were snails stuffed with green herbs, whole magret frais de canard , uncooked duck breasts; and tinned foie gras, paté and bloc from neighbouring farms. We saw all the makings of a picnic: artisanal bread, roast duck and saucissons , the dry French sausage. The advice I got re saucisson was to “flee the industrial type sold in supermarkets and head to the nearest farmers’ market.” The French consume more than 100,000 tons of this every year. According to a French site that promotes tourism, “it is a very rustic French gastronomic gem produced traditionally from high quality meat”. There were of course stalls selling B-grade hats and clothes, beads and purses… not very different from our weekly shani bazar- type haats , and aimed at tourists. I saw locals buying only the foodstuffs.
I watched Thierry cook — he made several rich main courses including a salardier of thinly sliced potatoes cooked in duck fat served with roasted duck breasts, and another of lightly pan-grilled trout with two sauces and a ratatouille of summer vegetables. But what I’ve taken away are some simple ideas: smoked salmon with potato salad and yoghurt; toasted goat cheese on lettuce; and eggs baked with ceps and cream. These are the only dishes simple enough to reproduce in my kitchen. The ceps were washed and dried, chopped quite small and sautéed. Then he put a heaped teaspoonful into a ramekin, broke in an egg, sprinkled it with dried herbs and topped it all with a generous tablespoonful of heavy cream. He had a pan of hot water steaming in his oven into which he gently placed the ramekins and let them cook till the eggs started firming. Two each, along with a slice of toasted baguette, comprised one first course.
Another starter he made was orange, white and green: white potato salad dressed with mayonnaise (or yoghurt for the allergy prone) and chopped herbs and onions, piled neatly onto green lettuce leaves and topped with many slices of chilled, bright orange smoked salmon. He went into his garden, plucked a nasturtium, crowned his dish with it and stood there, telling me to eat the flower. I did and it tasted of capers.
A first course we ate several times on the trip was a platter of colourful, crunchy, very lightly dressed cold salad of lettuce, sometimes with tomatoes and radishes and, on one side, an entire goat cheese placed on bread — a slice of baguette — and baked in a hot oven until it began to melt, bubble and turn golden. A variation is to finish by drizzling on some honey, sprinkling some shopped parsley and placing crisp toasted walnut halves on top. In a word, the learning was: keep it simple.
Vasundhara Chauhan is a food writer based in Delhi
vasundhara9@gmail.com
