Hôtel Du Puy d'Alon, Souillac, March 14, 2012—
PRINCIPAL MEAL AT MIDDAY again today. It's so long since we've fasted, and we've been eating rather rich, you'll have noticed. But after visiting one of the famous Dordogne caves, when someone (who was not I) mentioned foie gras, our guide advised a farm on the road from Les Eyzies toward Sarlat. We wasted no time; we were there before noon.
We parked between the barn and the corn-crib, across D47 from the stone farmhouse, crossed the road, and stepped into a pleasant, plain room with a number of tables, only one of them occupied. The menu was simple enough, as you see. Lindsey chose the first variant, I the second.
But we were soon surprised to be served a good-sized marmite nearly full of a steaming, delicious onion soup, the sweet flavorful onions sliced very thin and cooked very long in a light but deep-flavored chicken stock, with lots of nice bread floating in it. There was plenty for two servings apiece.
My confit came with pommes de terre Sarladaise: sliced potatoes cooked long and slow in duck fat, with finely chopped garlic and parsley added toward the end of cooking. Nothing better. The confit itself was a little dry, very tasty, with ample fat which I'm afraid I mostly set aside. Both the potatoes and the confit were definitely country; no pretensions here to refinement — nor was refinement wanted.
The salad was tender new Bibb-like lettuce leaves in a delicate mustard vinaigrette with walnut oil amd finely chopped walnuts, and we opted for the walnut tart which Lindsey, who knows about such things, says was an Engadiner nusstorte, but I forgave it its Swiss association. Walnut trees are plentiful hereabouts; walnut oil is such an appropriate coupling with confit…
Ordinary local red
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