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If you ask any Frenchman where the best food is in France, you’re likely to hear, “In the Dordogne—there they eat well.” It took us a long time to appreciate that saying. After our first hotel dinner in Périgord, we assumed the adage referred to a peasant’s ability to pack away a hearty meal, with the main course fried in goose fat. Eager to try the local cuisine, we ordered the menu du terroir, or socalled meal of the region. Noting our interest in local food, the patronne offered us an apéritif of walnut wine. It was a good choice for that cold, rainy night and our first dinner in the Dordogne. The mellow brown liquid with its nutty aroma warmed our tongues. As an accompaniment , the young waitress brought out a pot of the house rillettes, with an accompanying basket of toasted sourdough bread. What we knew about rillettes 9 p é r i g o r d t e r r o i r didn’t sound appetizing. They consist of chopped up pork from the least desirable parts of the pig, lavishly larded with fat. To be polite, we each spread a little on a toast and took a bite. A bite led to a munch and was followed by seconds. The savory taste of the homemade rillettes nearly made us forget that a whole meal was coming. When the waitress succeeded in separating us from our appetizer, the real menu began—a first course of terrine de campagne (a coarse pork and liver pâté, as it turned out, and therefore redundant on top of the rillettes ); a main course of confit de canard with pommes de terre sarladaises; a green salad dressed with walnutoil vinaigrette and sprinkled with chopped walnuts; and to finish, the classic walnut cake. With the help of a carafe of Bergerac red, we cleaned our plates. Everything had been delicious. But we had overeaten. If this was a typical meal, why weren’t the locals fat and grumpy, which is how we began to feel by bedtime? The answer is not simple. First, the restaurant’s menu du terroir is not, strictly speaking, a typical dinner, if by that you mean an everyday meal. Yes, the dishes are made from local ingredients and are prepared from recipes inspired by those of the local grandmothers. But much else about the menu du terroir is a tourist’s construction . For one thing, the timing is wrong. When Périgordians eat such a meal, it is not in the evening but at noon. Nowadays, such a meal is reserved for Sunday company and is served at a time that provides a good half day for digestion. Second, in trying to showcase the most distinctive dishes of the region, all but the best restaurants allow combinations that a sage Périgordian cook would avoid. Typically, walnuts, which are fundamental to the local 1 9 4 d o r d og n e day s cuisine, will appear sparingly, not with every other course. Nor would rillettes be posed before a pork-based terrine—that’s too much pork. In fact, neither rillettes nor a terrine would be the most likely offering before a main dish of confit and pommes de terre sarladaises, since that delicious duo gets its oomph from duck and goose fat, just as the rillettes and terrine get theirs from lard. It would be better to start such a meal with a soup of wild greens or a vegetable terrine. We have an American friend who jokingly refers to the menu du terroir as “the menu of terror.” But if there is blame to be placed for the heavy combinations, it’s more likely the customer than the chef who is at fault. In effect, the menu du terroir is a sampler. It is the customer who must be aware that if she chooses the terrine de campagne for a starter, she would be advised to take the trout, not the confit de canard, as her main course. When people talk about “learning to order” in a French restaurant, they don’t mean working on your French accent or even being able to translate the names of all the dishes. Rather, the challenge is to select a meal that is balanced and “correct” in terms of ingredients, preparation, and spirit. It takes time to develop a sense of what is convenable, a sense of what goes with what...

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