
There are four key ingredients in these melt-in-the-mouth, intensely garlicky, skillet-fried potatoes from southwest France — the potatoes, the garlic, parsley and duck or goose fat. As duck fat may not be available to all readers, my question was, how would the dish be without it? The answer was: almost as spectacular. Which is why I am offering the original and an alternative version of this classic, which marries well with just about anything.
Pommes de terre sarladaises / Skillet-fried potatoes with garlic and parsley
Pommes de terre sarladaises (pronounced sahr-lah-DEHZ) take their name from the pretty town of Sarlat-la-Canéda in Dordogne. Farms in the surrounding area raise ducks and geese, which star in the local cuisine in the form of confits (preserved duck or goose), foie gras and cassoulet (a bean stew that I plan to write about in due course). Sarlat has a bustling farmers market throughout the year, and over the winter it also hosts a marché au gras, where fatted fowl and their products are sold according to ancient custom.
Among the products sold are duck and goose fat in jars or cans, which simplifies matters if you’d like to make Sarladaise potatoes the authentic way. These days duck fat is also available in stores throughout France and online in the States, Britain and many other countries. However, I have never purchased this product, as I prefer to make my own.
Rendering duck fat is easier than you may think, providing you cook duck once in a while. For example, if you’re preparing a magret de canard (duck breast), you can pour off the fat into a recipient as it cooks, then strain it through a sieve into a clean jar. Once it cools you can refrigerate the duck fat, which will keep for months. You can add to the jar over and over, and use the fat as needed for cooking — well, I mainly use it for Sarladaise potatoes.
Lacking duck fat, you can fry the potatoes in a combination of butter and oil.
For success with whatever version you choose, here are some tips. First, don’t be tempted to accelerate preparation by steaming or parboiling the potato slices before frying — they need to be fried raw (à cru) to achieve the crispy exterior and meltingly tender interior. Second, wait until the potatoes are golden and ready to serve before adding the garlic. The minced raw garlic is what produces the delightful pungency of these potatoes.
If you’d like to try your hand at rendering duck fat, you could start out with one of these recipes: magret de canard au cassis (duck breast in a black currant sauce), salade thaïe au magret (Thai-style salad topped with sliced duck breast) or canard rôti au miel et au thym (roast duck with honey and thyme). Each recipe will produce about half a jar of duck fat — more than enough for frying up a panful Sarladaise potatoes.
Happy cooking.
I wanted to make an autumnal salad with hazelnuts and fresh herbs. This, I thought, would be a simple matter. Mais non, mes amis. I made the mistake of starting with hazelnuts still in their peels. Figured it would easy to blanch the nuts and remove the peels. I was wrong. It took me half an hour to rub the peels off just 20 hazelnuts, and the job was imperfect, with stubborn bits clinging on. Then I roasted the nuts, and they burned…
One of the simplest weeknight dinners I know is baked fish, in this case fillets of haddock with homemade tartar sauce, French style. The fish is dusted with salt, pepper and a little cumin — no flour is involved — and drizzled with olive oil before being roasted in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets. While the fish is cooking you can whip up the tartar sauce, and presto. Dinner is ready in less than half an hour.
The answer, mes amis, is that they mean ‘smoked haddock’, which is sold here in bright yellow-orange skin-on fillets. But not to panic. This recipe calls not for haddock (pronounced ah-DUCK), but rather for églefin, or ‘fresh haddock’.
Oddly, the word églefin derives from a Dutch word, schelvisch, which looks more like shellfish to me. But languages evolve in mysterious ways, and somehow over the centuries the word changed to something that sounds far more French — égle evoking aigle, or ‘eagle’, and fin meaning ‘fine’ or ‘thin’…
Ok, now on to the sauce. How is French sauce tartare different from the tartar sauce served, say, in the States or in England? Well, for one thing it isn’t sweet. For another it uses capers and can dispense with pickles or pickle relish altogether. This produces a more sophisticated flavor, in my view.
A savory tart made with pears and Roquefort cheese can be a lovely start to a meal, and with pears now in season this is a perfect time to try it. The tart is best if you make the crust yourself, in this case a pâte brisée — a tender, savory crust. This may be done a day ahead of time, after which preparation is remarkably quick. I had my tart in the oven 15 minutes after getting home with the pears, and 40 minutes later it was ready.
I first discovered fig jam many summers ago when I spent a few weeks at a country house in the Cévennes region of southern France. The place was idyllic, lush with fruit both cultivated and wild. We picked the figs straight from the tree. Making the jam was easy, as no pitting of the fruit is involved. And, as I learned, fig jam is heavenly. It manages to capture the musty, lusty fragrance of fresh figs — which happen to be in season right now.
Fig jam is fabulous not only on toast or on buttered baguette, as in the photo, but also on yogurt (which we also made ourselves during that summer in the Cévennes). I usually make this jam with dark purple figs, which lend the jam a beautiful ruby color, but I suspect it would be equally good if made with green figs.
Fig jam didn’t exist in Wisconsin to my knowledge when I was a kid growing up. Nor did fresh figs. The only figs I tasted during childhood were the dried variety that came in Christmas fruit baskets sent by elderly relatives once a year. Then came a summer study program in Avignon. Walking to class one day, I smelled a deiicious aroma. I looked around, and there was a fig tree, heavy with fruit. Well, dear readers, that was an ‘aha’ moment for me.
You don’t need to live along the French-Italian Mediterranean rim to enjoy a summer vegetable soup topped with parmesan and fresh basil. This version omits the beans and pasta but is otherwise rather similar to both Italy’s minestrone and Provence’s soupe au pistou. Oh, and did I mention that it also leaves out the tomatoes? It’s an improvisation I came up with one recent sultry day using the ingredients I had on hand in my Paris kitchen.
A bowl of sliced peaches poached in rosé wine with rosemary makes a light and refreshing dessert for hot summer evenings. You can serve the peaches on their own, as I prefer, or take a page from my daughter’s book and serve them over a luxuriously rich burrata. The recipe is simple — the peaches are slipped out of their skins, sliced and poached in a syrup flavored with the rosé and rosemary. A dash of freshly ground black pepper adds bite.
Colombo, a spice mix widely used in the French Caribbean, gives its name to this dish of spicy chicken balls in a coconut-curry sauce. The dish is generally served over rice to temper its heat. Start off the meal with
Colombo with chicken balls is both easy and fun to make. You first chop skinless chicken breasts in a food processor with onion, garlic, cilantro, hot pepper, lime juice, salt and pepper. You then shape the mixture into balls and sauté them with the colombo spice mix, coconut milk, more lime juice and a little sugar. This process is even more fun if you have a glass of ti punch handy.
This post featuring favorite summer dishes wraps up my 10th anniversary series on the best of The Everyday French Chef. And I have to say that, given the bounty of the season, it was hard to choose one special dish to highlight. My first thought was
Starters
Soups
Salads
Eggs
Savory tarts and sandwiches
Fish and shellfish
Poultry
Meat dishes
Vegetables
Pasta and grains
Desserts
Storzapretti are Corsican dumplings made with spinach or chard and cheese, topped with tomato sauce and more cheese, and baked until bubbly and golden. According to legend, a priest once found the dumplings so delicious that he stuffed himself to the point of choking, hence their name, which translates roughly as ‘strangle the preacher’. One might think they’d be heavy, but after eating a plateful my guest pronounced them delightfully light.

