The recipe for pommes de terre sarladaises – shortened to pommes sarladaises – should be straightforward and easy.
You need potatoes. Duh. You are in Sarlat-la-Canéda where it is said to have originated and takes its name sarladaise from, so duck or goose fat is inevitable. Add parsley and garlic for extra taste.
“It is all in the slicing of potatoes. Their unevenness will give you as many overcooked as barely cooked potatoes. It is that consistency that makes this dish extraordinary,” said Vincent Arnould, the Michelin-star chef of Vieux Logis restaurant in Trémolat. “You almost need to spoil them,” he added.
The dish is not on his menu but he makes it on-demand for regular clients and personally favours the two potato varieties of Bintje and Agria.
La Rapière, a restaurant in Brive-La-Gaillarde owned by local chef Gérard Gatinel, is another restaurant where pommes sarladaises is worth a try. So wrote Le Figaro in 2012, quoting one deputy mayor who said they were the best there could ever be.
In the land where ducks and geese reign supreme, their fat serves as a preservative for meat, so adding grease to potatoes was a no-brainer in Dordogne.
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From then on, pommes sarladaises has been a staple in every household and every celebration in Sarlat, be it as main course or side and in Fest’oie festival or La Felibrée where it is featured at the Taulada, a grand lunch for 700-plus people.
Purists rail against untraditional additions to this classic dishShutterstock/Frédérique Page
Over time, the recipe got more sophisticated and locals started to add all sorts of things.
“We are trying to restore a kind of nobility to something that never needed it,” said Abel Gauthier, the first president and grandmaster of the Confrérie des pommes de terre Sarladaises, which was founded last July and organised its first chapter in December.
Dried duck breast, walnuts, smoked salmon with heavy cream, Mr Gauthier has seen it all.
He is particularly hell-bent on calling out some restaurants in Sarlat and its surrounding areas, places he deems “tourist-traps”, that add ceps to justify high prices.
“Pommes sarladaises is a year-round meal. You do not find ceps year-round,” said Mr Gauthier, matter-of-factly. He does not, however, hold a grudge against people who like their pommes sarladaises with ceps or anything else.
But he is not the only one to have taken jabs at that trend. Nor is it new either.
An article in Le Monde in 1968 denounced the same financial tactic some restaurants of Paris were employing. The culprit? Truffles.
La Mazille’s landmark 1929 volume La bonne cuisine du Périgord, compiling recipes from Périgord, bears no mention of truffles, as the article points out.
“As much as I love truffles, I have never thought about incorporating them,” said Mr Arnould. “Now, when it comes to ceps or girolles, it does not shock me. The combination is interesting,” he added.
Preparing pommes de terre sarladaises
The following is taken from La Galère (Temps Cerises; 2018), a novel by poet Francis Combes who also reminded us that truffles were not needed.
It portrays a character cooking pommes sarladaises following Paul Bocuse’s style.
Peel the potatoes and slice them paper-thin. Rinse and dry them thoroughly. Heat a large cast-iron skillet over high heat. When hot, add the goose fat and let it melt.
Scatter in the potato slices and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Finely chop the parsley and garlic together. Season the potatoes with salt and pepper, then sprinkle over the parsley-garlic mixture.
Alternatively, skip the chopped garlic and cook whole, unpeeled cloves with the potatoes for a gentler, fragrant finish.
Up to you to add ceps, truffles, smoked salmon, walnuts.
The Confrérie des pomme de terre Sarladaises plans in the near future to organise a contest of the best pommes sarladaises in partnership with winegrowers of Montravel, a wine that suits it best.
