Standing out in the Cènac Monday market of local produce farms, butchers, cheese makers, and sundries is a long eggplant purple trailer edged with a simple gold trim line below the sparkling window displays of duck everything and truffle euphoria.
An aluminum awning protects the products from sun and rain. At days end, it folds down, collapsing and covering the displays, which descend into the bed of the refrigerated trailer for travel.
Albie Fois Gras is an institution in France’s Perigord Noir, an area named by the ancients. Now known as the Dordogne Department of Aquitain, it’s base is located in Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil, France, within arrondissement Sarlat-la-Canéda
Prehistorically settled and over come by Romans, the town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But surrounding this community are farms with deep histories of time tested agricultural practices. Basques and French with husbandry of ducks, sheep, geese, and the culture of mushroom hunting, specifically truffles.
Traveling with their trailer to the markets in Sarlat on Wednesday and Saturday, they delight those at St. Cyprien on Sunday. Products of duck and truffles are on view ad infinitum, including boletus, chantrell, and goose. Confites, pate, fois gras, smoked, pickled, roasted, in oil, and canned delights, all within a ten-meter span.
Pamela Mattson McDonald © 9/29/2016
