The food and wine of Périgord
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Monbazillac wine © Vincent Rousserie

The two great stars of Périgord cuisine are foie gras and truffles (truffes). Foie gras is eaten on its own, in succulent slabs, often combined with truffles to accompany a huge variety of dishes from scrambled eggs to stuffed carp. In fact, you can be sure that this is what you're getting with any dish that has sauce Périgueux or à la périgourdine as part of its name. Truffles also come à la cendre, wrapped in bacon and cooked in hot ashes.

The other mainstay of Périgord cuisine is the grey Toulousegoose, whose fat is used in the cooking of everything, most commonly perhaps in the standard potato dish, pommes sarladaises. The goose fattens well: gavé or crammed with corn, it goes from six to ten kilos in weight in three weeks, with its liver alone weighing nearly a kilo. Though some may find the process off-putting, small local producers are very careful not to harm their birds, if for no other reason than that this will ruin the liver. When the liver has been used for foie gras, the meat is cooked and preserved in its own thick yellow grease as confits d'oie, which you can either eat on its own or use in the preparation of other dishes, like cassoulet. Duck is used in the same way, both for foie gras and confits. Magret de canard, or duck breast fillet, is one of the favourite ways of eating duck and appears on practically every restaurant menu.

Another common goose delicacy is cou d'oie farci – goose neck stuffed with sausage meat, duck liver and truffles; a favourite salad throughout the region is made with warm gésiers or goose gizzards. Try not to be put off by fare such as this, or your palate will miss out on some delicious experiences – like tripoux, or sheep's stomach stuffed with tripe, trotters, pork and garlic, which is really an Auvergnat dish but is quite often served in neighbouring areas like the Rouergue. Other less challenging specialities include stuffed cèpes, or wild mushrooms; ballottines, or fillets of poultry stuffed, rolled and poached; the little flat discs of goat's cheese called cabécou; and the sweet light bread called fougasse.

The wines should not be scorned either. There are the fine dark, almost peppery reds from Cahors, and both reds and whites from the vineyards of Bergerac, of which the sweet, white Monbazillac is the most famous. Pécharmant is the fanciest of the reds, but there are some very drinkable Côtes de Bergerac, much like the neighbouring Bordeaux and far cheaper. The same goes for the wines of Duras, Marmande and Buzet. If you're thinking of taking a stock of wine home, you could do much worse than make some enquiries in Bergerac itself, Ste-Foy, or any of the villages in the vineyard areas.