Gastronomie : la truffade, toute la saveur du Cantal

We are in Saint-Etienne-de-Chaumey. Here, the cooks don't announce the start of the day, but the start of the meal. Two faux-filets, sir, truffade. A little extra, my dear. I'll bring you the rest. This restaurant is Jean-François's. The central place of life for a small village of 215 people. Would you like a green pastis? Our chef, everyone calls him Jeff. See you soon, thank you, bye. And today I'm making a truffade. And truffade is the essential dish of Auvergne. We always make generous recipes in the Cantal, because we have good eaters. A gourmet meal, devoured at all ages. This recipe, a symbol of a whole department, is cheap and easy to make. This is fried potatoes, browned in butter. Some fresh Cantal tuna, salt, pepper and a little parsley at the end. I add a little Cantal for the taste. But be careful, in the truffade, no mushrooms. Originally, the truff we said was the potatoes, not the truff we know well. This dish is that of the Bureauniers. Cattlemen who spent the summer on the mountains of the Cantal. And they prepared their meal with the ingredients they produced. So the potatoes, we're going to cut them into slices. There you go, slices like that. I put about a kilo of potatoes for four people. I cut them with a mandolin, it's still much more professional and it goes much faster. But at the time, in the offices, they did that with a knife, with the aïol. They cut that and it wasn't always very regular. Jeff then adds butter to a very hot pan and starts cooking the potatoes. So here we go for 15 good minutes, the sun-dried tangerine, as it should be, with a little stronger fire. They're going to start browning underneath, then we turn and turn and turn, we cover. The truffade is therefore the dish of the Bureauniers par excellence. Its smells bring back memories. In almost every farm, there were pigs and we cooked the potatoes outside, we made big tripe to give to the pigs. And that smell of potatoes, when there are a lot of them, it gives a good smell. My grandmother made the truffade, my mother made the truffade. It stays anchored all its life. Between the kitchen and Jeff's family, a love story has been written for more than a century. The restaurant opened in 1893 and has remained in the same family since. He goes back to 1982, the family affair. In more than 40 years, he has seen the other restaurateurs desert his village. When I arrived, there were four restaurants. And now there are more than one. Every ten years, there is a restaurant that closes because people retire. They are old enough to retire, fortunately for them. But the problem is that there are no entrepreneurs. There must always be a restriction, there are fewer inhabitants. Unfortunately, this is the observation that we can make in our regions. We have fewer and fewer inhabitants. To continue to make Saint-Etienne de Chaumey live, Jean-François hopes to find a successor. And for that, no need to look far. It made me live for 45 years. And I have my daughter behind, who may continue too. If it allows her to live and be happy, why go abroad or to the city to do a butcher's job when she can do it here? For the moment, from the age of 61, it's always him behind the stoves. Besides, Martin, a salaried farmer, brings a key ingredient to the recipe. Here is my cantal. How are you, Martin? I'm fine, and you? I'm in good shape. The traditional salary for this midday. Great, great. We're going to do a little push-up. It's going to be good. Is it beautiful? Great. It's beautiful, isn't it? Look at this. People are going to be happy. I have been working with Martin since he launched his cheese business. So, of course, he works with salaries. That's what interests me, since I was a salaried farmer. And I obviously prefer products with rustic breeds, cantal. And in the cantal, we are 7th on the scale of France, even of the world. Because the traditional salary can only be done in a protected area, which is not even the whole department of the cantal. We have 70 salaried cows for milking. It's a cow that makes a lot less milk. And the specificity is that we have to take its calf there so that it gives milk. That's why we are less and less going to make cheese with this cow. Bye, Martin. See you tomorrow. Thank you. See you soon. Bye. See you later. I'm going to do a little push-up. I put my little slices of very fine cantal. I call it cantal hosta. Because a hosta is very thin. We normally see through it. Well, it's the same here. Jeff then adds fresh, crushed cantal tomatoes. Now it's starting to have a good crunch. Then a parsley, for more and more flavor. And here is my truffade, we will say for four good eaters, which is ready to serve. Ready to taste. So, your truffade, sir. Yes, thank you. Well cooked. Thank you. Perfect. So, truffade is eaten every season. In the summer, we will accompany it with a slice of ham and a salad. There, as today, we are in autumn, but we are going to make a salted meat, a false filet of salted meat with a truffade. The truffade is eaten all the time. Like potatoes. We eat potatoes all the time, but truffade is the same. Summer is over, but Jeff and all the cantal offer us a good reason to welcome autumn with open arms.