When I first approached the 700-year-old farmhouse of Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, I wasn’t sure I had come to the right place.  The address was simply La Borderie just outside the bite-sized village of Chavagnac in the Dordogne region of southwestern France.  Only a small wooden sign nailed to a tree assured me I was on the right path. As the tires of my car crunched down the gravel drive, past overgrown oaks and encumbered fig trees, and up to a stone cottage dressed in lace curtains, I wondered if I had fallen into Périgord of yesteryear.  Once inside, I knew I had.

The typical house where Mazet-Delpeuch’s father was born, where her four children were raised, and where she welcomes her six grandchildren each summer, could be a movie set. Straw hats hang from one of the wooden beams and an old-fashioned lamp provides light to a small workspace where Mazet-Delpeuch has laid out a crisply ironed white cloth on which she is slicing smoked sanglier (wild boar). 

“I live almost like my grandmother did,” she says.

The house seems untouched by time, and Mazet-Delpeuch confirms that not much has changed, except for refrigeration and plumbing. The main room is tidy and consists of the kitchen, dining and living area, and a sliding door that leads to an overgrown garden. But the pièce de resistance is the enormous fireplace dominating the room.  It is open on both sides, with a slew of odd looking cooking utensils at the ready. Mazet-Delpeuch stokes the flames and tells me how she designed the fireplace herself with a purpose.

“Cooking is so much more than just eating,” she says, aiming the fireplace poker my way.  “It is talking and being social, and making people as happy as you can with the food you prepare.”

Mazet-Delpeuch picks up a black cast iron pot called a royale and sets it down in the embers. She tells me the pot is over 100 years old. “The trick is, you never wash them,” she says, wiping the pot with a cloth.

I ask her what she cooks in it, and she says, “Everything--- A whole turkey. A lièvre (wild hare). A cake.”  
Today she is making the typical Dordogne duck confit. With that she takes a paintbrush, dips it in the typical Dordogne cooking elixir, goose fat, and coats the inside of the royale.  Within minutes the sizzle and familiar aroma permeate the room.

Mazet-Delpeuch’s no-nonsense air is refreshing and she speaks English well, at least until she meets a French word, which causes her sentences to dip back into their native tongue. She also talks with her hands and with whatever is in them (sharp knife, hot fireplace poker, fork).  Her charisma and elegance were apparent from the moment we met, so it’s no surprise her table is regularly surrounded by friends, family or journalists curious about this local legend, once the personal chef of former French president Francois Mitterrand. She is busily preparing lunch for a radio show host and his wife, and hurries to the garden to pluck some figs from her tree for the amuse-bouche.   Mazet-Delpeuch invites me to stay for the mid-day meal but I decline, feeling a bit like an intruder. 

“You know,” she says, pointing at me with the knife she is now using to slice the figs, “If you make an appointment for 11 in the morning here in the Périgord, it is expected you will have something to eat.”

I gladly change my mind and accept her invitation.  With the satisfied nod of someone who usually gets her way, Mazet-Delpeuch takes a dish of potatoes from her counter and excuses herself to warm them in the oven located in her demonstration kitchen next door. I look around the room more closely now (mostly to verify there really is no oven), and Mazet-Delpeuch is revealed in pieces.   The walls are covered in signed oil paintings and mementos; old wicker baskets are ready for a tour of the market; dozens of jars of homemade jam sit on the buffet, next to cakes and pies that have been recently sliced.  On a rickety table, two photo albums bulge with photos and newspaper articles that span Mazet-Delpeuch’s life over the past 20 years. I concede her life may be simple, but it is not, nor has it ever been, empty.    

(Read more of this story in chapter 1 of the newly released book  Walnut Wine & Truffle Groves)

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