Auvergne is one of our favorite parts of France, a volcanic area with austere but charming hill towns, idyllic pastureland, six three-star Romanesque churches, scarcely more American tourists, and a rugged cuisine to be sampled by its sloping meadows and hastening brooks.  The Auvergnats like to eat near-Germanic things like the stuffed cabbage we had at Madame Komorek’s period-piece hotel, teetering, almost, at the slippery-looking top of St-Flour.  She also served a meat tart that seemed like France’s answer to piroshki. Trouffade, potatoes-and-cheese in one texture or another, is a signature dish of Auvergne, a cake of fried potato slices as our recipe has it.  At a Shangri-La like the Remparts in lovely little Salers with its pocket gem of a Grande Place Trouffade was course two in a five act meal, the banquet du jour.  In our scheme of things it makes a fine main event, accompanied perhaps by a simple salad, with a light dessert to follow.

        Life at the Remparts one April also meant breakfast with lengths of fresh warm baguette, candy-like sweet butter and juicy homemade strawberry jam.  The sun shone, the cows were in position, the Austrian honeymooners not up yet, and there’d be good Cantal at the store: all was right in one of the world’s most private corners.

In a skillet cook 1/2 cup of diced slab or thick cut bacon, then remove it with a slotted spoon and reserve.  Pour off and reserve all but 2 teaspoons of the bacon fat.

Now begin slicing thinly 1-1/2 pounds of potatoes and spread a single layer of them in the skillet.  Cook them gently, without stirring, until they’re browned on one side.

With a spatula gently lift the potatoes on one side of the skillet onto the potatoes on the other half.  Slice more potatoes and place a single layer to cook in the vacated space.  Now turn the cooked slices over onto the uncooked ones, and place another single layer in the vacated space.   (I know this sounds like “Who’s on first?”)

Repeat this process until all the potatoes are cooked, adding a little of the reserved bacon fat every so often.  Before the last turn and addition of potatoes sprinkle on the cooked bacon and with a deft hand mix it in.  When all the potato slices are cooked, carefully turn and redistribute them into an even layer.

Finally, sprinkle over all: 1/4 pound of diced Cantal cheese or coarsely grated gruyère.  Turn the heat down, cover your skillet and cook the trouffade 10 to 15 minutes longer, until it’s crisp and brown.  Invert onto a warm platter and serve.

        A “New American” chef with a bit of France in his soul might come up with the attendant recipe, someone like that culinary Albee named Jeremiah Tower.  Ah, Bûcheron, one’s reminded of those straw-paved platters of cheeses fueling the citizens of one French republic after another through the years, not to speak of ardent visitors to Androuetian shores.  Cheeses firm and mooshy, austere and hedonistic, clean-shaven and peppered specimens, Camemberts tasting like wine in a new dimension, Roqueforts that have made strong men cry Mon Dieu!  There they were, and sometimes are . . . 

        Globalization, alas, may be making inroads: it’s no longer the case in Paris, Lyon or Marseille that waiters taking away your main course plates will automatically ask that vital question, “un peu de fromage? . . . ”

Boil 3 or 4 good-sized red potatoes in water-to-cover with several peeled garlic cloves. Meanwhile in a saucepan combine 1/2 stick of butter, 1/2 cup of cream and 1/2 cup of a characterful goat cheese and stir over low to medium heat until the mixture is just melted and smooth, a lumpless wonder.

Using whatever kitchen and nature-given equipment seems right, mash the potatoes, along with the possibly vanished garlic cloves, whisking into them the cheese mixture with a little nutmeg — 2 turns, say, of the nutmeg mill. Transfer the mash to a shallow flameproof baking dish and broil it about 2 inches from your heat source for about 8 minutes, until the top is golden crisp.

Spoon your potatoes onto plates and serve them ringed with a vinaigrette of roughly 2 parts olive oil to 1 of red wine vinegar, dotted with diced tomato or pitted black olives.

OR: You could serve these potatoes on a bed of rather lightly vinaigretted watercress surrounded by smallish, candy-like pieces of mostarda di frutta (from an Italian delicatessen) arranged, more or less, like numbers on a clock face — but don’t feel obliged to stop at a dozen.

        I had an old recipe lying about for prosciutto-wrapped asparagus with Béchamel, its provenance wrapped in mystery.  Tasty, I remembered, but a shade rich, so the tomato sauce in the adjacent lineup has been applied to maximize the vegetable element.  A little red chasing white makes for a pretty dish, too.  The ovenproof platter I envision is a silvery oval, the sort on which an oldtime tuxedoed waiter would bring a pile of baby lamb chops decorated with cress or wine-soused filet of sole surrounded by an elegantly fluted ring of mashed potatoes — potatoes converted to royalty!  Peering further into the past, I see the great salle of San Francisco’s Bardelli’s where, a young newspaper reporter, I tried not to spill that sole on my notebook while interviewing, over a martini-lubricated lunch, the latest film vedette to hit town.

        The other and even gorgeouser venue for our amiable grillings of visiting celebs was the landmark Garden Court at the Palace Hotel (we never said Sheraton-Palace, being sentimental anti-corporate San Franciscans in our twenties and thirties who didn’t want to be banished to Goleta for a gaffe), a grand and leafery-punctuated space flooded with light, or a little less light when a cloud passed over its glass roof: it was as if the lighting were on some Providential rheostat.

        It was in the Garden Court, our table near one of those onyx pillars behind which some operatic conspirator bent on doing in royalty might lurk, that I asked the venerable tenor Tito Schipa for his autograph.  A bit remote but courtly, he affixed his name to an old photo of a Marin County garden party at which he and the baritone Stracciari, dressed in Brioni suits and boxing gloves, engaged in some jokey sparring while Two Other Great Tenors, Cortis and Ansseau, looked on.  Alas, the menu of their lunch, with bootleg Cabernet of course, remains a mystery.   It was September, not asparagus season, but late peaches maybe, or lovely figs . . . And probably there was barbecued chicken, fussed over by a burly retainer . . .

Trim and steam asparagus stalks and wrap bundles of them with thinly-sliced prosciutto; place them on an ovenproof platter. Now drizzle the bundles with Sauce #1, a light Béchamel made as follows: melt 2 tablespoons of butter, blend in 3 teaspoons of flour and stir until golden; gradually add 1/3 cup of chicken broth and 7/8 cup of milk, plus a little nutmeg and grated dry jack or parmesan cheese, and stir constantly until the sauce just begins to thicken.

Then, in a design counterpoint with #1, to create a bi-colored lattice effect, drizzle a little Sauce #2, a simple onion-less Tomato Sauce made by simmering canned tomatoes with a little sugar and a pressed clove of garlic — this could be tomato sauce left over from a meatloaf dinner.

Using a brush, oil the asparagus bundles at both ends so they don’t dry out, and bake them at 350° for 10 minutes. Just before serving, top them with some grated dry jack or parmesan cheese and run ‘em under the broiler until they’re a little browned and crispy.