This sumptuous new cookbook was inspired by Martin Walker’s bestselling Bruno, Chief of Police mystery series. Set in the Périgord region of France, the series boasts 16 novels, a handful of novellas, and now this excellent volume, complete with included short story! Martin Walker and his wife, Julia Watson, have collaborated on this beautifully photographed collection of recipes that pays fitting tribute to the French home cooking beloved by gourmand as well as amateur chef Bruno and his friends.

Our hero, Benoit “Bruno” Courreges, is the chief of police in the country village of St. Denis. When he isn’t busy using his unconventional ideas to solve the crimes that occasionally befall his otherwise sleepy town, he’s savoring the gastronomic riches of the Dordogne area in which he lives. A very small mystery comes to light when the villagers and their guests are gathered for the opening of rugby season, an event celebrated with a hearty feast before the first match of the year. The mayor of St. Denis is finishing his first course bouillon in the traditional way–pouring a glass of red wine into the liquid left in his bowl after consuming the solids and drinking down this mixture known as chabrol. A good-natured argument breaks out as to the origin of the term, and “The Question of Chabrol” is solved with humor and wit in the story of the same name that precedes the recipe portion of the cookbook.

The rest of the pages are devoted to food and to the traditions of the French countryside that provide them. Intriguingly, the cookbook is divided into sections by the primary source of the main ingredients. Thus, there are sections devoted to the home vegetable plot, the butcher, the baker, and the forager, among others. It’s a clever way of getting readers to understand the very localized way in which food is appreciated in the Périgord.

With over 100 recipes within these pages, I was hard pressed to choose which one to try for this column! It doesn’t help that Klaus-Maria Einwanger’s excellent photography makes every dish look like my next new favorite. After some agonizing, I eventually settled on this one, lightly edited for space:

Pamela’s Fish Pie

Ingredients

For the filling

4 ¾ cups whole milk

⅔ cup white wine

1 bay leaf

2 pounds assorted fish fillets (such as white fish like cod or pollock, salmon, and smoked haddock if available), cut into 2-inch cubes

2 eggs

8 tablespoons unsalted butter

½ cup flour

Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

2 to 2 ½ ounces peeled shrimp (optional)

2 tablespoons capers in brine, drained

Handful of roughly chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

½ lemon

For the mashed potato topping

3 ¼ pounds potatoes, peeled, quartered and boiled

8 tablespoons aillou or unsalted butter

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Pour the milk and wine into a large pan, add the bay leaf, and bring the liquid slowly to a simmer over low heat to infuse. Once it begins to frizzle around the edge of the pan, slide the fish into the liquid and turn the heat off.

Boil the eggs until they’re hard, 6 to 8 minutes; set them aside to cool before peeling and quartering them.

In a separate pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour; cook it over low heat for 5 minutes, till it becomes sandy-textured and pale yellow.

With a slotted spoon, lift the fish into a baking dish; remove the bay leaf. Very slowly, and in small amounts, add the milk-and-wine liquid to the pan with the cooked flour, stirring continuously, to cook through and make a bechamel sauce. Season to taste.

Flake the fish into large chunks. Distribute the shrimp, if using, the capers, parsley, and quartered eggs on top of the fish. Squeeze the lemon juice over this, then pour the bechamel over everything. Shake the dish gently so the sauce can seep through.

Drain and mash the potatoes. Whip in the aillou or butter cut into cubes, season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and spread the mixture over the fish in informal dollops. Bake until the topping is golden, 20 to 30 minutes.

This is a very satisfying dish that refrigerates well and makes for amazing leftovers! I did make several mistakes and substitutions while preparing this, but I think only one of those changed the final product significantly from how it was supposed to be. That happened as I was making the béchamel sauce: I should have stopped adding the milk mixture when I had the proper consistency, but I was under the impression from the recipe that I was supposed to add all of the mix. I did stop once the sauce became alarmingly thin, but I do think that that was a large part of the reason why my finished pie was less firm than the gorgeous picture in the book suggested it ought to be.

As my strictly teetotal mom and aunt are staying with me, I used vegetable broth with a splash of vinegar instead of wine and think that turned out quite nicely. I completely misread the bit about cubing the fish and just threw in the filets whole, later flaking them as the recipe directed (this dish is a great way to use up any spare filets sitting in your freezer too, as I used a mix of salmon and whiting to excellent effect). I also forgot that I didn’t have any capers. Chopped green olives made for an excellent substitute though, especially for the people in my household who prefer their milder taste.

Next week, we head back Stateside to figure out who’s menacing the set of a hit streaming show while baking up a sweet treat. Do join me!

See also: Cooking the Books: Syrup to No Good by Catherine Bruns