At La Pommeraie, the fruit farm where we picked a large amount of blueberries earlier this week, they gave out little leaflets about the different kinds of fruit they grow, giving out instructions on how to keep them, and a few, wonderfully straightforward recipes — tarts and compotes, clafoutis and jams. This is how I learned that in fact, you should let blueberries sit for a couple of days somewhere cool for them to develop their full flavor — who would have thought?

This is my favorite coffee cake recipe, with its super moist cake base and deliciously crunchy top.

The number one priority with our crop of blueberries was a tarte aux myrtilles, and number two was this coffee cake. This is my favorite cake recipe, with its super moist cake base and deliciously crunchy top. The original recipe called for a plain batter with a walnut and cinnamon topping, but I have found it to be very versatile and have made many successful variations, using chocolate chips and candied chestnuts, white chocolate and coconut, apricots, or here, blueberries.

It’s a wonderful cake for anytime of the day, breakfast, brunch, dessert or tea. In fact, I am seriously considering going on a blueberry-coffee-cake diet. Only — how would cheese fit in?

Oh and by the way, does anyone have the recipe to Hobee’s famous and fabulous blueberry coffeecake?

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One of the things I love about driving around the countryside with Maxence is that we share the same enthusiasm for anything that’s hand-painted on a wooden sign and planted onto the side of the road. Admittedly, it is the signs advertising edibles and drinkables that receive the most attention, but we also like to think that we could very well stop and visit that tree-root museum or drop by that special mattress sale.

Following such roadside signs is often an exercise in speed, reflexes and agility, as you are generally offered but the one chance to read the instructions correctly, understand how they match what roads and crossroads you find before you, recalculate your vehicle’s route based on that navigation information, and be prepared to make a sharp turn onto that teeny dirt road, possibly at a higher speed than altogether reasonable — all of this in a matter of seconds.

A couple of days ago, while driving just outside Colmar, one such sign urgently piqued our interest : it was pointing the direction of a fruit farm named La Pommeraie, where you could either buy some of their crop, or pick your own — blueberries in particular.

This sounded like a lot of fun and both of us had always wanted to do such a thing, so we followed the signs and were led to the pick-your-own blueberry fields. No attendant was there, but we read the instructions on a panel, picked up a bucket each, and started working our way through the alleys of blueberry shrubs.

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Saturday was the first day of my vacation, and Maxence and I decided to take a little trip to Asia : all it took was a twenty-minute motorcycle ride to the Parisian Chinatown where I had, for reasons I cannot fathom, never been before.

We sat down at a Vietnamese restaurant for a bo-bun (a delicious salads of noodles and beef with lemongrass, soy sprouts, mint and ground peanuts), then did a little shopping at Tang Frères, a gigantic Asian grocery store — so huge and busy they’ve even built a private railroad track that leads to their warehouse.

There, we marvelled at all those unusual and unknown fruits and vegetables, but since we were leaving just the next day, we couldn’t get too much fresh produce. We did get two big Kent mangoes, sweet and juicy. We adore mangoes, and it seems to be a really good year for them : they are everywhere these days, excellent and very affordable. We also got a few ears of fresh corn, which are nowhere to be found in regular stores : in France, corn is eaten mostly from a can and used in salads, so corn still in its husk is a rarity. Corn on the cob, here we come!

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I have a particular soft spot for polenta and anything cornmeal.

Unfortunately, they are not at all common in France : I have occasionally seen polenta served at restaurants (and I will reliably dart onto any dish that mentions it as a component, especially if it claims to be croustillante), but it is rather hard to find in French food stores. You need to go to organic stores — where you will find instant organic polenta, passable but not stellar — or to some small Italian stores, where you will likely be charged an arm, a leg and the left ear of your firstborn for what was, originally, peasant food.

Another solution is to have your two best friends get some for you on their trip to Rome, or a blogger-friend bring some from Ticino as she comes to Paris for a few days (thanks again Theresa!), but these aren’t sources you can rely on year round, of course.

The idea for a tart in which the base would be a disk of oven-baked polenta had been on my mind for a little while, and this recent profusion of excellent quality polenta in my happy kitchen cabinets (oh they certainly can’t complain of deprivation, no) was the perfect occasion to put it in practice, using Marie-Laure and Laurence’s Italian polenta with dried porcini.

There is something singularly satisfying about imagining a dish in your mind, making up the recipe as you go, and have it turn out even better than you expected : this tart was everything I hoped it would be, pretty and appetizing, its base golden and crispy outside, but moist and nicely mealy inside (with embedded mushrooms as a bonus), the layer of thinly sliced zucchini well-seasoned, its flavor wonderfully teased by the sharpness of the fresh parmesan. It also made for a very nice lunch the next day, and would be a great brunch item too.

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