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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[Apricot and Melon Crumble with Pinenuts]

Maxence and I were recently invited over to our friends Peggy and Julien’s appartment for dinner. They used to live just three blocks down the street from us, but they have just moved and now live, oh, a good six blocks further, so visiting them still has that special neighborly feel to it. Although Peggy is a talented cook, she wasn’t the chef on that particular night : Manu, another food enthusiast and faithful reader of this blog, who is sadly leaving in a couple of weeks to work in Sarajevo, had decided to treat us to a Yugoslavian dinner.

Yugoslavian cuisine is an interesting blend of Middle-Eastern and Mediterranean influences, and we enjoyed a feast of red pepper dip, delicious olives, a tomato and cheese salad (reminiscent of Greek feta salads but with shavings of Yugoslavian cheese), cevapcici (those tiny sausages with the cutest name ever, pronounced “tshay-vap-tshee-tshee”) and a fabulous burek, a spinach and cheese pie made with layers of crispy golden delicious filo dough.

I had volunteered to bring a dessert, of no particular Balkan descent however. It was quite warm so I felt like making something fruity, and since melons and apricots were threatening to disappear from the produce stalls very soon, I decided to combine them in this crumble, as a farewell to them and to Manu at the same time.

I do hope they stay in season long enough for you to try it, so very appetizing with its glowing orange and golden brown colors. The unusual taste of cooked melon adds an interesting depth to the sweet and tart apricot flavor, and the pinenuts (also rather uncommon in sweet dishes), oatmeal and wholewheat flour each add their own voice to make this a subtly flavored and delightful dessert, which would be a great brunch item, too.

As for Manu, he has promised to show me around the hard-to-find Yugoslavian grocery stores hidden in Paris before he leaves. I hope he’ll share some of his recipes too.

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Quail eggs : one of nature’s smallest wonders!

The beautiful thing with these teeny tiny eggs, is that they all look different, each of them with a unique half-inch of personality, random patterns of little smudges and freckles, some brown, some black, some blue.

You half expect them to crack open any minute, letting out a very small gawky dinosaur, or some other thumb-sized critter out of a fantasy.

Maxence bought a tray of them at our fantabulous and newly redecorated grocery store, where shiny bright aisles compete for your attention and unsuspected treasures of modern marketing await you at every turn.

He boiled them for four minutes, and we ate them still warm and soft inside, peeling them with the tips of our fingers, dabbing them into a little mushroom salt, and popping them into our mouths.

Quintessential egg pleasure in just one bite, perfect white-to-yolk ratio.

And just think : mini egg, sunny-side up! mini poached egg! mini oeuf à la coque! even better : mini oeuf cocotte! Oh, the possibilities!

[Related post : the opposite adventure in egg scale, the goose egg!]

Confiture de tomates cerise à la cannelle

My mother has been making jars and jars of delicious jam every summer as far back as I can remember, using fruit bought at the Sunday morning greenmarket (strawberry, apricot), hand-picked by my family (raspberry, blackberry, blueberry), or given out by friends blessed with overflowing orchards (rhubarb, plums, cherry plums). She labels them and stores them in the cellar, where they patiently age for a year before being generously spread on buttered toast for breakfast. The wait is hard on us, but we know it’s for the best.

Yet jam-making has always seemed an involved enterprise to me, until last summer when I decided to give it a whirl.

I started clipping recipes from magazines, and bought a jam book written by Christine Ferber, often referred to as “la fée des confitures” (the jam fairy), an Alsacian who makes them the old-fashioned way, with local seasonal fruit, cooked in small batches in copper pots.

I also started saving all the jars I came across, stacking them at the back of my already bursting kitchen cabinets, and generally driving Maxence crazy. I even bought a few beautiful ones at the French chain store Résonances. Can you picture the love child of Restoration Hardware and Williams Sonoma, conceived during a trip to Paris? That’s Résonances in a nutshell. Believe me, it is tough to resist the calling of that one.

Over the summer, I made three different recipes in small batches, put the jars away, and vowed to wait until the chilly winter days to open them. Those days have finally come, and for reasons that will soon be disclosed, the first jar I opened was the Cherry Tomato Cinnamon Jam.

It’s a beautiful jam, bright red with golden specks, and the taste is very surprising, a sweet and tangy compote with a full tomato flavor and subtle hints of cinnamon.

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