Oh. My. Muffin.

These corn muffins you see here were made with the mix that Alicia sent me a little while ago, as part of her Maryland Delights food package.

I hadn’t had a corn muffin since my California days, and they were as excellent as I remembered, if not even more so. This mix is made by a brand named Washington, and boasts golden sweet corn as its first ingredient — while the Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix lists Enriched Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin and Folic Acid before cornmeal even shows up! This may very well explain the taste difference.

And um, as enthusiastic a baker as I am, there is definitely something to be said for baking mixes : you dump the mix in a bowl, add a beaten egg and a half-cup of milk (which was, quite eerily, exactly the amount left in the carton), and then stir-pour-bake. The most time-consuming thing was, possibly, lining the muffin pan with paper cups.

Nice and golden, subtly sweet with a great corn flavor, they developped the tastiest crust on top. We ate them still warm, just out of the oven. Maxence seems to be a horizontal muffin eater, but I am most definitely a vertical muffin eater, bottom-to-top : remove the paper liner, but gently, to minimize the amount of muffin that stays stuck on, for grating the paper cup with your teeth isn’t acceptable in all situations, and just isn’t as enjoyable as you might expect. Flip the muffin upside down and bite into the bottom of the muffin, gnawing at the moussy yellow goodness, until you are left with the top crust and just the right amount of remaining muffin flesh. Take a moment to admire your crispy flying saucer with the eyes of love, and eat it blissfully in a circular motion, crusty side down.

And now, dear and resourceful readers, my question to you is : does anyone have a from-scratch recipe that makes corn muffins as delightful as these?

I could eat sandwiches at every meal. This is probably because I adore bread, but also because nothing beats holding your food in your hands and biting greedily into it. Elegant? No. Messy? Yes. But oh-so-satisfying!

Sandwich making, however, is an art that very few food outlets master. Cardboard bread, processed chicken, limp lettuce, mayo overdose, this is what you have to face most of the time. And it shouldn’t be that difficult really: decent bread and a few good-quality ingredients, in an interesting and sound combination. Are my expectations too high?

Besides the traditional jambon-beurre (a half-baguette sandwich garnished with butter and ham), I think sandwiches are just not part of the French food culture. Most people think of sandwiches as a way to eat a cheap and fast lunch, setting aside all considerations of quality and taste. And of course a good sandwich, as described above, is not cheap to make, so it may just be a supply and demand thing: if people are not willing to pay for a good sandwich, well, let them eat crap.

So I very rarely buy sandwiches, unless I am in the vicinity of one of my trusted sources (Boulangépicier, Cojean) and I will often take matters into my own hands when the urge strikes. This is how today’s featured sandwich came to life: I came home from work, positively famished, with visions of sandwiches dancing in my head, composing themselves with the ingredients I had on hand. Little loaves of bread and figs from the freezer, buffalo mozzarella and pesto from the fridge, and basil from the window sill herb garden. Quickly assembled, quickly baked in the oven, quickly scarfed down.

A moment of pure, scrumptious enjoyment. The bread gets crispy in the oven, and the ingredient combo is simple and beautiful : sweet figs, soft mozzarella, fragrant basil and tasty pesto. This was so earth-shatteringly good that I couldn’t get enough of it, and actually made it three times in five days, until I was forced to stop for lack of supplies. Otherwise there’s a good chance I’d be eating one as I type.

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When our friends came over for dinner on Saturday night, I felt like serving a simple and light dessert. By “light” I do not necessarily mean light in calories, but rather light as in “not too rich”. I wanted to make something fruit-based, with a little cookie-type thing to dip in and accompany it. I like that kind of dessert, because it allows each guest to adjust his serving to his own appetite : if you feel pretty full, you can just have the fruity part. If you have a sweet tooth and enough room, fill up on the cookies!

Just the day before I had seen beautiful rhubarb at the store, and I just cannot get enough of that fruit, so I decided to repeat the Compote Rose experience, which took care of the fruit part. It couldn’t be easier to make, you just have to peel the rhubarb, combine with raspberries and sugar, bake, and voilà : Compote Rose, pretty, acidulé and delicious.

As for the cookies, the idea of making speculoos had been in the back of my mind for quite a while, ever since my grandmother gave me a bag of cassonade brune from Belgium, that special dark brown sugar made by Candico. And then just recently, when I posted about a certain giant Speculoos, a reader named Peter kindly submitted a recipe in the comments, translated from the Belgian recipe website La Bonne Cuisine. The recipe looked simple enough, and it came recommended by Peter, so that’s what I set out to make.

The traditional recipe uses cinnamon and cloves for spices, but I used the pumkin pie spice mix I had bought at Trader Joe’s back in the days. For that I do hope that my ancestors — my father’s family comes from the North of France — will forgive me. Regardless, I was delighted with how they came out : the taste is very close to store-bought speculoos. They aren’t as crumbly though, which I think means that there is more butter in the store-bought version, but the texture of mine is extremely pleasant nonetheless, crispy on the edges and slightly soft in the center.

And they were just perfect with the rhubarb and raspberry compote. And with coffee. And with tea. And by themselves. And again. Yum.

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[Codfish with Fava Beans, Cranberries and Pistachios]

This is the main dish I served on Saturday night, when our friends came to dinner. The idea for this sort of came to me out of thin air : I was leafing through cookbooks but nothing was really calling my name, when all of a sudden I had visions of fish, baked, with colorful little veggies. This materialized into codfish fillets, baked on a bed of green onions and sprinkled with fava beans, whole cranberries and pistachios.

We served it with quinoa, which I cooked with onions and herbs and served cold, and long-grain rice, served warm. Both sides were plated using my metal circle, with the help of my beloved assistant plater.

I highly recommend baking fish in a foil-covered dish : it’s a gentle cooking method which allows the fish to stay moist, and the circulating steam infuses it with the flavors of the other ingredients you add. Here, the mix of tastes worked really well : the green onions, fava beans and pistachios brought their gentle sweetness, while the cranberries and lime juice played it slightly sour and tangy. In terms of texture, we had the green onions for the softness, the beans and pistachios took care of the crunch, while the juicy cranberries burst on your tongue — all of them complementing the pleasantly firm codfish really well. Oh, and did I mention the gorgeous mix of colors?

It was also a rather light dish, which left plenty of room for the cheese platter that followed : all of us are huge cheese fans, so Maxence and I had carefully selected a few of our favorites at our cheese store on the rue Lepic earlier in the day. In attendance were : a Maroilles, a remarkably tasty Camembert, a Reblochon, a Chèvre Fermier, a Brebis du Larzac, of which we are particularly fond, and a Brocciu, with ample fresh baguette resources. Brocciu is a very fresh and very delicious sheep’s milk cheese from Corsica, and we served it with membrillo, the quince paste we had brought back from Madrid. The pairing was a real hit. Here : don’t they look happy and contented?

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