Rosa Jackson's Edible Adventures

The first few times I bought these orange-tinted lemons with a bergamot scent from the woman who I will forever think of as the Meyer lemon lady, she couldn't resist asking me if I knew what I was doing.

"They are not normal lemons, you know," she warned.

When she saw me buy a dozen of these lemons for the fourth or fifth time, she realized that I was not exactly a normal customer. That was when she suddenly became talkative.

"Some people love these lemons and some don't," she said. "People have come back and yelled at me because they were surprised by the taste."

Meyer lemons are a rare sight in Nice, and I probably never would have noticed them had it not been for my friend Peter from San Diego, who first spotted this unmistakeable fruit at the Cours Saleya market. At first, I wasn't sure what he was so excited about: what could be better, I thought, than the zingy lemons from nearby Menton, which is famed for its citrus fruit? Then he made this tart with Meyer lemons as part of our Christmas feast, and I became an instant convert.

A few days later I came across the Meyer lemon lady at the Libération market, and since then I've felt positively panicky every time my supply runs low. More fragrant, sweeter and much juicier than normal lemons, they have gone into any recipe in which I would use ordinary lemons: most remarkable lately was a lemon cream sauce for linguine made with their juice, plenty of zest, parmesan and crème fraîche. I like them in salad dressings, particularly with carrots and/or avocado, and Sam loves to squeeze them for lemonade.

The other day, the Meyer lemon lady and I got talking about jam and she nearly swooned at the memory of her last batch of Meyer lemon marmalade. It turns out that the procedure is exactly the same as for my Seville orange marmalade, though she advised using a little less than 50 per cent sugar. I stocked up even more than usual and Sam and I spent a pleasant hour slicing the lemons and painstakingly setting aside the pips for their pectin. The next day the pips had gone missing, which, as Philippe pointed out, was my own fault for not telling him what they were for. Not to be deterred, I squeezed a few mandarins and hid the precious pips at the back of the refrigerator, behind my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes dough.

There seemed to be plenty of pectin in the resulting marmalade made with about 40 per cent sugar, which began to gel within half an hour of coming to the boil. I was surprised by its orange-gold color, though there was no mistaking its mysterious lemon-bergamot taste. Spread thinly on toasted homemade bread this morning it was my idea of a perfect breakfast, but even more sublime was a little of its jelly smeared on a square of dark chocolate after lunch.

Tags: Fruit, Nice, Recipes