The advanced reading copies — bound galleys — of DARJEELING have arrived! Bloomsbury will publish the book on May 12th in the US, may 21 in the UK, June 1 in Australia, and in September in the India.

There is pleasure in being sent on assignment to a place far from home, a new city with new places to discover and people to meet. But there is pleasure, too, on being on assignment in your own city — in my case, Barcelona. This (cold) morning shooting in a favorite bar. January 16th, 2012. © Jeff Koehler

There are few sights as surprising as hearty goats grazing up in thorny argan trees. These were taken recently coming down the Tiz-n-Test pass and into Morocco’s Anti-Atlas. ©Jeff Koehler

 

 

Morocco: A Culinary Journey with Recipes

The things that my kids discover in the back of their grandparents’ closets or storage spaces is often thrilling to them, and they bring these items home with the same passion that their mother and her sisters surely once displayed for the objects decades before. This perfectly-preserved microscope kit (c. 1971) that came in the door yesterday is no different. Now where to find new glass slides? November 6, 2012. © Jeff Koehler.

 

Are there any finer shellfish than navajas (razor clams)? Not in my opinion. South of Barcelona. September 23, 2012. © Jeff Koehler.

 

Sagrada Família before the snow. © Jeff Koehler.

Celebrating this nit de foc (night of fire) with cava and traditional coca de llardons… a flaky puff pastry flat bread with sugar, pine nuts and crunchy fried pork skin.

I have begun sorting images for the The Country Cooking of Spain, and I am reminded of the long and often lonely journey it is to write and shoot a book of this scope. 20 chapters, 250 recipes, 80-plus sidebars, and the images… there will be hundreds. And that means thousands to go trough, edit, sort, crop. Today I came upon this one, from Aragón, in March 2009–2009!–in the first trip taken specifically for work on the book.

 

 

Some photos taken at the legendary Paris bookshop Shakespeare and Company by Lauren Goldenberg just before Christmas. It was a cold and wet night, but the evening was intimate, in the softly lit upstairs room among used books. Notre Dame glowed out the window just across the river. A most magical place to read. And a perfect place to launch Rice Pasta Couscous in Europe!

Catching frogs beside Principato di Lucedio, south of Vercelli, northern Italy. July 9, 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

I am on the road right now in northern Italy, on assignment in the rice fields of the Po River valley – roughly between Milan and the mountains of Piedmont. That means I’ve been eating lots of risotto. But where there are rice fields there are frogs and I’ve been eating a lot of those, too.

Yesterday I had lunch with Countess Rosetta Clara Cavalli d’Olivola and her son Paolo of Principato di Lucedio – not just one of the finest rice farms in northern Italy but also the oldest (I wrote about them in Rice Pasta Couscous). We went to a small trattoria called La Bucunà in Fontanetto Po and had frogs with onions in a rich vinegar sauce and then a stunning risotto with Barolo and sausage.

Back at Lucedio, Paolo had one of the older women who live on the farm show me how to catch frogs. Using an old cane pole with a piece of prosciutto tied to a 4-foot-long piece of string, she bobbled it on the surface of a slow-moving ditch that edges a rice field and made clicking noises with her mouth. When a frog took the big wad of prosciutto in its mouth she yanked it up. The surprised frog came flying out of the water and through the air and she was able to catch it in her hand.

Well, most of them. Those she missed had us flaying around trying to grab before they could leap back into the water.

She put them in a cotton pouch tied to her waist and took them back to the farm, where they would be prepared for dinner.