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.

The spiced pears are brought out for dessert at Jnane Tamsna in Marrakech. June 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

A woman walking along Av Marginal in Maputo. April 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

Along the beach outside Maputo. April 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

Squid in Maputo’s Mercado Municipal. April 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

In Maputo’s Mercado Municipal. April 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

Catching the train north. Estació de França, Barcelona. February 24, 2009 © Jeff Koehler.

Daurade (sea bream) for sale in the port of Algiers, December 2007 © Jeff Koehler

It was dark in Algiers by 6 p.m., and even though the days were dazzlingly sunny, the evenings chilled quickly in the Mediterranean dampness.

With unbroken repetition, my dinners all week began with a bowl of chorba or h’rira, thick, nourishing vegetable- and legume-filled soups. (The chorba was often thickened with frik, green wheat). The best that I sampled was at Restaurant Djmenina, a forty year old bastion of traditional Algerian cooking.

The restaurant filled the night I dined there, despite the double al-Queda bombing that killed dozens just a few days before; and everyone, it seemed, was having the h’rira.

Though the ceilings of the hundred year old palace that houses Djmenina are high and ornate, the walls covered with decorative antique tiles, and many of the dishes elaborate, their lentil h’rira is downright homey. Flavored with lamb and laced with plenty of fresh herbs and sharp spices, I couldn’t resist refilling my large terracotta bowl three times from the tureen on the table.

By then I was warmed – though also nearly full.

But after the soup comes a sweet tagine of lamb and prunes, or a thick sea bream (like the ones above in the image), chosen earlier from a tray of the day’s catch and prepared in the oven, or the house specialty “Couscous de l’Emir” with lamb, meatballs, and caramelized onions, or…

But first – always first – is soup. And after a week of winter Algiers nights, I understood why.

Loading sheep that will be sacrificed for the Eid al-Adha festival on Wednesday, December 19th (Algiers, December 14, 2007) © Jeff Koehler

This week, as I huddled over my notes and a morning coffee in the smoky Brasserie des Facultés, or sipped afternoon glasses of murky, sweet tea on Café Tontonville’s broad terrace at the end of place Port Saïd, I saw a number of chunky rams with curling horns being hustled along Algiers’ busy boulevards. Young kids ran behind and ahead of them, some flourishing long sticks, all laughing.

Tomorrow is Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, one of the most important days in the Islamic calendar. It commemorates Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) willingness to sacrifice his son Ismael to Allah, as well as marking the end of the Hajd, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

Everyone in Algiers was buying sheep. On Friday, when the city was mostly closed, I trekked to a large sheep market outside the city. To be worthy of being sacrificed, a sheep needs to be a certain age, weight, and high-level of quality. Those clustered on the red dirt lot looked near perfect – and were selling for a few hundred dollars a piece.

A teenager kid grabbed a sheep by a back leg and pulled it from the flock, dragging it across the lot. With the help of a couple of other kids, he heaved the bleating animal up onto the back of a truck. He pulled another sheep from the flock, and then another, and another. When the truck was packed tight, the gate was shut, and they began filling the bed of a second truck.

Tomorrow the sheep will be slaughtered and four days of celebrations will begin.