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.

This week I will be a guest on Everyday Food on Martha Stewart Living Radio talking about paella and preparing Spain’s iconic dish at home.

The date and time: Wednesday, June 22nd at 12:15 PM Eastern Standard Time. 

Everyday Food gives our listeners great ideas and inspirational uses for all kinds of food. We take our audience from the professional test kitchen to the home cook on a daily basis.  Everyday Food broadcasts live Monday through Friday 11 AM - 1 PM Eastern on Martha Stewart Living Radio, SiriusXM channel 110.

Click here for more details. 

Apologies for the bareness of the site. We are in the slow process of rebuilding it and in the meantime it has been stripped of formatting.

The Morocco book is in, and the lengthy pre-publication process has begun. I am just wrapping up the photos for it—the last of the plated shots as well as the final selection of shots take during my numerous trips in Morocco. The book should be on shelves sometime in April 2012.

In the meantime, I have returned to working on The Country Cooking of Spain. It’s siblings continue to due well—Colman Andrew’s The Country Cooking of Ireland took home top honor at the James Beard Awards. His Country Cooking of Italy will be out in late fall 2011. The Country Cooking of Spain will follow on in 2013.

That’s a long time away… but there is much work to be done.

More on the projects soon. As well as a website redo.

The official blurb says:

A new edition of the authoritative and appealing anthology, comprised of the finest culinary prose from the past year’s books, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and Web sites. With food writing and blogging on the rise, there’s no shortage of treats on the buffet to choose from, including selections from both established food writers and new stars on everything from noted gastronomes to how to fry an egg, from erudite culinary history to delectable memoirs. Evocative, provocative, sensuous, and just plain funny, it’s a tasty sampler platter to dip into time and again.

Best Food Writing 2010 features top-notch writers like Colman Andrews, Calvin Trillin, Ruth Reichl, Alice Waters, Frank Bruni, and many others.

The book will be published in October. Pre-order it here.

On a high-end note: staying in the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel might be above the budget of most, but dinner at Carme Ruscalleda’s Moment’s Restaurant in the hotel is a worthy splurge. Eat there and you will see why she is the only female chef to have 5 Michelin stars. Well, 5 for now. More to come with Moments. Guaranteed.