Jeff Koehler

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Jeff Koehler is an American writer and photographer based in Barcelona. His most recent book is Where the Wild Coffee Grows (Bloomsbury, 2017), an “Editor’s Choice” in The New York Times. His previous book, Darjeeling: A History of the World’s Greatest Tea (Bloomsbury, 2016), won the 2016 IACP award for literary food writing. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Saveur, Food & Wine and NPR.org. Follow him on Twitter @koehlercooks and Instagram @jeff_koehler.

Articles by Jeff Koehler

Spice Migrations: Ginger

Spice Migrations: Ginger

Written by Jeff Koehler
Art by Linda Dalal Sawaya
Native to lands across Southeast Asia, ginger has long been used there and across the Middle East and North Africa in savory dishes, while Europeans and Americans have more recently popularized it in sweets. In Detroit, Michigan, chef Warda Bouguettaya does both.
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Spice Migrations: Cumin

Spice Migrations: Cumin

Written by Jeff Koehler
Art by Linda Dalal Sawaya
Aromatically sharp, earthy and haylike, cumin is essential in cuisines from Asia to Latin America. It is also one of the world’s oldest spices, one that has served as a remedy, a seasoning and a commodity for nearly 4,000 years.
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Spice Migrations: Cloves

Spice Migrations: Cloves

Written by Jeff Koehler
Art by Linda Dalal Sawaya
Stems like tacks, buds like gems and scented so richly that their sweet redolence wafted far out to sea, cloves have come to the kitchen from the island of Ambon, the archipelago of Zanzibar, and many places between and beyond.
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The North African Eye of Yves Saint Laurent

The North African Eye of Yves Saint Laurent

Jeff Koehler
The French fashion designer frequently mentioned Morocco as his muse for colors, collection design and even models from around the world, but Yves Saint Laurent’s eye trained early while growing up on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria.
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Spice Migrations: Nutmeg

Spice Migrations: Nutmeg

Written by Jeff Koehler
Art by Linda Dalal Sawaya

In the Banda Islands, picking, peeling, drying and selling nutmeg to Arab and other traders was an aromatic business for centuries until the Dutch arrived. Nutmeg’s early fans used it more for health than cooking, but today it’s a kitchen staple, used in the West mainly in desserts but elsewhere in both sweet and savory dishes.

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Spice Migrations: Pepper

Spice Migrations: Pepper

Written by Jeff Koehler
Art by Linda Dalal Sawaya
It is the most common spice on tables around the world today, and for centuries, growing and trading the round corns of Piper nigrum—black pepper—created wealth, from pepper’s monsoon-watered origins in India to all of Asia, East Africa and Mediterranean Europe.
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