Author
Jeff Koehler
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 this author
Spice Migrations: Ginger
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.
Spice Migrations: Cumin
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.
Spice Migrations: Cloves
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.
The North African Eye of Yves Saint Laurent
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.
Spice Migrations: Nutmeg
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.
Spice Migrations: Pepper
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.
Spice Migrations: Cinnamon
The series Spice Migrations opens in Sri Lanka with one of the world’s favorite spices, which once grew exclusively on that island. Traders priced cinnamon like gold, and those who could get it used it for health as much as for flavor. A storm, and a Portuguese fleet, changed everything.
Brickwork in the Land of Palms
Along the northern edge of the Sahara, in the part of Tunisia called Bled el-Djerid—Land of the Palms—the regular pruning of vast date-palm orchards literally fuels a centuries-old brickmaking industry, and local bricklayers have taken the kiln-fired masonry to heights of artistry. Throughout the city of Tozeur and the nearby town of Nefta, bricks set in patterns decorate facades, windows, doors and arches with motifs from desert life, textiles and other traditions. The results not only dance with the changing angles of the sun, but also create just enough shade to help cool the buildings behind them.
The Storyteller of Tangier
Mohammed Mrabet ran away from school and never learned to read or write. But he told spellbinding stories. A friendship with writers Jane and Paul Bowles got him published in more than a dozen languages. Today he is known also for his painting and drawing.
Lemons, Garlic, Mint, Portraits
Hamza Ayari describes himself on Facebook as having a “photo addiction,” which fuels his growing collection of portraits made on location at his produce stand in Tunis’ central market.
Capturing the Light of the Nile, Egypt's First Photographs
The announcement in 1839 of Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s formula to fix a camera’s image on a metal plate set off a race to be the first to produce daguerrotypes of the world’s great monuments. High on the list–Egypt.