Jeff Koehler Livres

Winner of the 2016 IACP Award: Literary Food Writing Set against the backdrop of the looming Himalayas and drenching monsoons, this is the story of how Darjeeling developed its tea industry under Imperial British rule and eventually came to produce the world's finest leaves. But today the industry is battling dropping production, a violent struggle for independent statehood, labour unrest and the devastating effect of climate change. It's the story, too, of the measures being taken to counter these challenges and save India's most exclusive and iconic brew that are nothing short of radical. A fascinating portrait of the region and a story rich in intrigue and empire, full of adventurers and romance, it illuminates the historic, arcane and changing world of this celebrated tea.

"Extensively researched and twenty years in the making, The North African Cookbook is the largest collection of traditional North African for home cooks. Focusing on the Maghreb region - Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya - The North African Cookbook explores the territory's vast culinary diversity and history. From Berber, Arabic, and Ottoman influences as well as French, Spanish, and Italian, this cookbook offers a comprehensive overview of how native, as well as European colonialism, influenced the region's traditions today. A wide network of culinary voices from across North Africa guided the project. In a region so vast and so diverse, James Beard award-winning food writer Jeff Koehler looked to many hundreds of experts and locals. Following two decades of travel across North Africa and a career spent writing in depth about the region and its food, Koehler's extensively researched collection is an exhaustive look at traditional recipes across the Maghreb. Filled with delicious and authentic North African dishes that can easily be recreated at home, this treasure trove of a book brings to life an exciting cuisine that is as varied and fascinating as the countries it covers."--Amazon

The most famous dish of the hottest cuisine in town right now, paella is as flavorful as it is festive. Longtime Barcelona resident and Spanish food expert Jeff Koehler fills us in on this cherished rice dish, from its origins to just what it takes to make the perfect one (even without an authentic paella pan). Thirty recipes range from the original paella valenciana, studded with chicken and rabbit, to his mother-in-law's Saturday shellfish special, to sumptuous vegetarian variations, to surprising soups and sweet takes. Stunning scenic photographs, shots of the finished dishes, plus a source list of unusual ingredients and special equipment round out this gorgeous homage to one of Spain's national culinary treasures.

"Darjeeling's tea bushes run across a mythical Indian landscape steeped in the religious, the sacred, and the picturesque. Planted among eighty-seven tea estates at high elevation in the heart of the eastern Himalayas, the linear rows of brilliant green waist-high shrubs that coat the steep slopes and valleys produce less than 1 percent of India's tea. Yet with its bright color and muscatel flavor, Darjeeling is generally considered the finest tea in the world. Built from scratch, India's tea industry grew to be the largest on the globe and came to symbolize British imperial rule in India. The jewel of its production was, and remains, Darjeeling, and its story is rich in people, intrigue, and terroir. It includes Robert Fortune, whose mid-nineteenth-century smuggling of tea plants and expertise from China brought the British East India Company the quality tea it sought; the charismatic and controversial Rajah Banerjee, whose family owned the iconic Makaibari plantation for 150 years; the tea pluckers who underpin the industry; and the lone auctioneer who bangs down his hammer oversees the sale more than half of Darjeeling's entire crop. But it is also the story of how this Edenic spot in the Himalayan foothills is beset by labor and political unrest and alarming climate change that threaten its future. With passion and perception, Koehler illuminates a historic and arcane world, such that an ordinary tea bag and the cup enjoyed by tens of millions each day take on entirely new meanings"--Publisher's website

Koehler's re-creation of this lost realm--the Eden of the misnamed CoffeaAbrabica--is enchanting and tragic. His depiction of its disappearance is almost Tolkienesque . . . Koehler weaves an absorbing narrative of politics, ecology and economics. The New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice