Finds from Afar: Lotta and Per-Anders Jörgensen

If you haven’t seen the glossy Swedish food magazine Fool yet, do yourself a favor and order one immediately. Fool is the creation of creative husband and wife team, Per-Anders and Lotta Jörgensen, who act as co-Editors in Chief as well as Creative Director and Photographer for many of the stories. Both have decades of experience working in magazines and photography, and they bring their experience to the superbly produced Fool.

But don’t expect a collection of how-to’s and recipes—as Lotta says, "Fool is different to other magazines on food, taking inspiration from fashion, design and popular culture…no high end fashion magazine would have sewing patterns for clothes. Gastronomy needs to be taken seriously but with humor."

Issue #4, “The Italian Issue” is out now. Read on for the Jörgensen’s favorite find from their recent travels around Italy. Thank you Per-Anders and Lotta!

Last year we traveled extensively all over Italy for our fourth issue, "The Italian Issue". We soon learned to arrive both with an empty stomach and lots of spare space in our luggage because hospitality is not taken lightly in Italy, where "no thanks" is not even an option.

Of all the excellent olive oils we were given, one stood out, coming from Restaurant Don Alfonso on the Sorrentine peninsula. After a winding road we came to Alfonso's and Livia's Capri-facing garden that resulted in a Fool spread on the bees there and the beehives with the best view in the world! In the incredible garden they bought in 1990 there is an ancient orange grove as well as six varieties of olive trees, mostly Sicilian Nocellara del Belice and Frantoia from Toscana.

These trees produce 1500-2000 liters of the most incredible and "real" olive oil we have ever tasted, an oil that at first is incredibly sharp, yet harmonious later, maturing like a fine wine, showing what a great olive oil should be. It’s impossible to cook food in this region if you don't have the best olive oil, and our oil is made from hand picked olives, individually selected when absolutely ripe, Alfonso says. We'd say it is worth a journey!

As Lotta and Per-Anders pointed out, this is a perfect contrast to the recent Food Chains infographic in the New York Times!