Hi, I’m Andre. Every Sunday I cook dinner for whoever shows up, usually somewhere between 8 and 20 people. I keep the count on the whiteboard on our fridge and have stopped trying to guess.
What I write about
Where my stories come from
I grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana. My Aunt Rose taught me that a roux should be “the color of a penny,” and my father argues with her about that color every time they meet.
Half the recipe cards in her box say “enough” where the measurement should be. When she let me borrow them, she counted the cards before I left and again when I brought them back. My dented 12-quart gumbo pot has followed me across three states.
How I write
Measurements by eye, explained so you can follow them. No diets, no calorie counts and no food snobbery.
Off the clock
I live in Nashville with my wife, Tasha, and our daughter, Simone. My father still peels crawfish faster than anyone at our table.
How we check our stories: Editorial Standards and Ethics.
My aunt Rose keeps her recipes on index cards, and where the measurement should be, half of them just say “enough.” When she lent me the box to copy, she counted the cards first and again when I brought it back. These 12 foods were lost and found again, from a peanut that survived as 40 seeds in a cold seed vault to a date palm grown from a 2,000-year-old seed.
