Meet the cook
Jamie Anderson
Home cook and recipe tester, based in New York.
I grew up in New York on dollar-slice pizza, street-cart pretzels, and my grandmother’s Sunday sauce, the kind that cooked all afternoon until the windows fogged up. I wasn’t a natural. My first couple of years cooking for myself were mostly burnt garlic and pots boiling over, learning in a kitchen barely bigger than a closet. I stuck with it because I was hungry and couldn’t afford to eat out, and at some point it stopped feeling like a chore.
These are the recipes I’ve kept: the ones I’ve made enough times to trust, and to know where they go wrong. No twenty-ingredient projects, no “first, make your own stock.” Mostly it’s the food I actually cook on a normal weeknight, plus the odd food question I got curious enough to dig into.
Jamie
I’d rather give you three recipes you’ll cook for years than fifty you’ll open once and forget.
What’s here
What’s on the menu
Simple recipes
Food for a normal Tuesday, made from things you probably already have. If a step ever annoys me, I cut it before the recipe goes up.
Family favorites
The bigger dishes, for when people are actually coming over. Tested on real guests, picky ones included.
Food stories
The odd food questions I end up researching too much: where a dish really came from, why a brand quietly changed its recipe, what’s actually worth knowing.
Go cook something.
Pick a recipe for tonight, or read your way through the food stories. Either way, glad you’re here.
