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Our cookbook of the week is My Jamaican Table by Andre Fowles.
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Jump to the recipes:Solomon Gundy, coconut steamed red snapper and chocolate-dipped ice cream bars.
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It’s not every day that you open a cookbook to see a foreword by Bruce Springsteen. “That’s my badge of honour right now, to have that foreword by the legend himself, and he’s even a better person,” says Andre Fowles, who cooked for Springsteen as a private chef and now calls him a friend.
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In Fowles’s cookbook debut, My Jamaican Table (Artisan Books, 2026), the three-time Chopped champion charts his career — from growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, where “food was our North Star,” to professional kitchens in New York City.
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“You see some traditional dishes that pay homage to Jamaica, but also some more modern takes that show my style of cooking as well.”
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A classically trained chef, Fowles incorporates twists, traditional dishes and techniques but above all, keeps recipes true to how he likes to eat. He offers the example of steamed red snapper, which is traditionally done on the bone. Since he prefers fillets poached in coconut milk with allspice berries and Scotch bonnet pepper, he presents it that way in the book.
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“That’s why I thought of the name, My Jamaican Table,” says Fowles. “I really wanted to make it my own, to talk about stuff that I personally love to eat, because everyone has their own take on what Jamaican cuisine means to them.”
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He highlights the history and context of classic dishes, such as the “Patty Wars” sparked by the Jamaican beef patty in Toronto in 1985. Vendors contested the government’s attempt to define a “beef patty” strictly as seasoned meat. They ultimately found a compromise, and the iconic street food was allowed to be sold as a “Jamaican patty” — a victory celebrated as Patty Day every Feb. 23 in Toronto.
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“It was a big deal to fight for your culture, and food is just a major part of that. So I really wanted to touch on those bits and pieces, and to really do my best to do right by Jamaica, because firstly, this is a cultural book that happens to have fun recipes in it.”
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Fowles has always considered himself a proud Jamaican, and writing the book gave him an even deeper admiration for his country. He says that he wanted to capture its positivity and hopes that readers put on some reggae or dancehall music and invite friends over for rum punch and coconut shrimp. “Or you can do the Solomon Gundy, and talk about the history of how that made it to Nova Scotia,” he says of another Jamaican dish with a Canadian connection featured in the book.
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“If you’re lucky enough to have a grill outside, let’s put some jerk chicken on, and then you immediately feel like you’ve been transported to somewhere else outside of your four walls. That’s really the essence of the book — to make it your own. Make it your Jamaican experience, which is always fun.”