Stanley Dry

We suggest that you clip out this column; laminate it if you can or at the very least seal it in a storage bag and place it in a treasured cookbook.

Why?

Stanley Dry, our long time food expert is, with this issue, retiring. On matters of Louisiana cuisine, there is nobody better.

Dry, a resident of New Iberia, has had a distinguished career writing about native food. We have been proud to have his byline in Louisiana Life for 21 years. Throughout his career, he has accumulated distinguished credentials for national publications including Food & Wine, Travel + Leisure, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Diversion, Departures, Doctors Review, My Table, Acadiana Lifestyle and southernfoodways.org.

In 2014 this company, Renaissance Publishing, released a hardback book entitled “The Essential Louisiana Cookbook,” a chronicle of his words and recipes.

Dry has not only written about food; he takes part in the process. He grows bountiful vegetables in his back yard. (“The cherry tomatoes can be eaten off the vine like candy.”) He is also a skilled baker with specialties in breads.

He retires having made us wiser in the wonders of our native cuisines. And as we yearn for a serving of speckled trout with lump crabmeat, we thank him for all that he has contributed. We also remind him that for whatever food experiences lie ahead, to always leave room for the bread pudding.

What Is Your Favorite?

So that his wisdom continues, we asked Stanley Dry to leave us with answers about his favorites in a potpourri of Louisiana cuisine questions. What follows is gold.

Type of gumbo: Seafood

Rice dish: Dirty rice

Type of sausage: Andouille

Boudin — red or white: White

Coffee — plain or chicory: Plain dark roast — au lait with chicory

Okra or filé: Okra

Fish for eating: Speckled trout

Seasoning ingredient: Filé

Way to use Steen’s syrup: As ingredient in sweet potato pie

Baked bread or pastry item: French bread

Way to prepare crawfish: Boiled

Ingredients for boiling crawfish: Seasonings, corn on the cob, sausage, small potatoes and artichokes

Way to prepare pecans: Pecan pie

Louisiana themed dinner: Oysters on the half shell, seafood gumbo, speckled trout with lump crabmeat, bread pudding

Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in Passages North, Catapult, Islandia Journal, Louisiana Literature, Latino Book Review and other publications. He is a monthly columnist at The Ploughshares Blog and is the Poetry Editor at Peauxdunque Review. Romaguera was an editorial intern at Electric Literature. He is a VONA alum. Romaguera is a 2023 Periplus Fellow.

Kevin Rabalais, an Avoyelles Parish native, writes and photographs the Natural State series for Louisiana Life. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Australian, the New Zealand Listener, and the Argentine magazine Revista Ñ. He teaches in the Department of English at Loyola University New Orleans.