Guess what? “Milkshake” singer Kelis is done bringing boys to the yard and has written a cookbook, “My Life on a Plate”.
According to TIME, “My Life on a Plate” resembles a memoir, with paragraphs of personal stories accompanying each recipe, which readers can piece together for the singer-turned-chef’s biography.
Born Kelis Rogers to a black musician father and a Chinese-Puerto Rican mother who had her own catering business, she grew up in Harlem surrounded by food. She’d spend her her summers in Puerto Rico and her Sundays eating pierogies on the Lower East Side after church.
Before the LaGuardia High School graduate signed a record deal as a teenager, she worked in a Malaysian restaurant Penang and spent many late nights at Mamoun’s Falafel.
That’s right. A Malaysian restaurant! Penang!
She featured a recipe called, “Pineapple Beef” in “My Life on a Plate”, which was said to have been inspired by her first ever encounter with Malaysian food at Penang (the Malaysian restaurant, not the Malaysian state).
In her description, she also gushed about how she eventually ended up in Penang (the Malaysian state) as part of her work travels as a singer, and how she fell in love with authentic Penang food.
Access Hollywood quoted Kelis as saying:
When I was about 15 years old, I worked near a restaurant on the Upper West Side in Manhattan called Penang. My two favorite dishes there were shrimp with mango and beef with pineapple. It was my first encounter with Malaysian food, and it would be a long time before I realised that Penang was a place. Malaysia was a far-off land to me. I couldn’t fathom what it would be like to be there. Fast forward just two years, I signed my first deal, and before I knew it, I was in Penang. I couldn’t believe I was actually there! I loved the food at Penang the restaurant and in Penang the city, but it also became a symbol for me of how far I’d come.
“Before I ever had a career, before I knew what I was going to do with my life, I used to go to this restaurant for lunch and eat pineapple beef, and now here I was sitting on a beach in this really exotic, beautiful country. I felt in awe of life and how things turn out. This dish and that trip has stayed with me all of these years. Since then I’ve been able to travel to that part of the world extensively and there are so many luscious treasures to taste,” she added.
Hate to disappoint you, there are no milkshake recipes in “My Life on a Plate”. But aww, it sure is nice to know that Kelis is such a fan of Penang 🙂
Want the “Pineapple Beef” recipe? Get it off Access Hollywood here.
Sources: TIME, Access Hollywood / Featured image from NY Daily News.
