Patti LaBelle - Labelle Cuisine: Recipes to Sing about

20th Anniversary Edition

New York Times Bestseller

Patti LaBelle

LaBelle Cuisine

Recipes to Sing About

Im very excited to share the twentieth anniversary edition of my first cookbook, LaBelle Cuisine: Recipes to Sing About, with you! I cant believe its been twenty years. I know so much has happened in all our lives during this time. But one constant in mine is that I continue to be asked to prepare many of the recipes in this book.

I will share with you that the most exciting thing that has happened in my life during this time is the birth of my grandchildren. My two granddaughters, Gia and Leyla, live close by and we spend lots of time in the kitchen experimenting with different ingredients and make-believe recipes. None of our recipes are ready to be included in a book quite yet (although I did include a few new ones of my own in here) but stay tuned to see what the girls and I come up with!

Because everyone seems to like these recipes so much, several years ago we launched Pattis Good Life. The Good Life brand includes desserts, frozen foods, spices, and of course my sweet potato pie! Many of those items were recreated from recipes in this book.

Cooking has always been one of the joys of my life. There is nothing like preparing a meal for those you love and see them really appreciate it. I hope you enjoy the recipes in this book. And I hope the folks you prepare them for shower you with as much love as I feel whenever I prepare a meal for those I love. Happy Cooking!

Love always,

Patti

Gia Edwards (Pattis granddaughter), Patti, and Leyla Edwards (Pattis granddaughter) sampling Glam-moms new line of frozen waffles.

Whitney Thomas

13a

Gallery Books

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Copyright 1999 by Patti LaBelle with Laura B. Randolph

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Interior design by Judith Stagnitto Abbate/ABBATE DESIGN

Jacket design by Kelli McAdams

Jacket photograph (front) Timothy White/Trunk Archive

Jacket photograph (back) courtesy of the author

ISBN 978-1-9821-7908-3

ISBN 978-1-9821-7909-0 (ebook)

T his book is dedicated to all the cooks who have come before me who practiced and perfected this ancient healing art we call cooking. To them, I offer my heartfelt gratitude for showing me the true magic of meals: that how we prepare and present them nourishes the spirit as much as the stomach. And the most important ingredient of any recipe is love.

To my aunts Hattie Mae Sibley and Joshia Mae James, my mother-in-law, Anna Edwards, and my forever friends, Norma Harris Gordon and Naomi Thompson: Thank you for walking me through the best, most beloved recipes of my ancestors and sharing so many of yours.

To Harriet Bell, for whom I have just two words: dream editor.

To Rick Rodgers, whose patience, professionalism, and passion for his work made what could have been a difficult project a delight.

To Al Lowman, thank you for your expertise, encouragement, and always enlightening advice.

And last but not least, a very special thank-you to Laura B. Randolph, who hears my voice in ways that continue to amaze me and captures it with style and grace for the printed page.

From the time I was a little girl, I knew there were two things in this world I was born to do: sing and cook. Ive spent my life developing my voice and my recipes and, to tell you the truth, Im hard pressed to say where Im happiestin concert or in the kitchen; making music or making meals. Whether cooking or singing, I feel at ease, at peace, at one with the world.

While reminiscing for this book, I realized why cooking has always been such a labor of love for me. Because its as much about friendship and fellowship as it is about food. Because, behind the whole processthe shopping, the planning, the preparing, the servingcooking is really about love. Cooking is a way to show it, share it, serve it. Cooking is as much about nourishment for the soul as it is the stomach.

Especially the kind of cooking I grew up on. Were talking Southern, country cooking. Authentic, down-home, Southern country cooking is a generation-to-generation pass-it-down gift, and I have so many people in my family to thank for mine: my grandmothers, my mother, my father, my aunts Hattie Mae and Joshia Mae. I dont mean to brag, but the people in my family have always been some cooking folks. And thats no idle boast.

Do you know that, to this day, people still talk about my Grandmother Tempies biscuits? And, let me tell you, that is high praise when you consider that at the time she was making them she was living on a farm in Piston, Georgia, where everybody, and I do mean everybody could cook. Especially the Sisters. A Sister in Piston saying you could cook would be like Maya Angelou saying you could write.

But let me get back to those biscuits. When my father was a little boy, he couldnt get enough of his mothers biscuits. Whenever Grandmother Tempie baked a batch, he would park himself at the big kitchen table and eat a dozen biscuits at a time. And Daddy wasnt the only one who had a jones for those biscuits. People would come from miles around just on a chance theyd get to taste one. My Aunt Hattie Mae says Grandmother Tempies biscuits were so light they could fly. And people swore that one day, one biscuit actually did.

Now, I cant vouch for the truth of the story, but I do know this: Folks used to eat an entire biscuit at oncejust pick up the whole thing and stuff it in their mouthever since what people who were there that day refer to as The Incident. It happened at a Fourth of July picnic, and a whole bunch of folks say they saw it: the flying biscuit. As the story goes, one of Grandmother Tempies neighbors was eating one of her biscuits when he set it down to reach for a glass of lemonade. It didnt take longmaybe fifteen, twenty seconds tops. But it was twenty seconds too long, because when he went to pick the biscuit back up, it was gone. Legend has it, while he was sipping his lemonade, that biscuit just floated away.

I feel so blessed that, before Grandmother Tempie got sick, she taught my father almost all of her secret recipes. Aunt Hattie Mae says Daddy practically lived in the kitchen with her. After school, all the other kids would head outside to play, but not Daddy. Hed stay right in the kitchen with Grandmother Tempie soaking up all her cooking secrets. Years later, growing up in Philly, I did the very same thing. Until I was 12, I spent hours at a time in my mothers kitchen. Where I grew up, in the closely knit, working-class community of Elmwood, out by the airport, there was a park right across the street from our house on South 84th Street where all the neighborhood kids used to play. All of them, that is, but me. All I wanted to do was hang out in the kitchen.