All About Me

I figured my bio needed updating now that I've had this blog for a year and a half. But, I asked myself, what's the point in changing it if you don't notice I've updated it? My clever solution, if I say so myself? Post it here for all you lovely people to read! I hope you enjoy an insight into me.

My name is Lily and I enjoy cooking for family and friends, especially if it involves baking (even better if it's about midnight and not a sensible time to be cooking). This is sounding like an AA introduction. I'd better start again.

Hi, Lily here, I'm 20 21 22 years old and I read French at the University of Manchester (currently on my ERASMUS year in Poitiers, France). My gap year was spent in Singapore where I finally got over my fear of spice and embraced Asian cuisine, helped by cookery classes in exotic locales such as Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. When I'm not talking about food, I'm not really sure what I talk about. Asia? Books? Food? Oh wait, that's the subject I'm not meant to get started on. I began this blog to connect with other foodophiles and have somewhere to direct friends and family to when they ask for a recipe. Thai green curry and gooey chocolate chip cookies seem to be the most popular with my friends.

I have lots of gadgets in my kitchen but the one I love most is a bright orange KitchenAid mixer that gets pointed out if people don't admire it soon enough. My kitchen is also stocked with all sorts of weird and wonderful ingredients that I'm still working out how to cook with. Dried barberries, anyone? My inspiration for recipes, sadly, isn't delivered to me by David Bowie flying in on a tiger made of lightening, but comes from food magazines, recipe books and my mum (who cooks sensible yet tasty food like this lentil bake. No barberries for her).

Tastebuds are funny things and everyone's are different so if you want to tweak a recipe to your tastes then I won't hold it against you, and I'd love it if you would comment your changes so that I can give them a go, so long as they don't involve mushrooms. I hate mushrooms. Email me (lily.helen.carden@gmail.com) with requests for recipes and stalk me on Instagram (@gorgeousgateaux), I won't bite.

Join me on my crazy journey to make the best food I can; laughing  when it goes wrong and celebrating when it goes right.

Satay

My cousin's wife and their children came over to cook the other day* (you may remember them from when we made dumplings) and we made chicken satay. Charlie also demanded that we made bread so there was a quick detour for that to happen but ultimately we made some amazing satay that tasted just like the stuff I ate all the time when we went to Boat Quay or Chinatown in Singapore. Now, this isn't as much of a coincidence as it might seem - the cookbook author, Ghillie James, is an expat in Singapore. If you want little ones to help then juicing the limes with an electric juicer was deemed excellent fun, as was pressing the buttons on my mini processor (it's fairly noisy). Holding the hand held mixer to knead the bread definitely met with Charlie's approval - he loved the shape of the dough hooks but interestingly didn't want to touch the dough itself.

The recipe is quite straightforward but I'm not happy with the marinade for the chicken and want to tweak it using a satay recipe I previously used. Therefore I'm only going to give you the recipe for the sauce, with my changes, and will upload the marinade another time. When I can't be bothered to marinate, thread and grill the chicken I often just fry the chicken and cook some rice/noodles and peas and serve with this sauce on top. You could use beef, pork or prawns if you'd rather.

*Other week - I forgot to finish this before I went to Sweden (more on that next time) - sorry!

A Strange Time Of Night For Blog Posts

Right now, I should be asleep. In fact, I should think that most of you are asleep at the moment (unless you're my friends and family in Singapore, in which case, Mum, I promise not to stay up and blog when I have lectures!). I have this thought buzzing around in my head, stopping me from sleeping, which is how incredible it is that I've only just started this blog and yet my page stats on Blogger say that I have had 262 page views already, from all over the world, though I have just realised that my Thai visitor was probably actually my dad on one of his business trips there, but I don't think I know anyone in Switzerland and not 50 people in America, and they are reading my blog! Also, there are drunk people outside my window and I can't find my earplugs!

My mum sent the link to The Interesting Food Blog to some of her friends, and I hope they're enjoying reading my writing. A few of them sent her emails back saying well done, a fact that I was really touched by, and my godfather commented about Callebaut chocolates on the Thank You cookies post (I also can't believe I only just discovered they existed). One friend suggested that my next post was about savoury food to keep variety going. As I sat there, scratching my head as to why, for I had equal sweet/savoury posts published, I realised that she had probably been told over the years just how much I loved to bake and that I could spend hours, days even in some cases, making and decorating cakes. My previous blog was all about my baking and I realised very quickly that, although I love making complicated bakes, my everyday staples were brownies, cookies, chocolate cakes and Victoria sponges and that there are only so many times and ways that you can post about the latest batch of cookies that you made, identical to the last batch, and the one before that. Amanda, I promise not to let this blog get like that and to always strive to make unusual but do-able recipes and document them here. The other piece of advice given to me, again by Amanda, was that the most successful blogs drew you in and made you want to read the next instalment and I've been wondering how I can do that. All I can say for now is that I'll work on it.

One of the things I miss most about Singapore is the pork buns that I ate for snacks and ordered at Din Tai Fung on my many visits to their Singapore restaurants. Much to my eternal dismay there is no Din Tai Fung here in Manchester although there is the different, but equally good, Yang Sing (but they only serve Dim Sum before six) so I set out to make my own pork pau - it's complicated. My next post will be about this quest and the very long time it took to get there (hint, the whole process lasts 5 to 6 hours each time!!).

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings and I wish you a good night!