Cooking for my boss and his mate who just happens to be a Lord!

[Mama Lan]

Wow, what a week it has been!

After keeping the Mama Lan supper club away from my work colleagues, I finally let them in on the secret that I have been moonlighting as a cook during my weekends for the past year.

The news spread like wildfire around the office and so I decided to tell my boss before he heard it on the grapevine.

Now, given that I worked in a very professional Private Equity house – I was worried that my boss would think I was being distracted from the job that actually paid my bills. So you can imagine my surprise when he said “that’s fantastic! How marvellous! I’ve got a meeting with a old friend for lunch tomorrow – could you cater for us, we would have just some sandwiches from downstairs otherwise?”

“...err, what about work? Not sure I can rustle something with only a day’s notice ” I replied – not quite sure of what to say...

“Tell your line manager you’ll be late that way you can cook in the morning. Also, I want him to try to convert him to my ways of eating vegan food. Will that be a problem?”

Luckily for us it’s not too much of a problem cooking vegan friend food as not much diary is used in Chinese cooking other than eggs.

In the end, I reluctantly accepted – though I declined the offer to come it late – not sure that would have gone down too well with my manager.

My encounter didn’t end there however.  On my way out the boss shouted “ Oh can you tell Ms B* (my boss’ secretary) that she won’t be needing to order lunch for me and Lord ....”

A LORD!

As it turns out, the guy I was to cook for was formerly a highly distinguished banker and is now an advisor to the Government!

Three things struck me at this point:

1) I was about to cook for two of the most powerful men in the UK let alone the City. This made me very nervous.

2) That two men with a combined net worth that would make the guys on Dragon Den look like they needed spare change would have quite happily tucked into supermarket sandwiches for lunch! This made me feel much better.

3) I needed to go shopping – I had used all the plain flour to make last night’s dinner! I couldn't serve them left overs could I?

 

I’ll post a full blog of how lunch went on our website shortly www.mamalan.co.uk.

Love Mama Lan

 

*alternative name used