girls gone wild at uh…. Royal China?

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royalchina_01

I have been really really slack with my posting. I can’t help it, I get so excited about my recent baking adventures that they are like my favourite children, my fingers stumble over each other trying to post them straight away and every-thing else falls by the wayside.

Favouritism. It exists. Deal with it. 

Anyway, I’ve been pre-occupied with I-don’t-know-what, but I do know that I’ve been so pre-occupied with stuff that I totally forgot our Girls Gone Wild (keep dreamin’) In Alicante trip is this weekend. It’s been two months since the planning began, right along side those Harwood Arms scotched eggs, and while there’s been many a date night since to drill into the finer details of our trip (amongst them Buddha Bar, which was just dark and expensive and I didn’t love it anywhere near enough to post about it), my favourite girls-weekend-planning-lunch has been at Royal China on Baker Street.

Good ol’ dim sum.

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“fawking awesome” red velvet cupcakes (and death by frosting)

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hummingbird bakery's red velvet cupcake

Me. Baking red velvet cupcakes. Are you kidding?? I mean honestly, if you’d told me a year ago, wait scratch that, if you’d told me three months ago that I would be creating from scratch painfully scrumptious and most adorable little red velvet cupcakes, I would have probably gagged on my vitamin water (orange+orange, c+calcium, I don’t know why I’m plugging vitamin water but yum, it’s my current favourite thing) and possibly made a mess of me. And you.

Three months ago, I didn’t even own a mixing bowl.

But stranger things have happened. From my first foray into baking, straight into some hiccups which were quickly frosted over with vanilla butter cream, and my very new crazy awesome Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, I’m now a total pro at uh… at least at removing the whisky bits from my electric mixer because trust me, that one took me quite a while to figure out.

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charming & endearing, oh and so is the restaurant: dinner at Donna Margherita

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the margherita pizza; Ischio Rosso 2006

We’ve already established that I’m really lazy when it comes to travelling around London. I stick to Zone 1 like an overgrown amoeba, but it’s not that I don’t want to travel outside of Zone 1, it’s just that I hate the tube. And I dislike the buses. So unless I can walk there, I ain’t going there.

Curiously, this dislike vaporises when it comes to food. Funny that, huh?

So when Donna Margherita‘s PR guy (Jamie Fox, and believe me I was beside myself when I thought Jamie Foxx was asking me out to dinner) contacted me offering a complimentary meal, I first recoiled at the idea of travelling out to SW11, but with all the fabulous reviews I’d read about the place, I soon found myself on the top deck of bus 87, careening precariously down the never ending road towards Lavender Hill.

And yes, I did just write a paragraph-long sentence.

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life altering reading: the hummingbird bakery cookbook

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chocolate brownies

I read Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner a few months ago. It was such a tear jerking, soul wrenching story, so far from the usual trash that I read (chick lit, Steig Larsson, The Twilight Saga! Eeek!), that it moved the emotionally stunted mountains within me. I don’t even know what it is, I mean it’s not like I relate to the protagonist, god my life is brilliant-cut 5-carat diamond compared to his, but you know a book has changed made a dent in your life when it makes you want to be a better person.

Or eat a brownie.

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The Fat Duck. A Fat Post. A Very Fat Catty.

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Fat Duck cereal box; mock turtle soup; roast foie gras; tafferty tart

Monday July 6, 2009. The single most painful and least productive morning of my life. Don’t tell my boss. And get comfortable, this is a fat post (and I don’t mean phat).

10.00am. I pick up the phone and dial 01628-580-333. I’m trying to get a booking at The Fat Duck, the second best restaurant in the world. Engaged. End call. Re-dial. Engaged. End call. Re-dial. It’s ok, I’m gonna keep trying for a good 30 minutes. All good.

10.30am. Engaged. I need to do some work. I gotta stop, I mean who ever gets through anyway? But. What if I’m next, what if I hang up now and I miss my chance? I’ll do this for another 15 minutes. End call. Re-dial. Engaged. End call. Re-dial.

10.45am. Engaged. My neck hurts from cradling this awkwardly shaped Cisco IP Phone *ahem* in the nook between my shoulder and right ear. I’m getting RSI in my left wrist from repetitively pressing End Call and Re-dial. Ok 11am, I’ll go til 11am. End call. Re-dial. Engaged. End call. Re-dial.

11.00am. Engaged. The engaged tone is giving me a headache. But I can’t stop now. Surely, I’m close? Surely? Please? Can anyone hear me? End call. Re-dial. Engaged. End call. Re-dial.

Ok so you get the idea. If there is something I am, it’s s.t.u.b.b.o.r.n. I was born with it, and I have refined my stubbornness to within an inch of its life and by god, it is not something you want to mess with. I want to go to The Fat Duck. I want to go for my 30th birthday (ok so we went a day earlier). And I don’t want any-thing else. You see the shite my poor bf has to put up with? Thank goodness I’m endearing 🙂

11.45am. It’s wearing me down. My head hurts, my neck hurts, my wrist hurts, even my heart is starting to hurt a little. I’m giving up, I spill my resignation onto twitterverse “how stupid of me to think I could actually get through to The Fat Duck” and holy mother of Murphy’s Law! Literally the instant I am about to hang up for good, the phone rings! It rings!

And then I am on hold. But God I Love On Hold Music After Hearing The Engaged Tone For One Hour And 45 Minutes. I’m on hold, listening to a rendition of Alice in Wonderland for another 15 minutes and finally finally, someone picks up the phone. I want to curse and spit and dance with joy all at the same time. But I do nothing and give them my name. My date. My time. and hope to f**king god that after all my effort, they are not booked out.

And they are not. Friday September 4, 2009. 12.30pm. We are going to The Fat Duck!

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30 is the new 20’s. It could be my 50’s, I don’t care, I have my Jimmy Choos!

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bday_01

WARNING: this post has nothing, nudda, not-one-thing to do with food. I thought I’d throw a 100% boda fide personal post in here just for kicks, so if you’re all about the food and not about the catty (screw you), I have a doozy of a post ready for you: The Fat Duck.

So. A few years ago, while renewing my drivers licence in Sydney, I remember choosing the five year expiry option, because it’s just a rip off to renew for a year or three. Or maybe I’m just cheap. Roz from Monsters Inc, who so happened to be working at the York Street RTA (who knew?), barked husky orders at me through cigarette-yellowed teeth and I was too petrified to not comply.  I filled out my forms with perfectly square printed letters 4mm high x 3mm wide, I signed, I paid, I sat, I smiled.

“WHAT YA SMILIN FOR?” she bellowed.

Me, the rest of the RTA and all the people in the Starbucks next door, we all shat our pants. And she took the photo.

Five effin’ years I was to have this I’ve-shat-my-pants photo as my single form of ID. I couldn’t believe it was going to last me til I’m 30. I mean, gawd, really? That is SO. FAR. AWAY.

But look at that. Five years passed without too many glitches, and I was very much excited about turning 30 because, yes, that photo is now expired (and incinerated).

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