I Forge a New Style of Dinner: World Figures Attend

Friday 5th August 2011

Thank the Lord the markets have closed for the weekend! Wracking strain. Mercifully I bailed out of banks on Tuesday: massive losses, netted about £2.30. Going into mines and technology instead.

Pre-boarding tension as well: I board for Tuscany tomorrow. Can’t wait to escape. From there the collapse of the world economy will be a comforting distant murmur.

Now, my new style of dinner. Very simple. Get the guests to do the cooking. If you have a private architect, as I do, use him or her. On Tuesday I launched into three never-before-done Ottolenghi recipes plus a true Melba: I had world-architect, Virgil Grayson (not to be confused with my private architect, Bruce MacBain, who dominates London) slicing peaches. His partner, Cedric Partridge, said that Dame Nellie Melba didn’t actually like Melba toast. He is of a museum and is often accompanied on aircraft by a small Vermeer or Rembrandt.

I could explain why but it would spoil the shape of the sentence.

The True Melba, by the way, is real peaches, with top-drawer vanilla ice-cream and raspberry sauce made by pressing raspberries through a sieve and adding icing sugar.

Bruce MacBain helped me with the chick-pea flour pancakes, mounted with tomatoes and onions, although I managed the green gazpacho (about 18 ingredients, but only to be whizzed) and the herb omelettes filled with potato and sorrel by myself (7 to be made one by one).

But I couldn’t run to the pancakes. Why not try this yourself? Put the guests to work. It’s ideal for August because it re-creates, in London, the joint-venture cooking of the villa holiday, in this case without the near blows over risotto method that erupt without fail whenever Poor Little Rich Gays gain  Tuscany.

I’m not sure you could get away with it in any other month though.

Otherwise, I said to Bruno-France Bruno, the great mystery Poor Little Rich Gay, now with an apartment at Deauville and a house at St Germain en Laye, ‘Do you know any society in Tuscany?’ ‘Well, there’s a Contessa who deals in black diamonds.’

I wonder if we will achieve her, next week in Tuscany.

Harry Rollo, the impresario and performance artist, who flooded the Hollywood bowl and had the audience in diving suits, is invited to join a private yacht next week on a non-paying basis. It will cruise off the California coast. Pre-boarding instructions have been issued in writing: no long trousers, but a windcheater essential. Oil-based lotions not allowed, nor clothes with studs; shoes are not worn, no metal belt-buckles, all because of the teak. ‘Minimizing salt water aboard helps aesthetics,’ the guidance explains helpfully. Gentlemen are requested to wear shirts when sitting on the interior fittings. Hooks on the doors are for towels only, not hanging garment bags – the teak again.

I couldn’t agree more. What’s an interior for if not to be ruthlessly preserved until such time as you get bored of it and can throw it away – as the Limpney/Smallmeals did at Massivebury. Although not everyone would actually have an entire home with 9 bedrooms bollocked to pulp then flung into a pit.

When I was on board a gullet in Turkey with Laura Malcolm and Frankie-Doreen May, their husbands and children, the main challenge was the pump lavs.

Reggie Cresswell also dined, glowing from the triumph of his new 240 room ceramic. Everyone is agreed that nothing like it has been done in ceramic before. The figures disappear, then reappear in different guises. Bruno-France Bruno confided that Guinevere Pelham recently tripped at her own dinner and hurled an entire salmon at Sir Andrew Motion.

Posted Friday, August 5, 2011 under Adrian Edge day by day.

Leave a Reply