Thursday 27^th August 2009

 You remember how Angus Willis, the internationally-known food writer, slammed down his fish slice when I put salt in the beans, queening, ‘They’ll be hard! They’ll be hard!’

 As it happens, they weren’t.

 But I’ve haven’t told you about the tiramisu affair.  On the first night, Donatella, the richly burnished villa housekeeper, made the welcome dinner.  The pudding – tiramisu, without coffee, a sweet, perfumed custard decorated with little choc buttons. Rather charming and I thought typico. That horrid gluey confectioners’ custard paste such a feature when in foreign. But Angus Willis furioso. Non mangiere. Next morning into the kitch, instructs Donatella to buy ingredients for true tiramisu, particularly a rare coffee liqueur. We imagine her buzzing all over Italy in the Fiat Uno in search.

 Anyway, next day, she appears with liqueur. No sign as yet of the bomba in cucina we all think a certainty. In fact from the kitch all day (while Angus Willis reigns no-one likes to go in, especially after the salt-in-beans near-death experience), rumours drift that Donatella is actually helping with the erection of the True Tiramisu.

 In the evening we have the Tiramisu, as I’ve mentioned already. It is marv. You will find Angus Willis’s recipe in the comments on ‘Strange and Wonderful Harmony in Tuscany’(22nd August 2009). Then next morning people wafting past the nether regions report that Donatella is actually trying the Tira, and taking down the recipe.

 Finally Angus Willis himself appears. He makes a stunning announcement. He intends to cook one of Donatella’s recipes. And he does. And photographs it for Australian Vogue. It is Penne con ragu alla salvia. Perhaps you’d like the recipe for that as well?

 On the other hand, you can have enough recipes.

 But Donatella is non credo, bowled over.

 So poor little rich gays are not completely horrid. As it happens, in addition, Angus Willis demonstrates the true gay style in the matter of staff. The approach is firm, even demanding, but equally there is a duty to entertain and break down barriers. Staff should feel that they have never been so terrified nor known such larks and nonsense all their born days. Simon Limpney, when I knew him, before the great falling-out, kept up a whirlwind of innuendo and outrage in the kitchen regions at Massivebury. Come to think of it, I don’t think his ladies were frightened of him, not as I was later.