Last week I was invited to stay with friends in the timeless and heavenly bailiwick of Santa Agnes on Ibiza.
Less than 24 hours into my holiday I was on a 73-meter custom displacement yacht, singing happy birthday to DJ Pete Tong.
At the bit where you say the name, confusion befell; some said Peeeete, others sang Pete Tong, although I elected for Tongy.
After greetings were ineptly imparted, the birthday boy spun a set of records to a very appreciative crowd, which for most of the time included just me and ooh Gary Davis; the rest were content to both hob and knob with the likes of Jemma Kidd and James Blunt.
The following day I cooked a salad, its origins laying a mere zigzag from our kitchen. Runner beans were blanched in boiling water and then fried in olive oil with garlic and chilli. White courgettes were sliced thinly and then griddled on the electric BBQ. Tomatoes were blanched for a few seconds in boiling water, skinned, halved, and roasted for an hour at 140oC, before being added to the other ingredients. Seasoning and olive oil finished of a dish fit for an epic Russian industrialist.
On the last day I decided to charter a vessel of my own; it was a pedalo with slide. The current drifted us out to beyond the safety zone and my mate and I had to work very hard just to save our families from looking like something out of French artist Gericault’s, “Raft Of The Medusa”.
Thankfully no one from the earlier party saw this fall from grace, otherwise they might have been left asking where it all went Pete Tong.
Salad of Broad Beans, with Oven-Roasted Tomatoes, Griddled Courgettes, Chilli and Garlic
Serves 2
200g fresh broad beans
3 medium tomatoes
1 medium white courgette
4 cloves garlic, finely diced
1 whole chilli, finely diced with most of the seeds removed
Seasoning
Extra Virgin Olive oil
Dedicated to Bertrand Lipworth