Family Affairs and other matters

I had the most amazing evening last night. I was privileged enough to be invited to a birthday dinner for 10 at a friend’s house. Her husband had paid (a lot), in a charity auction for a meal to be cooked by Mark Hix, one of Britain’s top chefs (aren’t I on a roll with top British chefs at the moment?).

The money was going to the Dyslexia Research Trust, set up by Professor John Stein and Dr Sue Cowler at Oxford University to fund research into dyslexia and other related conditions and to support free clinics to assess and assist people with these conditions.

John Stein, Professor of Neurophysiology at Magdalen College is a leading expert on the neurobiological basis of dyslexia. He also happens to be Rick Stein’s brother – hence the chef connection. They look quite similar don’t they? No prizes for guessing which one is which (in fact, I think that maybe from time to time Rick Stein gets bored with being a chef so puts some glasses on and a jacket and pretends he’s really really clever):-

Mark Hix has had 17 years of working in some of London’s top restaurants. He went from the Hilton to the Grosvenor House Hotel to The Dorchester to Le Caprice to Chef Director of Caprice Holdings (which owns The Ivy, Le Caprice and presumably now Scott’s) to actually opening his own restaurant called “Hix Oyster and Chop House” in Smithfield, near the City of London.

I was very impressed. His new restaurant only opened on Monday (to full capacity) and here he was having to give up his time (for free) when he must have been extraordinarily busy, to have to cook for us.

It was a culinary triumph naturally. You will notice that I rarely mention food (unless cooked by my far more able children, but on this occasion I feel I must). We started off with asparagus, pheasant eggs and smoked (by Mark in his own garden) salmon. The main course was Red Mullet on a bed of exquisite mashed potato with mushrooms and spinach (see picture below). Pudding was made up of a combination of individual chocolate souffles (cleverly unwrapped by me) with oranges soaked in something (cleverly laid on the plates by me with just a teeny bit of jus allowed) and some other chocolate mousse like thing, with some other darker chocolate sauce drizzled about in attractive manner (not by me) all over the top.

Not sure I’ll ever make it as a food critic – somehow I even manage to describe food in an unappealing way. We then had chocolate truffles made from a combination of Wonky Willie’s chocolate and somebody else’s apple liquor.

Bizarrely I was able to have a knowledgeable conversation about all the other nbf (new best friend) chef’s I know. He seemed like a lovely guy and I have invited myself (I’m doing a lot of that lately) with my friends to check out his new restaurant soon.

I have also decided that I need to take him on as a client as well. Bloody hell, do chef’s backs and necks ever take a bashing. They’re constantly looking down and bending over the wrong height of surface.

It was a lovely, lovely evening and a big thank you all round. Never has so much time and effort and money been invested by so many other people in one so undeserving.

Still, I took loads of really awful photos, so I was a bit useful.