Chris Corbin OBE, restaurateur, Chairman of the charity Leuka and founding partner of Who’s Cooking Dinner
The cookbook that has most influenced your cooking?
I would say A A Gill’s Table Talk has been influential and hilarious at the same time. His wisdom on why we eat in restaurants; a meal is ‘a metaphor for life’
The food of love: what would you cook to impress a potential date?
No cooking, oysters and poached lobster, eating with your hands is a most sensual experience
The perfect dinner party: which five people (dead or alive) would you invite to dinner and what would you cook for them?
My French in-laws, my wife and my twin children. We would bake a large sea bass with herbs and fennel storks. Accompanied with creamed spinach. Followed by fraise des bois, with Chantilly cream
Fast food – your top snack tip
Ortiz tinned Sardines on sourdough toast
Most memorable meal in film/literature/painting
Monsieur Creosote – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
Your worst kitchen disaster
The worst thing is something that effects your customers and staff, and is out of your control; gas or electricity breakdowns, fire, flood
The best thing to do with a celeriac?
Celeri remoulade
What would you like your final meal to be?
6 Fines de Claire oysters, roast Bresse chicken, with all the trimmings, Rum Baba
What is your secret talent [in or out of the kitchen]?
Empathy
What did you eat for breakfast?
Still water, creamed porridge with banana, sourdough toast with French butter, homemade marmalade, and a flat white coffee
What’s in your fridge?
Semi skimmed milk, Greek yogurt, bags of wild rocket, free-range eggs, garlic and onions, French butter, Parmesan cheese, cranberry juice, Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, short pastry, blueberries, cucumber, avocados, bottled soupe de poisson, bottled mirabelle, Dijon mustard
Your inheritance recipes – the one you inherited [and from whom] and the one you’d like to pass on to your children?
Fried Egg on creamed mash potatoes with white pepper, from my mother
Leuka is a leading UK charity, championing vital research into life-saving treatments for leukaemia and other blood cancers. Their goal is to work towards a future that is free from cancer and they support the work of dedicated scientists and clinicians who are committed to providing the best treatment possible whilst undertaking some of the most advanced research into leukaemia and related disorders so that patients can live better, fulfilled, longer lives.
Who’s Cooking Dinner? is an annual event set up to help raise funds for Leuka. To mark its 20th anniversary this year, 25 of the UK’s most acclaimed chefs (including Alain Ducasse, Clare Smyth, Tom Kerridge and Angela Hartnett) will crowd into the kitchen at The Dorchester, each charged with cooking dinner for one of 25 tables of ten – which chef is in charge of which table remains a mystery to be unveiled on the night…
Who’s Cooking Dinner? will be held on Monday 4th March at the Dorchester, London W1. To book a table of ten (£7,500) please contact Emily Purdham on emily@leuka.org.uk or for further details visit leuka.org.uk/
