FOOD & DRINK / At the table of the top team: Sunday lunch with Bruce Hyman & Melanie Pini: It is Premier League stuff, a scratch lunch with serious foodies. What's more, the guests prepare some of the dishes. Michael Bateman joins them

THE MENU

FAY MASCHLER'S

SAVOURY SALAD

MEDITERRANEAN

TERRINE PAGNOL

SALMON WITH

POTATO

MOUSSELINE AND

MANGETOUT PEAS

FARMHOUSE BRIE

TOMME DE ROMANS

PYRAMIDE

CHEESE SABLEES

WALNUT TART

PEAR AND PRUNE

CRUMBLE

TARTE FLAMANDE

CHOCOLATE

YOGURT TRUFFLES

COFFEE

DO RESTAURANT critics know how to cook? Does the Pope kiss tarmac? Surely they do but, anyway, here is a rare chance to check out London's leading restaurant critic, Fay Maschler.

She's to be a guest at a Sunday lunch given by Bruce Hyman with his friend and business partner Melanie Pini. Bruce is a theatre producer (Rowan Atkinson's The Nerd, Denholm Elliott's A Life in the Theatre), promoter (New York comic Jackie Mason) and broadcaster.

They have invited Fay and her husband, the crime writer Reg Gadney, together with her sister Beth Coventry, a renowned cook (and a former pal of the greatest of all restaurateurs, Peter Langan); guests include composer Philip Pope (he cut his teeth on the satirical spoof Spitting Image) with his wife, Rosie, a lawyer, their 21-month-old son, William, and Mary O'Leary, a physiotherapist (and marathon runner).

Reg Gadney has brought red wine, a Zinfandel. Rosie Pope has made some cheese sablees, biscuits which taste like delicious cheese straws. Fay Maschler has volunteered to bring a first course along.

Bruce and Melanie, who live close to Hampstead Heath, apologise because it is only a 'scratch lunch'. But, as Sunday lunches go, this is Premier League stuff; we're talking Manchester United here.

Preparing Sunday lunch for a crowd (and a demanding bunch such as this lot) holds no fears for Bruce since his partner, Melanie, is something of a star. At 26 she is co-owner of Traiteur Pagnol, a Primrose Hill delicatessen selling up to 60 ready- cooked fresh dishes daily.

Melanie has cooked seriously since she was 16. She was a student at Lyn Hall's La Petite Cuisine cookery school in Richmond where her uncle, the food photographer Anthony Blake, was a partner. Melanie went on to work at Jacques Pic's restaurant in Valence, one of France's finest restaurants; she was the first woman in his kitchen. In London she made her name catering for big wine houses such as Krug.

But Bruce is no slouch on the food front himself. For a lark, he says, he entered Loyd Grossman's Masterchef in 1991, and became South-east region finalist. 'I felt I might have done better if I'd been wearing a wet T-shirt,' he says. But cooking, he insists, is not where his passion lies. 'I like it. But in the end it's just food. There are other things that are more important.' Such as? 'Well, starvation.'

But if he is not a reverential foodie, what was he doing at the auction of Elizabeth David's kitchen items last month? Might he not have been after a culinary relic for himself? He snorts. It was stupid that bidders were paying hundreds of pounds for a few wooden spoons. 'I came back from the auction and assessed the contents of my kitchen. I reckoned they were worth pounds 7.5m.'

Cooking was always taken seriously at home, and his French mother had been very good. Bruce's father, David Hyman, a property dealer, also has a part to play in today's lunch, having sent down a wild salmon that he caught in Banffshire.

Guests meet informally in a sunlit kitchen backing on to a garden bathed in spring sunshine. Melanie hasn't arrived yet, so Beth Coventry volunteers to make patties from a container full of mashed potato. Pat-a-cake patty-cakes. She's in a good mood. She's just been told of a rave review for her restaurant, O'Keefe's, in Dering Street, Soho.

Fay unpacks her salad ingredients, asking Bruce for olive oil, raspberry vinegar, salt, pepper and Dijon mustard. She smiles in reproof. 'This mustard is rather elderly.' Dijon mustard should be kept in the fridge after opening, she suggests.

Lunch is taken around a great elm table, casually decorated with garlands of green stems with yellow flowers. Fay's salad is passed round in a huge dish, a glistening anthology of appetising salad leaves.

Who will dare criticise the critic's offering? In more than 20 years as London's top restaurant critic, Fay Maschler must have had more than few bum salads in her time. But this one is piquantly delicious, savoury and bitter-sweet, smooth and crunchy. 'We take it you didn't buy a bag of mixed leaves from a supermarket.' A quick, sharp look. 'I don't like those supermarket pillows of mixed leaves. I get the leaves separately - baby spinach, lamb's lettuce, watercress, some frisee, some lollo rosso, some leaf parsley.'

Savoury ingredients lurk in the depths. Button mushrooms finely sliced, tossed in dressing. Smoky Ardennes ham has been cut into shreds as fine as string. There are mysterious slices of Japanese omelette (eggs beaten with a little soy sauce and sugar, poured thinly into a pan, cooked, rolled and finely sliced).

Next is the Mediterranean Terrine, which Melanie created for Traiteur Pagnol. It is a painterly masterpiece based on dazzling red and yellow peppers, halved, cored, roasted with oil, then skinned. They are placed in a long loaf tin and layered with slices of unpeeled aubergine, dribbled with oil and also roasted. Then the terrine is interleaved with slices of fresh mozarella di bufala, dressed with more olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sea salt and pepper. Finally it is studded with fresh basil leaves.

To bind a vegetable terrine, a restaurant chef would probably use a puree of one kind or another to bring the elements together before pressing and chilling. But this rustic dish is more boldly assembled, and settles roughly into its shape, unpressed. The ingredients keep their character, and it tastes so fresh nobody minds that it's impossible to cut neatly.

A change of pace. The hosts retire and soon the room fills with a blast of smoky fish. The salmon embalmed in a marinade of oil and Japanese sweet vinegar has been put to a red hot griddle. But all is well and it is transferred to the Aga to finish off, while Melanie regroups the patties Beth has patted out, returning them to a solid mass. This is no mashed potato, but pommes mousseline, a potato puree enriched with sauteed green leeks, milk, a dash of cream, bay leaf, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

The salmon is extraordinarily juicy with a buttery taste. Beth regards her plate appreciatively. She is an English-style cook whose signature dish is salmon fishcakes. 'Deconstructed fishcakes,' she pronounces.

Cheese is Bruce's speciality. One of the three he has chosen, a rich yellow, nutty-tasting brie, is from one of two remaining farmhouse brie makers in Ile-de-France, so small they can't even undertake to supply Harrods or Harvey Nichols.

At the same time Rosie's cheese sablees are produced, appetising, light and crispy. Her husband Philip's pretence that neither of them are unduly interested in food is palpably untrue. (Philip tells the story of booking into the famous Paris restaurant La Tour d'Argent, having checked by phone that the meal would cost around F200 ( pounds 20). 'That's reasonable,' he thinks. But scrutinising the menu on arrival he realises his mistake. 'I must have misheard,' he whispers to his wife. 'This is going to cost more like deux mille francs').

The puddings are Melanie's speciality; she produces three, no trouble. Her crumble is like no other: raw pears, peeled and chopped, mixed with uncooked Agen prunes, stoned, and baked under a delicate crumble mixture. The thrill of the walnut tart lies simply in the quality of the walnuts, which a friend in France sends them still moist from harvesting.

But what is this tarte flamande? A rich and subtle confection of apples and caramel and cream. Melanie confesses: 'One day we had a bucket of caramelised apples left over, and a bowl of leftover creme brulee and a pate sublime, a rich pastry case. We needed a pudding quickly so we put them all together. It was a great success so we thought up the name, tarte flamande, and we've been doing it ever since.' And why not? 'I bet a lot of classic dishes started this way.'

Instead of giving recipes for the whole meal, which is broadly described above, we have chosen three puddings, Melanie Pini's finest.

PEAR AND PRUNE

CRUMBLE

Serves 8-10

8 Comice pears, peeled and chopped

1/2 lb/250g prunes, pitted and chopped

4oz/120g Demerara sugar

4fl oz/100ml freshly squeezed orange juice

For the crumble:

6oz/180g plain flour

4oz/120g unsalted butter

2oz/60g caster sugar

Put the pears, prunes, orange juice and sugar into a buttered gratin dish. Magimix the crumble ingredients to the consistency of fine breadcrumbs. Put this over the fruit. Bake at 180C/ 350F/Gas 4 for 50 minutes.

WALNUT TART

Serves 8-10

5oz/150g walnut pieces

1/3 pint/200ml double cream

3oz/75g caster sugar

2 whole eggs

1 pate sublime case, baked blind (see below)

Mix all the ingredients together. Pour into pastry case and bake at 180C/350F/Gas 4 for 35 minutes.

For the pate sublime (enough for one case): Rub 1/2 lb/225g unsalted butter into 1lb/450g flour (sifted twice). Add 1/2 lb/225g caster sugar. Mix 8 egg yolks with a few drops of vanilla essence, adding little by little and beating between each addition. Work into flour mixture to form dough. Wrap hermetically and refrigerate for at least half an hour before use. Bake blind at 220C/425F/ Gas 8 for 15 mins. Leave to cool.

TARTE FLAMANDE

Serves 8-10

5oz/150g sugar

4 William pears, peeled, chopped and quartered

2oz/50g unsalted butter

1 pint/600ml whipping cream

8 egg yolks

2oz/50g caster sugar

1 vanilla pod

1 pate sublime case baked blind (see above)

Make caramel with the first lot of sugar and the butter, cooking till light brown. Add the pieces of pear and cook very gently for 2-3 minutes. Cool. Put these pear pieces into the pastry case and set aside. Boil the cream with the vanilla pod in it. Mix the egg yolks and remaining sugar in a bowl. Pour on the boiling cream and whisk to achieve a smooth custard. Pour this mixture on top of the pears and pastry and bake for 45 minutes or until set and golden at 180C/350F/Gas 4.