Dish of the day: humble pie

We were well and truly paying for it now. In the heat and clatter of the kitchen we were rueing every unintended slight, every trashing we'd ever given a restaurant on an off night. The tables were turned. We were feeding the hands we usually bite.

We were well and truly paying for it now. In the heat and clatter of the kitchen we were rueing every unintended slight, every trashing we'd ever given a restaurant on an off night. The tables were turned. We were feeding the hands we usually bite.

Out there, on the right side of the kitchen doors, 90 chefs and restaurateurs were about to pass judgement on half a dozen London restaurant critics' cooking. Stars of the stove, including Fergus Henderson, the Cinnamon Club's Vivek Singh, Jeremy Lee, Rowley Leigh, Mark Hix and Antonio Carluccio, had each paid £120 for dinner cooked by writers whose abilities range from toast burning to the full range of skills acquired in a previous life as a chef. They were graciously spending more to enjoy our efforts than we sometimes grudgingly hand over in their restaurants. But, above all, they were paying to see us sweat. Cameras in the kitchen relayed our panic and pain on to TV screens around the dining room.

I'd been too nervous to eat anything all day, and all I would get were a few broken pieces of Tracey MacLeod's grissini and scraps of Terry Durack's poached skate. Jostling us Independent critics for a turn at the chopping board were Charles Campion and Kate Spicer of the Evening Standard; Jeremy Wayne, restaurant editor of Tatler; Bill Knott, ex-chef, restaurant writer and founder of Too Many Critics; and Jill Dupleix of The Times.

Too Many Critics is a cunning and delicious form of schadenfreude devised for Restaurants Against Hunger's fundraising programme. The money goes to Action Against Hunger, one of the leading charities in the treatment of malnutrition. This year was the third such event, and took place a week ago in London. The location was glamorous Locanda Locatelli, where Giorgio Locatelli and his chefs usually serve some of the best - no, make that the best - Italian food in Britain. Abetted more than aided by the amateurs, they had their standards to keep up, and the restaurant's regular chefs had volunteered to give up their Sunday to help us out. But they were going to give us a taste of what they go through every night when they have customers and critics with knives and forks at the ready.

As if this wasn't enough punishment for the critics, on the previous Sunday, Simply Heathcotes in Manchester had hosted a similar but even bigger event, with regional and national restaurant reviewers joining the brigade of long-suffering professionals. As the only veteran of both evenings (how did I get suckered into that?) I can tell you that conditions are far tougher up north. We had to provide our own recipes. And cook them for 170 guests. The Roux brothers joined Manchester luminaries like Paul Kitching from the Michelin-starred Juniper, mingling with the city's high rollers to offer their professional opinion of our efforts. I'd have felt sorry for myself if the restaurant chefs helping us hadn't worked twice as hard and for twice as long every day over the past week. No wonder they gave us no quarter. The following night they had another £100-a-head dinner with Gordon Ramsay as the star turn.

Albert Roux returned untouched the man from The Guardian's eels and chanterelles. Matthew Fort, angler and offal enthusiast, had skinned every eel himself, and braised them with mushrooms, as well as putting together 170 mackerel brochettes and a glistening, unctuous onion confit.

Each critic had been allocated a course. I'd chosen cheese. If you think that's a cop out, try making 200 oatcakes. And you have no idea how long it takes to divide a cheese into 170 neat slices. Multiply that by three - there was Garstang Blue, Allerdale - a ewe's cheese - and a fiendishly crumbly Lancashire that defied every effort to turn it into tidy triangles. I will never sneer at La Vache Qui Rit again.

Somehow, though I'd volunteered with uncharacteristic speed for what seemed like the easiest of the seven courses, I hadn't factored in rolling out the biscuit dough. I spent hours hunched over a rolling pin. "Is there a knack to this?" I dared to ask a passing chef. "No," he retorted, "just keep going." He was the one who'd tried the raw dough and turned up his nose. Too much salt, he chided, and suggested adding mustard to the mixture next time.

Meanwhile, Liz Marcy from Waitrose Food Illustrated sliced so many courgettes into zillions of ribbons that her fingers turned green. "It seemed like a nice simple bruschetta. I'll never want to cook it again," she sighed. City Life's Jonathan Schofield was coaxing a cauldron of carrot and artichoke soup (recipe from Delia) to a reluctant boil, before pulverising it with a tool that resembled a pneumatic drill. It turned out to be the star dish of the evening.

Only the critics drank on duty. Amanda from Caterer & Hotelkeeper, the organ of the trade, was mocked by our chef assistants for suggesting we might have a break before service. The slacker from a local freesheet appeared at tea time, just as the professionals were lamenting the sloppy mess his family chocolate mousse recipe had turned out to be. I did see one chef nip into the walk-in fridge to feed his Coke habit. He had a two-litre bottle in there.

With bruschetta out of the way, and empty soup bowls back, there was now a shoal of Matthew's mackerel to be got on the plates. The other slacker and I were spooning out the onions. "That's minging," said the kindest chef, whisking away a plate covered with a slapdash splodge, as we jostled with others gently lowering fragile, rosemary-speared fish on to every acceptable onion base. The head chef galvanised us by rapping his spoon on the steel counter and shouting. If this was frantic, it was a breeze compared with the main course.

There were fat-spitting duck breasts coming out of the oven; baking-hot, barrel-shaped sweet potatoes to be positioned on each plate; finger-scalding pak choi to be snuggled up next to them, and every piece of duck to be carved and placed on top. Somehow it came together in a maelstrom of shouting, skidding, heat and fury from the chefs.

"Stop dropping them from a height. You're splashing everywhere!" one snapped, as I reached across another to plop a bloody piece of poultry on to a plate. Finally, someone suggested I step out of the way. I offered to do some redemptive washing-up, but there was already a demonic pot washer working flat out. Ray and Trudi King from the Manchester Evening News kept their cool under pressure as they added decorative squiggles of sauce to each plate of their dinner-party duck dish. They can't have expected a simple home triumph to have caused such mayhem. Could we stand the heat? Not very well. Could the chefs stand us? They put on a brave face, but we imagined they'd be muttering "never again" as they scrubbed down the kitchen at the end of the night.

Don't get me wrong about Manchester, but compared to this baptism by fire, London seemed like a masterclass. Tracey spent all afternoon hand-rolling the grissini under the tutelage of London's leading bread-maker, Dan Lepard. I helped julienne the orange zest, taking the pith off the peel before Pasquale sliced it more finely than I ever could. It was the only time I got to take the pith and not the other way round. Tracey, Kate and I retired to the bakery corner, not just to keep Ivan the handsome Catalan pastry chef in sight, but to wrap Parma ham round the end of Tracey's grissini. Any that looked badly bandaged stayed. "We don't want to make it look too professional or they'll never believe it was us," whispered Kate.

First up were Terry and his wife, Jill, with their starter of lemon bread bruschetta with rocket, caper, anchovy and chilli salad, and poached skate. The skate was warm, the salad mixed, the bread toasted. My contribution? I got to sprinkle the sparkling crystals of Maldon Sea Salt on each slice of toast that Tracey had anointed with oil. As far as I know, nobody commented on the seasoning that distinguished the starter.

Now for my big moment. A kilo of pumpkin risotto to stir. Onions, oil and in goes the rice, make sure it's coated with oil and almost beginning to crackle before adding the wine, then ladle in simmering stock. "Slow down with the stock," Giorgio warned, patrolling the critics' progress. Mine passed muster, had Parmesan and butter beaten into it, and was on to the plates and away. No one got to eat the next batch. "I'm not serving this fucking shit," shouted Giorgio, gesticulating at the sloppy rice. The critic - I won't name names - slunk away sheepishly, and an eerie silence descended as the rest of us felt the shared shame of a fellow pupil being told off.

But that was our 17 minutes of flame. The chefs didn't trust us with the main course. Only Charles and Bill joined Giorgio, Frederico, Massimo and Pasquale to toil over sizzling pans of venison, matched with half moons of fried cream, porcini and radicchio with orange zest (that's my de-pithed julienne, right). Cries of "pronto, pronto" gave way to Anglo-Italian invective, culminating in an appeal to Locanda Locatelli's most famous customer - "Madonna".

Action Against Hunger raised more than £14,000 that night. Only Carluccio dared suggest he wouldn't make pumpkin risotto like that - he'd roast the pumpkin first and add sage leaves and olive oil. And I heard from some quarters that our Manchester banquet, all seven courses of it, compared rather well with Gordon Ramsay's.

For more about Restaurants Against Hunger's fundraising activities and Action Against Hunger's work alleviating malnutrition in 40 countries visit www.restaurantsagainsthunger.org