Dining high

Your vacation is officially launched from the time you find your seat inside the aircraft with a spacious overhead compartment and you are leafing through the in-flight magazine for movie titles and games.

If the seat next to yours remains vacant, expanding therefore your personal space, you’re in for a great time.

(Tip: Check in early so you can ask for the longer, roomier, front-cabin seats.)

You look out from your window and see suitcases being loaded into the belly of the plane followed by space-saving food carts. Air hostesses in their designer aprons push these ubiquitous carts and recite the usual dialogue: "Chicken or fish?" At times we hesitate because we want something that’s not on the menu and the common cry of fed-up passengers is: "Why can’t they serve something more appealing without losing the full flavor?"

Does anyone care to listen?

One fine Thursday afternoon, I met some people who do listen and were more than happy to face the firing line. I call them the "dining disciples in the sky," and yes, there are more than 12.

Hermann Freidanck, Singapore Air Lines’ manager for in-flight services, led us through a flow chart of how meals are planned, approved, cooked, food-tested, chilled and served. The entire process takes months of planning and flying around to consult chefs and wine connoisseurs from different continents in order to fine-tune the dishes and wine selection. This exercise is repeated every six months with new menus and wine selection each time.

Cooking for in-flight dining is similar in many ways to cooking at home – same menu planning, marketing, preparation (measuring and chopping of ingredients), boiling, frying, baking and finally garnishing and presentation – except…

1) Airline food is cooked and blast-chilled to preserve the original flavor and nutrients, and is stored in chillers to await the next immediate departing flight, while food cooked by mamma mia is served pronto – from the wok to the table – steaming and piping hot.

2) Airlines appoint a panel of international culinary experts and food critics to ensure that each chosen meal will appeal to a great majority of travelers. They keep in mind the we-aim-to-please policy, while back home, you can get stuck with a tyrant-cook who simply dictates, "Eat what’s on the table or else…"

3) At home, the cook may have mood swings and not practice food hygiene or could be ignorant of it. If the family suffers from digestive aches, the evidence may have been thrown away, so it’s hard to pinpoint where the contamination started.

Not in the airline kitchen. Like a clinical laboratory, they apply only tried-and-tested scientific methods for proper handling of food each time and all the time. Each ingredient is labeled, so a record or history is established. If a complaint is filed on an alleged case of food poisoning, the kitchen can easily trace where the so-called contamination originated and isolate it. They can retrace the process involved. They also conduct random sampling to ensure that all safety standards are met and the high quality is maintained.

4) Where you buy your ingredients (supplier or the market) could also be the cause of food poisoning with many private homes not vigilant about labeling ingredients for shelf life.

Not In The Airline Kitchen

Its outside suppliers pass through rigorous training and tests to ensure that hygienic standards are followed. (Some food items have actually been pre-washed, disinfected, and vacuum-packed following rigid regulations even before they are delivered to airline kitchens where they undergo further scrutiny).

5) At home, we can load the dining table with food until it groans from the weight of this abundant spread – pure indulgence, if you ask me.

Not The Airline

Obviously, what they can serve on board is restricted by space and weight.

Willy Riesen, the head chef and production manager of Singapore Airlines, explained further, "Cleanliness is practiced in every step of cooking and transport. In fact, regular audits are conducted by internal quality control experts using the Cold Medina Canadian Inspectors’ Guide, aside from following the standards of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point or HACCP."

Jun Bueno, a microbiologist by profession and manager of Quality and Technical Services of MacroAsia Eurest, the catering company used by Singapore Airlines (Singapore Airlines is a part-owner of this company, too), walked us through the clean facilities of their kitchen, but not before we were given a sanitized gown, a mob hat (like a shower cap), and were asked to wash our hands (in a knee-operated faucet) before finally being "groomed" by a quick brush with a lint remover to remove any speck of dust (and stray hair) on our shoulders.

Traffic inside the different sections of the kitchen, freezer/chiller, and storage complex was strictly one-way to avoid cross contamination. No one is allowed to turn around and retrace his steps.

A timeline is strictly followed so that everything needed to cook and complete the meals is mapped out efficiently. The time gap between cooking the food and loading it into the plane must be as short as possible. For those flights that require a longer waiting period, the food is kept in a hot-from-the-oven state by using the blast-chilling method.

Tomas Jämtander, general manager of the catering service, MacroAsia Eurest, has been in charge of this big kitchen and storage and warehouse facilities for more than eight years, and has kept the standards of the company consistent and uncompromising.

If you think tight wardrobe space is only tricky at home, try packing meals and amenities into tighter spaces onboard. This explains why meals and garnishing are packed in foil containers for easy loading into the airplane.

Once the plane has reached its desired altitude, the crew goes to work in the kitchen. The food and garnishing are taken out from their packed containers and are heated up in steamers or by custom-built stoves and ovens in the galley kitchen. Since food was blast-chilled earlier, it only takes a few minutes to revive meals to their fresh and edible state. They are then transferred to fine china following a strict plating guide (a photograph of the finished dish is pinned to the work area, and the stewardess replicates it to the last garnishing, be it parsley or asparagus tips).

When you fly first class or business class, you get the complete silver service treatment, which is like dining in a fine, three- or four-star rated Michelin restaurant in Europe: fine bone china, fancy flatware, starched linen, crystal glasses, and gourmet dishes washed down by premium wine, etc.

The highlight of this visit included a sneak preview of the new dishes that will be served next quarter in the first class and business class sectors. Be prepared to be dazzled by the following:

Appetizers:

Crab salad with sun-dried tomato in mango;

Duck liver terrine with smoked duck in plum dressing;

Prawns with pineapple; and,

Marinated scallop with fresh mango chives;

(My personal favorites were the duck liver terrine and the marinated scallop.)

Main courses:

Stir-fried seafood in XO sauce;

Braised herb chicken;

Stir-fried beef in oriental black pepper sauce; and

Grilled mahi-mahi with coriander butter.

(I recommend the stir-fried seafood in XO sauce and the grilled mahi-mahi.)

Dessert:

Warm apple strudel with cappuccino ice cream.

(Ah! This crusted fruit dessert is a toothsome trip to seventh heaven.)

For many of us flying coach (or economy), only the tried-and-tested, guaranteed-to-please recipes will be served onboard. I still have yet to hear anyone complain about Hainanese chicken rice or braised duck. They’re the classic dishes, full-flavored and always a reminder of meals prepared at home.

Aren’t you hungry yet?