Flight stimulators
Close to Junction 14 of the M25 motorway lies a warren of subterranean kitchens in which a small army of some 60 chefs, plus numerous porters and catering assistants, are hard at work cooking a range of dishes they hope would do a top West End restaurant proud.
In the Oriental kitchen, dishes such as semur daging (braised beef in soya sauce with stir-fried vegetables and steamed rice) and stir-fried prawns with macadamia nuts, vegetables and ee-fu noodles are being prepared. Meanwhile, along the corridor in the Western kitchen, roast loin of venison with pan gravy, vegetables and potatoes is under construction, along with cassoulet and spaghetti with chicken and tomato.
But what happens before all these dishes are ready to be served is enough to reduce many a grown restaurant chef to tears. They are whipped from the stove and thrust into a giant blast chiller, where they are greeted by temperatures of 2-3°C. Then they are divided up into individual servings, loaded on to trolleys and made to wait for a few hours before being transported to Heathrow Airport and on to one of Singapore Airlines' services to Asia. Somewhere several thousand feet above eastern Europe they will ultimately be reheated, served and consumed.
UKcontractor The man in charge of the subterranean kitchens is Henrik Jensen, executive chef of International Catering Limited (ICL), which has held Singapore Airlines' UK catering contract - worth some £5m-£6m a year in turnover - for the past seven years.
Jensen himself trained in hotel and restaurant kitchens and moved into airline catering 20 years ago, so has a clear understanding of the contrast between the two types of operation.
"There's one major difference between us and restaurant kitchens. Where, for example, Gordon Ramsay can cook a dish and serve it within seconds, we will make a wonderful dish and then have to chill it so it can be reheated mid-flight and eaten several hours later," he says. "This process means it's very difficult to achieve the quality we want and to keep the airline and its international culinary panel [see page 46] happy."
From experience and endless trial and error Jensen knows that not all dishes that are possible in restaurant kitchens can be reproduced for in-flight meals. For instance, salmon in hollandaise sauce is a no-go. "A pure butter sauce like hollandaise cannot work, because the reheating process makes the sauce become like scrambled egg. Similarly, old-fashioned roux sauces don't work, because the sauce gets thicker during regeneration. We have to use corn starch or potato starch for sauces, because they reheat much better."
Sometimes such constraints mean having to reach a compromise with members of Singapore Airlines' international culinary panel, Jensen reveals. "When we first started working with Georges Blanc his recipes were very complex, requiring classical preparation and sauce reductions, making them very difficult to adapt for an airline. But he came here and we presented him with lots of dishes, we discussed what could work, and it ended very successfully. He understood that he had to be flexible, too, because of our constraints."
However, having the involvement of famous chefs is useful, Jensen is quick to add. For a start, it is motivating for members of his brigade to see what goes on in Michelin-starred restaurants. "When Gordon Ramsay joined the panel I went to his kitchen with a couple of chefs from here, because he wanted to make sure we understood how he wanted the dishes to be. That was really interesting and worked very well. Now, if I have a question about a dish, I can call him and ask him about it."
Jensen also points out that Singapore Airlines and its international culinary panel's determination to push the boundaries with catering reaps rewards. Recent service awards have included being named the most admired airline by Fortune magazine, scooping the title of Best Airline to Asia in the 2002 Travel Weekly Globe Awards, and being voted number one for customer service by the UK's Institute of Customer Service (for more on Singapore Airlines' accolades, visit the Web site, www.singaporeair.com).
What's more, further innovation is being implemented by the airline. Owing to increased competition in the business-class segment of the market, passengers in Singapore Airlines' Raffles (business) class are beginning to be served meals worthy of the first-class cabin only a few years ago. "All ingredients for main courses for Raffles passengers are now being loaded in individual foils," explains Jensen.
"This means they are reheated separately and then assembled on the plate by the crew, rather than everything being reheated together in a single foil as was the case in the past.
"Some airlines are more demanding about what they want from us than others, and I can say that Singapore is very demanding - they consider the food element of their service to be very important."
Singapore Airlines' Book the Cook service
Passengers travelling in Raffles (business) and first-class cabins on Singapore Airlines' aircraft are offered the opportunity of using the innovative Book the Cook service, whereby they are allowed to choose their main course before departure from a more extensive menu than is possible in-flight. Orders can be placed from several weeks to 24 hours before the flight.
Many of the dishes in the Book the Cook range are designed by members of the airline's international culinary panel, with examples in Raffles including Oriental five spice duck with plum sauce, Mediterranean barbecued noisette of lamb, and salmon and smoked haddock fish cakes. Meanwhile, in first class, a passenger might be able to preorder the likes of honey-roast duck breast with baked English apples, or pan-fried veal loin with truffled mashed potatoes, or baked barramundi fillet in banana leaf.
Frequent flyers with Singapore Airlines are given a Book the Cook booklet that includes descriptions of all the dishes on offer and several faxable booking forms for preordering dishes before flights.
Singapore Airlines' international culinary panel
Singapore Airlines employs eight leading chefs from around the world on a consultancy basis to help it offer international cuisine of the best possible quality. The members of this international culinary panel are:
Satish Arora - director of food production, the Taj group of hotels, India
Georges Blanc - chef-patron of restaurant Georges Blanc in Vonnas, France
David Burke - executive chef and partner of the Park Avenue Café, New York, USA
Yoshihiro Murata - chef-proprietor of Kiku No I in Kyoto, Japan
Nancy Oakes - chef-proprietor at Boulevard restaurant, San Francisco, USA
Gordon Ramsay - chef-proprietor of Gordon Ramsay and Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's restaurants in London
Dietmar Sawyere - chef-proprietor of restaurant Forty-One, Sydney, Australia.
Yeung Koon Yat - the chef behind the Ah Yat Abalone Forum restaurants in Hong Kong, Singapore and China
How Singapore Airlines runs its UK catering operation
Phillip Parker, senior catering officer for Singapore Airlines in the UK, is based at International Catering's (ICL)headquarters near Heathrow.
He explains that Singapore Airlines' head office in Singapore carries out the forward planning of menus and then sends them over to the UK to be implemented. "Henrik and I then get together and look at what we're being asked for and discuss how the dishes can be made to work in the UK. About 90% of head office's suggestions are fine, but we'll make a few changes according to the ingredients we can source here and the cost of them."
He continues: "Henrik then goes away and produces the dishes, and about a month later we'll get together for a tasting, where we'll be analysing the appearance, portion size, flavour and cost of each dish."
On an ongoing basis Parker then ensures that the quality and quantity of dishes is just as his airline wants them by doing daily random checks in the ICL kitchens.
New menus are introduced on board the aircraft four times a year, with the main courses served in Raffles and first class also changing within each three-month menu cycle, says Parker.
"In addition, we offer special meals to children, diabetics, vegetarians, those with food allergies, etc. We tend to get requests for about 20 such meals on every flight."
International Catering
International Catering Limited (ICL) is, in fact, owned by Japan Airlines, but its Heathrow operation also holds contracts with Singapore Airlines, Finnair, Varig Brazilian Airlines, Thai Airways and Korean Air and it also produces the sushi served by British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
In total, ICL's Heathrow site produces some 6,000 meals a day, although this can rise to 10,000 during the summer.
The Singapore Airlines contract involves preparing about 2,000 meals daily.
Sample dishes from Singapore Airlines' in-flight menus
Economy class
Smoked fish cheesecake
Smoked beef with sun-dried tomatoes and mesclun salad with mustard dressing
Grilled fish fillet with tomato-herb sauce, vegetables and potatoes
Wok-fried chicken in sesame oil and ginger, braised bean curd with vegetables and chicken rice
Soya bean pudding with longans
Ice-cream
Raffles (business class) Lobster, abalone and crab meat with salad cream
Mesclun with assorted smoked seafood and asparagus
Cheese-crusted New Zealand lamb rack with aubergine pur‚e, rosemary-scented lentils and potatoes
Sesame bagel with smoked tuna and cream cheese, pickled dill cucumber
Coconut milk pudding with green chendol and sweet corn
Vanilla ice-cream with raspberry coulis
First class
Satay with onion, cucumber and spicy peanut sauce
Chilled malossol caviar with melba toast
Sliced smoked goose breast with Waldorf salad
Oriental soup with bamboo piths and snow fungus
Purée of artichoke soup
Pan-fried sea bass fillet in vanilla velouté, buttered spinach and new potatoes
Indian chicken curry with potato, cauliflower, braised spiced lentils and kesari pilaf
Lemon sorbet on almond tuile with mango salad in Japanese plum wine
