The duel for the crown
Alpha Flight Services' Niall Gordon is baffled by the amount of attention he has received since winning the 1998 International Indian Chef of the Year title earlier this year. Not only has he been besieged by journalists and asked to make promotional appearances for British Airways - Alpha Flight Services (AFS) supplies all the in-flight catering for British Airways' Gatwick flights - but he has become quite a celebrity at his five-year-old son's school, where teachers have been asked by the proud Gordon Jnr to read out press releases about his clever dad.
"I was being slightly cocky when I entered the competition," says 30-year-old Gordon, who has been a chef de partie with AFS at Gatwick for three years. He entered the competition with his colleague Vasudev Vaidya, who finished second, and says: "I wanted to get back into competitions and thought I may as well throw myself in at the deep end."
The brief for the International Indian Chef of the Year competition, which is in its eighth year, was to create a menu of two main dishes and two vegetarian side dishes. Gordon's menu comprised fennel and bay-roasted flounder with hot tamarind sauce, aromatic steamed chicken filled with coriander, coconut and chilli rice, fried potatoes with mustard seed and garlic, broccoli and dahl fritter with spiced ginger pickle and sesame, and a dessert of passion fruit and mango sabayon.
"I tried to go slightly off the beaten track when creating my menu," Gordon explains. "I broke it down and practised one dish at a time." He could not make any major changes to his dishes following his practice session because the recipes had been submitted to the judges. "It was more a case of refining the dishes," he says.
Nervousness set in the night before the final, which took place at Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh, on 27 February and for which Gordon had to come up with a dessert in addition to his four other dishes. "It may sound rather perverse," he says, "but I spent a good few hours in the kitchen that night massaging the chicken I was going to use, to make it tender."
Gordon was the only non-ethnic finalist selected from a total of 2,800 entrants and was surprised to gain a place in the final. "I did wonder if my entry might be put to one side," he says. "The other finalists seemed surprised but they were very generous and said I deserved to win."
The prize was £1,000 and a crystal bowl, and Gordon hopes his success may encourage other non-ethnic chefs to try their hand at ethnic competitions. "I'll enter the competition again next year," he says. "I may even try for Chinese Chef of the Year if there is such a thing."
It was only Gordon's second competition, but his success has fuelled his ambition and he plans to enter some classes at Hotelympia 2000.
His interest in Indian food started at an early age. "I grew up with Indian-style food because my father travelled abroad as part of his job with Customs and Excise and was an excellent cook," he says. He has developed his own style of Indian cooking, which he accepts some people might not class as traditional Indian cuisine. "I use all the core ingredients," he says, "but with a twist."
Although menus are mostly European at AFS, where Gordon starts preparing meals for first class at 5am, he is pleased to see curry growing in favour. "People want food with the strength of character that Indian food has," he says.
This belief was tested on a recent two-and-a-half-day trip to Bermuda in conjunction with British Airways and the Bermuda tourist board. "It was the inaugural flight of BA's 777 plane, with travel writers and journalists on board," he says, "and I was invited in my capacity as International Indian Chef of the Year." Gordon cooked a selection of dishes from his winning menu and went along to help the cabin crew serve the meals.
Although in the long term Gordon could see himself in a training role, for the moment he is happy with his career the way it is. "It's definitely right for me," he says. "I'll always be in whites - I just don't see myself doing anything else."
