A plate is a Chefs canvas. He paints it as an art form and displays his creativity and innovative instincts. Various techniques and methods are employed along with the use of various colors, edible flowers, molecular gastronomic tricks and what not.<\/p>\n
“We eat first with our eyes” goes the age old adage.<\/p>\n
It is easy to go over board and beyond in a restaurant where there is à la carte style service and each plate is charged at a price the meal deserves. However, the challenges that chefs in bulk catering industry vis-a-vis airline catering industry face are very different.<\/p>\n
Consumers still want that fancy plate or a colorful salad at a price that would put a McDonald burger to shame. Financial pressures force airlines to cut their food budgets. Price of a meal is a fraction of the entire offering, which is a minuscule part of the total fare.<\/p>\n
Still, the focus of the entire journey is the food. People look forward to the food on board the aircraft. The menu is discussed at length, choice of ingredients, cooking styles and the presentation.<\/p>\n
A picture of the meal on board has become the norm, usually being posted on a social media site. Following this trend and widely discussed topic, food becomes focal point of all the airlines. During a menu selection exercise each component of the meal is chosen with great detailed pondered over by a team of experts, nutritionists, dieticians, culinary chefs and Airline representatives. Each will have his or her agenda to meet, ranging from nutrition to eye appeal to price of the meal.<\/p>\n
Higher altitudes alter the taste and texture of food, the way the taste buds react. Food may taste dry and tasteless, because of the pressurized cabin. The ability to sense salt and sweet drops by about a third<\/p>\n
In such circumstances, Airline Chefs come up with innovative ways to meet these challenges.<\/p>\n
Further Airline chefs face another typical problem. The meal is served in a small bowl or a dish which has to fit in the designated slot hence the limitation of space comes in to play. You can not actually place large garnishes, big chocolate twirls or similar items which may not fit onto the trolley slots where the meal trays are stacked.<\/p>\n
Low-cost garnishes, artistically cut fruits well-manicured plates and colorful ingredients, intelligent use of garnishing techniques help us reach the goal.<\/p>\n
Presentation of the food begins much before it is cooked – tied a piece of roast in a specific manner or Frenching a cut of meat enhances how it will look after being cooked. For example, a simple salad of salmon gets a new dimension just by sprinkling paprika over it, or addition of chives or a dill sprig strategically placed over the salmon.<\/p>\n
A bland dish may call for a herb or spice garnish, which enhances the flavor of the similarly<\/p>\n
contrasting colors and textures are usually good ways to garnish an airline meal and finally strategically arranging the garnish may bring the best out of your dish.<\/p>\n
A salad may be jazzed up by a simple addition of micro greens or pumpkin and sun flower seeds which add another dimension to the dish.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A plate is a Chefs canvas. He paints it as an art form and displays his creativity and innovative instincts. Various techniques and methods are emp<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-expert-view"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thechefsarena.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}