What do you eat on aeroplanes? I try not to eat the in-flight meal because on most airlines, no matter what class you travel, the food ranges from ‘not very good’ to ‘truly disgusting’. It is not always the airlines’ fault (though most times it is); it is just that it is hard to make food manufactured in industrial quantities and then reheated in a basic aircraft oven many hours after it was cooked, taste good.
So, I usually refuse to eat it. Or if it is a long flight, I pack my own food. I have experimented with various kinds of packed meals before coming to the conclusion that there are only a few dishes that taste good cold.
(Also read: The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: Exploring the unique flavours of Sri Lankan cuisine beyond Indian influence )
Once upon a time I used to take a biryani on board, but this did not always yield the desired result. There were some happy moments, of course. On one Vistara flight many years ago, the cabin attendant noticed that I was eating cold biryani out of a packet and offered to reheat the meal. She took my biryani to the galley, warmed it and then plated it stylishly on Vistara crockery before returning it to me.
I must’ve taken over 100 Vistara flights after that and sadly, it never happened again and it remains the high spot of my years of travelling Vistara. I was so impressed by her consideration that I tweeted about it. Most people were as impressed as I was but some tedious aviation nerds and former airline personnel tweeted back that the attendant had committed a cardinal sin. Wasn’t it dangerous to put food from an unknown source into the oven? It could have contaminated the entire galley.
I had to fight back the urge to say “listen pal, if the galley can survive a flight kitchen meal, then it can survive anything, let alone biryani from Dum Pukht. “(No doubt the same guys would object to reheating milk for infants on board the aircraft on the same grounds.)
(Also read: The Taste by Vir Sanghvi: From rarity to ubiquity, transformation of luxury foods in today’s market )
Eventually, I gave up. After some more years of cold biryani, I finally settled on another kind of airline meal. If I am on an international flight, I take along a packet of salami and another one of good quality small-batch potato crisps. I drink the wine served on board with the salami and I am willing to bet that I have a more satisfying meal than most of my fellow passengers.
If I’m travelling on an airline where the wine is good then the salami and crisps can elevate the experience. But even on Thai Airways or Air india where the wine is very ordinary, the combination still works. (Air India does serve a reasonable champagne – Laurent Perrier – so caviar would be the perfect accompaniment but as the Rolling Stones have taught us, you can’t always get what you want.)
On shorter flights, only one dish really works as an in flight packed meal: The samosa.
Yes, I kid you not. I have eaten samosas in the skies over most continents. Most recently I had delicious Malabar chicken samosas packed for me by Kedar Bobde, the chef at the excellent Kochi hotel, the Grand Hyatt, where I had spent four days and they kept me going for the three hours it took to reach Delhi.
I don’t always get to eat Kerala samosas alas. But there are good samosas all over India. The Bangalore-Delhi flight (over 2 1/2 hours) is always made bearable because of the samosas from Anisa’s. You may have heard of Anisa’s Kitchen: It is a takeaway place that specialises in the food of the Memons, a microscopic Gujarati Muslim community that has some of the best non-vegetarian food in India but which most people (even Gujaratis who think our cuisine begins and ends with dhoklas ) have not heard of.
Anisa’s samosas are not your stodgy chaiwala samosas. They are like a cross between patties (or puffs) and what we normally think of samosas. The outside is so light and flaky that I actually had to ask if they were fried or baked. I was told that they were fried but that a lot of people had also asked the same question. They are filled with a spicy masala keema and have travelled the world with me.
It may just be parochialism but I have to assert that Gujarati samosas are nearly always better than the North Indian variety. All over Mumbai – if you know where to look – you will get what are called patti samosas made by the Bohras– yes, you guessed it – another microscopic Gujarati Muslim community with a great cuisine.
Even people who don’t know who the Bohras are or how delicious their food is love the samosas. Their defining characteristic is the patti that encases each samosa. This is so difficult to make properly that most restaurants buy their patti from specialists in Mumbai and then make the samosas with it. I recently had an excellent samosa in Hyderabad and when I asked if the patti was part of the city‘s traditional cuisine, I was told that they had ordered it from a Bohra specialist in Mumbai.
Patti samosas are small and crisp which means they deteriorate quicker than the stodgy Punjabi samosas we are familiar with in North India. If you intend to eat them on a flight, by which time they will probably be cold, you should buy them on the day of travel or ideally, shortly before you leave for the airport. You get vegetarian versions (I have even had a delicate samosa filled with sweet peas and French beans, or what the Gujaratis call phansi) but the real thing has to be made with keema.
I have nothing against stodgy samosas but my problem with most North Indian samosas is that the filling can be very boring. If you want to eat that kind of samosa on board – and it lasts longer than any of the Gujarati samosas because crispness is not a major factor – then head east. The Bengali shingara is a cousin of the North Indian samosa but has a much more interesting filling. I started eating shingaras in Calcutta when I worked there and I find that they make a more satisfying aeroplane meal. I’ve got so used to eating them on planes that even when I fly out of London, Sujoy Gupta, the Bengali chef at the Taj-run 51 Buckingham Gate/St. James’s Court complex packs a dozen for me to eat on the flight back to India.
There are other advantages to using samosas as your inflight meal. Even if you are not hungry enough to finish what you have packed for the flight, you can always eat them later.
I once packed a dozen of Anisa’s samosas for a flight to the Maldives from Bangalore. Of course, we couldn’t finish them on board so my wife and I sat by the lagoon that evening and ate them gazing at the clearest waters in the world.
You can reheat most samosas though not necessarily in an airline oven. You can’t microwave them because they will get soggy but a real oven will usually do the job. Thanks to the number of flights I take every year I’ve now got used to enjoying them cold . And even without being warm, they always taste better than the airline meal.
