Aerodynamics

So Air India, here I am with my baggage.

The head chef of Taj Catering, Satish Arora, is already in the middle of putting together a test platter for the next Air India festival. He offers me a chocolate stuffed with saunf8212;not as interesting as the prospect of unearthing why airline food smells. 8216;8216;It makes a difference when a chef is on board to take the orders, when you don8217;t get food tailor-made for just this one flight. It reassures the passenger,8217;8217; says Arora.

That might8217;ve made a difference, I think to myself as I get ready for my job as assistant chef.

The gear arrives on a plate8212;a white, dry-cleaned coat, a pair of fresh, disposable gloves and a cap. Minus accessories and cellphone and with hair neatly tied under the hat, I follow the chef. The large corridors are punctuated with plastic doors through which there are more men and women dressed like me their mouths are covered too, in the thick of the gourmet process. Except for the collective bustle of various kitchen sounds, I could8217;ve been inside a giant biology laboratory. Hand disinfectants, freezers of different sizes and degrees of cooling, frozen knives and forceps8212;these 1,000-odd people looked like they were on the verge of the next breakthrough in genetics. 8216;8216;The safety factor is our priority, so the cooking process goes through various levels of freezing, right from cutting the ingredients to packing,8217;8217; says Arora.

I8217;m going to assist chef Perreira with today8217;s dessert8212;Strawberry Parfait, topped with fresh strawberry and served with fresh cream and Pepper Kulfi. The meal kitchens prohibit outsiders, and I can only watch the team make Leg of Lamb Bedford, Avocado Lobster and Sungta Si Kodi through the detachable plastic doors plastic, because they8217;re washed and disinfected every day.

The waft of fresh chocolate batter hits me as we enter The Chocolate Room. My job is to carve the already cooled soft souffle into round portions, buttress their sides with an intricate chocolate net, blast cool it and serve it on a plate the way chef Perreira is planning to serve on board.

The carving is the easy bit. Having designed the net on butter paper, I place the round parfait on a revolving iron plate and stick the butter paper as the plate moves around. 8216;8216;You have two seconds to place it inside the blast cooler,8217;8217; the chef tells me. After a minute of blast cooling, my intricate design is fortified; it then goes into a

5deg; C freezer until being transported in a 10deg; C catering bus to the flight pantry. In the meantime, the pepper kulfi is being frozen in 0deg; temperature. I fill the separate compartments of the enormous dessert tray with fresh cream cones, pepper kulfis, sliced strawberries and the finished parfait and put them back on a huge refrigerator to be whisked away two hours before departure.

A guided tour through the corridor of the meal and salad kitchens ends my three hours at Taj Stats and Catering. All the while, my belief that airline food is stale begins to dispel. Yet, I can8217;t fathom why, for a flight that takes off at five in the morning, meals have to be ready nine hours in advance. Chef Perreira reasons, 8216;8216;It8217;s the science of preserving food without using chemical preservatives. About five hours before we load the food into the air-conditioned van, we shift the meals to a slightly higher temperature so that there8217;s no drastic fluctuation in the temperature when they8217;re out

of the kitchen. You have to treat them like babies.8217;8217;

By the time I8217;m out of the kitchen area, my hands, despite being gloved, are as stiff as burnt toast.

I8217;m almost convinced that despite sleepy breaths and foil wrappers, my Strawberry Parfait is going to taste good at 32,000 feet, even 12 hours after lying inside a smokey, whizzing freezer. The only thing infectious in this hi-tech kitchen is the staff8217;s paranoia about serving safe food.