Imperative cooking: flying with the lower classes
IMPERATIVE COOKS do not eat airline food. On short flights, they eat nothing. On long ones, they take their own food.
A nine-hour flight surely deserves some raw oysters or mussels, a few large prawns in ceviche, followed by a plate of mixed charcuterie, then a cold pheasant, salad, fruit and cheese. With five to eight hours you might consider something very simple: anchovies, potatoes, tomatoes and tuna in lots of olive oil, jellied eels, Gorgonzola and a few grapes.
One reason for self-provisioning is that airline food is generally disgusting. There's a sort of damp marshy smell which starts to pervade the cabins as the first chicken or beef aluminium packets are broken open, and the passengers squabble when one runs out. The squabbling gets worse as someone indignantly complains that he, more usually she, is sure, well nearly sure, she ordered a vegetarian option when the tickets were booked in Ipswich for Disneyland and now she hasn't got it.
Vegetarians complain in a particularly nauseatingly self-righteous way. Not only has their rightful 'option' been denied but a corrupting alternative is being offered them. Ten to one the reasons are not reli- gious. Why the airlines bother to cater for them, I don't know. They are only 1 per cent of the population and a changing 1 per cent at that.
The other reason to take your own is that you can have a drawn-out meal that you have balanced and organised. A good hour or two can be whiled away as you open the mussels, put a little wine vinegar on, slurp them, pull off a little bread, have a glass or two of white, toy with the ceviche, compare the different saucissons, gaze at the squab- blers, offer your pouting vegetarian neigh- bour a splodge of rillette, down some red, carve the pheasant, mix the salad and linger over the fruit and cheese. And it will be two hours of your choosing, selected to put you on a different rhythm from the canaille and leaving you free to go to the lavatory when they are all occupied eating their ersatz whips.
Until recently this Imperative advice applied chiefly to economy passengers. There are now warnings that Club class Spectator readers should take their own grub. British Airways, an otherwise excel- lent airline, has for some time been saying odd things about food, going on about something it calls 'well-being' and offering `lighter' and 'healthier' menus. Now, in its High Life magazine, it is threatening a new regime. Not only will the Club passenger be able `to opt ... for the lighter option', but if he, stupid fool, can't tell whether he is hun- gry or not and makes a mistake, he can have a later snack. Each passenger will have 'a "larder" to raid as and when the "munchies" strike'. On longer journeys, these will be stocked up with such things as `pies' and 'treats'. 'The idea is to "make yourself at home".' So the extensive menus, of which BA claims to be so proud, 'can be enjoyed from start to finish or just be dab- bled in here and there, now and then'.
Now, this dabbling is the eating of a child, a spoilt and distinctly oikish child. The elaborate Imperative self-catered din- ner is of course designed to get away from a formula, but it is not designed to free the individual to dabble. On the contrary, it imposes a stronger discipline in both prepa- ration and eating. This is because Impera- tive cooks know, and most gentlemen, even ones who do not cook at all, know, that pleasure and taste depend on discipline. The Dabbler's Charter is quite the opposite of this. It is an oik's charter.
It is not, however, BA's fault. I am quite sure it has done its market research thor- oughly. It has surely found that its Club class passengers are indecisive infants who this moment go for lighter options and the next decide to snack up. They are obviously persons drawn from the social classes who understand, perhaps even talk themselves, about 'munchies striking'. In their own homes, we must presume, these persons who pay, or who are paid, to travel at tick- ets costing thousands of pounds, pass the day and night indulging individual whims `to raid the larder' and satisfy the craving of the moment 'here and there, now and then'.
If the truth be told, the best reason for travelling in superior classes was not the food — as we see Imperative cooks manage quite well themselves. It was to get away from the people in economy class. It was to have a little more room and privacy and be with gentler and more refined people. Now that it is clear that the upper classes are full of munchers, dabblers and larder-raiders, the last good reason for buying a Club class ticket has gone.
Digby Anderson
`I'm afraid 1 need my coin for my scratchcard.'
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