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PHOTO: This photo of the dish, taken by Deanne Scott, is from my dining room, not the book.

IF YOU’VE ever flown at the front of the plane over the past year or so you’ll have experienced the difference in food quality. Airlines these days hire the world’s top chefs to create the menus which are cooked to first class restaurant quality. The days of cardboard sandwiches, even in economy, are long gone on international routes.
Singapore Airlines has a panel of 10 international celebrity chefs planning their meals and the airline has created a new cook book which can help you create gourmet meals in your own kitchen – and I mean gourmet!
The chefs include our own Matt Moran and English TV star Gordon Ramsay.
The other are: Georges Blanc, France’s three Michelin-starred chef who has culinary ancestry dating back to 1872:
Sanjeev Kapoor, one of India’s most famous celebrity chefs with a popular TV cookery programme, Khana Khazana;
Sam Leong, Singapore’s celebrity chef and winner of Asian Ethnic Chef of the Year in 2001, 2002, 2004 and 2009 from the World Gourmet Summit Awards of Excellence;
Yoshihiro Murata, Japan’s Michelin-honoured master in the culinary art of kaiseki;
Alfred Portale from the US, winner of James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef title in 2006;
Zhu Jun from China, well-known for his refreshing take on modern Chinese cuisine and the latest chef to join the Singapore Airlines’ ICP in April 2009;
Nancy Oakes, winner of the California Chef of the Year award from the James Beard Foundation Awards in 2001 and one of San Francisco’s most popular chefs (retired from the ICP in 2008);
Yeung Koon Yat from Hong Kong, whose name is synonymous with the art of preparing and cooking he abalone (retired from the ICP in 2008).
The book is called Above and Beyond: A Collection of Recipes from the Singapore Airlines International Culinary Panel, in which the chefs have contributed five recipes each that stretch from exotic starters and sweets to dishes that make your mouth water just looking at the ingredients.
How would you fancy double boiled apple soup with fish, pork and honeyed dates; or seared scallops and braised short ribs? or prawn-filled lotus root with warm vinegared rice parcels? or Matt Moran’s seared Australian lamb loin, salsa verde, Lyonnaise onion, aioli and crispy bacon? It is all so mouth-watering
I fancy myself as a bit of a cook and I thought I would try to create one of the dishes and test out the feasibility of the recipes. Some of them have ingredients not usually stocked in the larder and would mean a trip to the supermarket or oriental supermarket. For some of them though you’d need a Harrods’s food hall!
But I chose one in which I could use ingredients I had in stock plus a few bits and pieces from my garden. It was one of Georges Blanc’s chicken dishes called Bresse Chicken Fricassée flavoured with coconut and ginger served with turmeric rice. The ingredients were quite simple, butter, garlic onion, tomatoes, ginger, coconut milk, and cream with the basmati rice flavoured with salt and turmeric. I added carrots, kohl rabbi, and kale from the garden to add extra colour and flavours.
It took a bit of preparing, but it turned out to be fantastic. The directions were spot on down to the last second of cooking and millimetre or gram of ingredient. When it was eaten it was a piece of magic. The sauce was so good it really felt we were eating in dining room of a five-star hotel.
I was inspired and start to feel hungry just by remembering the taste of that sauce. It was just amazing. I intend to try out all the fifty recipes over time, the next on the list is Gordon Ramsay’s salmon rilllette with caviar, so we are set for some flavoursome evenings at my place.
The book itself is coffee table standard with colour plates, easy to understand recipes, notes about the chefs and even Included is a glossary of ingredients, complete with pictures, so domestic cooks can learn more about the various ingredients used in the recipes.
In addition there are five specially created menus in which various chefs’ dishes are matched to create a fantastic and very expensive looking three-course meal from starter to dessert. They are certainly something to impress special dinner guests.
Australian customers can purchase the cookbook for S$68.00 (approx A$56.55) online at www.krisshop.com (no delivery charges for purchases made on or before 31 December 2010) or from the KrisShop catalogue. For those travelling through Singapore, Above and Beyond can also be purchased through Times Newslink, Times Travel and Relay stores in Changi Airport.
Singapore Airlines will donate the net proceeds from the sale of the cookbook, accumulated from release until 31 December 2010, to Singapore’s Community Chest, a non-profit organisation that channels funds to assist the less advantaged in the community.
If you really want to cook like the legendary chefs this book will really help you do it.
www.absolutetheatre.com.au