THE CANNY COOK AUBERGINE WITH FETA AND POMEGRANATE
LOWER YOUR FOOD BILLS AND STILL EAT WELL WITH FOOD EDITOR ELEANOR MAIDMENT A good-looking vegetarian meal, best served with flatbreads or couscous
How do you make a dish feel more luxurious at little extra cost? Simple: add a garnish. If you think garnishes are superfluous additions that are reserved for fine-dining restaurants and fancy chefs, then I urge you to think again. They can undoubtedly elevate a home-cooked dish, adding a last-minute flurry of flavour, texture and colour.
Colour is such an important element to think about when serving food. We really do eat with our eyes, and having some variation on the plate will instantly
Adding a garnish makes a dish feel more luxurious
add appeal (not to mention the health benefits of eating the rainbow). A stew, casserole or chilli that looks a bit ‘brown’ can be lifted by a confetti of fresh herbs. Roasted nuts offer crunch and warm, toasty tones to salads and curries, while finely chopped spring onions ramp up flavour and colour in noodle and rice dishes. I also love to slice radishes finely to scatter over noodle soups or even a simple cheese on toast – their pop of pink and peppery bite really liven things up.
Perhaps my favourite garnish, though, is the jewel-like seeds of the pomegranate. Yes, they are a pain to extract, but they bring vibrancy, a burst of acidity and a welcome crunch to all manner of sweet and savoury dishes. In this week’s recipe they offer a flash of ruby-red charm to herby roasted aubergines, with salty feta cheese balancing out their sweetness.
METHOD Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/gas 6.
Line a large oven tray with parchment. Halve the aubergines lengthways and, with a sharp knife, cut a deep crisscross pattern in the flesh (taking care not to cut through the skin).
Place the aubergine halves
cut-side down on the parchment and bake for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix 6 tbsp olive oil with 3 crushed or finely grated garlic cloves.
Take the tray of aubergines out of the oven. Brush the skins all over with a little of the garlic oil and season with salt, then turn them cut-side up. Season the insides with salt and pepper, then brush with the remaining garlic oil,
trying to get into the cuts as much as you can. Sprinkle ½ tsp zaatar over each aubergine half. Return the tray to the oven for 35-40 minutes or until the aubergines are golden and tender.
Allow to cool for at least 5 minutes before showering with pomegranate seeds and crumbled feta. Some shredded mint leaves and toasted pine nuts or flaked almonds add extra crunch and colour, too.
Even by luxury hotel standards, it’s impressive. Vivaldi is playing in the lounge. In the bedrooms, the pillows you requested have been plumped. In the en-suite bathrooms, silk pyjamas are laid out. In the dining room there’s a platter of caviar and fresh seafood, a bottle of your favourite vintage champagne on ice.
And the space? This is the cabin of a private Airbus A320neo. About the same size as a Ryanair plane.
And Vanessa Williams, 35, is one of three flight attendants on it.
‘You might have 19 passengers turn up on a stag do who want to party the whole time and smoke and drink beers nonstop,’ she says.
‘Or you could have a Muslim family who want to pray at certain times and aren’t eating anything because they’re fasting.’ Passengers are often chauffeur-driven directly to the door of the plane, with passport checks performed on board. For the duration of the flight, their every whim will be catered for. They probably won’t even experience turbulence because private jets can fly higher than commercial – around 42,000ft rather than 35,000ft – meaning they often miss bumpy patches.
Despite the glamour, some pilots and flight attendants say they feel under pressure to take risks to keep private-jet clients happy. Harry, 41, is a pilot who used to fly for a major private jet company and now works for British Airways. ‘There’s a constant expectation that you’ll turn a blind eye,’ he says. ‘I watched some guys take off from a mountain airport in the Alps with only one engine working so that they could get the plane fixed and return in time to pick up the owner. For some clients there’s no such thing as “No”.’
Sounds dangerous? It can be downright death-defying: ‘A friend was flying some Albanian passengers and one of them got into a fight with his bodyguard. Guns were pulled out,’ he says. ‘The pilots had to depressurise the aircraft [lowering the pressure in the cabin and so reducing the oxygen levels] to knock them out,’ says Harry. ‘When they landed, the pilots blamed it on a leaky outflow valve.’
Guests have sky-high expectations. ‘We have high-speed wifi on board, but there’s a patch over the Atlantic where you’re in between satellites and it always cuts out,’ says Williams. ‘We had these crypto guys on board all constantly on their laptops and when we lost the internet they were going crazy. They were shouting: “Get us back online! We’ve got money to make!” but there was nothing I could do.’
That said, private flight attendants are well compensated – they earn between €60,000 and €115,000 a year depending on experience (compared to the €30,000 average of a commercial flight attendant). They also receive tips, both cash and gifts. ‘I’ve been given a beautiful Gucci handbag,’ says Williams.
‘My friends who work in the Middle East get given luxury bags all the time.’ The uniforms are also a step up from Ryanair. ‘We wear smart Reiss suits and an Hermès scarf,’ she says. ‘There’s no polyester in sight.’
Some clients just want to be left alone. ‘There are a few passengers who come on board and won’t make eye contact or will only communicate with you through an assistant,’ Williams says. ‘Once we had Russian passengers who boarded with some young French girls. They had a big bottle of vodka and let’s just say they didn’t want to be disturbed.’
Sex at 42,000ft? ‘The music was loud and the doors were closed the whole time,’ says Williams. ‘What happens on board stays on board.’