The Malaysiafiles: Part 2- Aeroplane Food

Dun dun dun.

Outgoing

Dinner:

Nasty, nasty olive potato pepper salad, school dinners chicken and gravy and mass concoction with weirdly posh but overcooked romanesco cauliflower, surprisingly good Victoria sponge and obligatory cheese + crackers + roll + butter. My God though, that salad... the memory of how it tasted will stay with me for quiet a while.

Breakfast:

Fruit (can't go wrong with fruit), yogurt, nasty-looking but actually pleasant nasi lemak and a croissant boulder. I could have knocked someone out with that croissant.

There was also a sandwich snack after the stopover at Kuala Lumpur, but I didn't much feel like photoing a sandwich. It looked and tasted like a sandwich.

Return

What I thought was dinner:

Curried weirdly uniform cubes of some white fish or another (cod or coley I thought). I thought it was weird that it didn't come with the obligatory roll and dessert, but I was too tired to care. The curry was surprisingly good.

Actual dinner:

After the Kuala Lumpur stopover and once we got on the plane for the longest part of our flight, they rolled out the food- to my dismay. But we'd already eaten! There was a pretty inoffensive sweetcorn salad, crackers and cheese... lord knows what the main was, I can't even remember. Something that started off as being chicken and then went horribly wrong, I think. Also, I had never met a cheesecake I didn't like until this meal: the cheesecake was like an old, dry bathroom sponge. Very disappointing for a dessert enthusiast.

Breakfast:

The usual yogurt and fruit (covered by the foil in a fit of jetlagged pique), along with another boulder of croissant, plus an alright omelet, alright chicken sausage, inoffensive vegetables and soggy potato things. By now I was so zombified by the flight back west that I could barely taste anything, anyway.

Overall Verdict

On average, it all tasted exactly how it looked.

Such a shame every holiday has to end this way- at least, when you're flying 'cattle class'. In any case, I had a very good enough innings during my time in Malaysia- which you have caught a glimpse of in Part 1... and there is more to come.

The Australiafiles: Part 2- Aeroplane Food

I wanted to blog about other more interesting things, but I really don't want to leave aeroplane food until last- so let's just get this over with, shall we?

Before I start, I'll admit that I was impressed with the quality of the food mains on the outgoing flight. Homecoming, not so much.

Outgoing meal 1: Red wine lamb stew with mash and veggies

Cons: It literally looked like a dog's dinner.

Pros: It actually tasted really good, the mash was done just right, as were the veggies- and the lamb was tender and lean. Go figure.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (untouched- too much stodge), salad starter, a bit of cheese and crackers and Singapore Sling flavour ice cream (we were flying with Singapore Airlines since we stopped over at Singapore Changi airport)

Outgoing meal 2: Pan-fried fish wish pesto velouté, potatoes and Mediterranean veggies

Cons: The veggies were disgusting- mushy and weirdly sour.

Pros: The fish was awesome and not overcooked, the potatoes were actually cooked through and, to my surprise, the velouté was actually a velouté and not some random sauce that they decided to call a velouté to make it sound fancier.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (again, untouched), potato salad starter, a bit of cheese and crackers and a Cornetto (I freaking love Cornettos so I was pretty happy).

Breakfast happened at some point when I was too exhausted to properly note (we travelled for 24 hours and I didn't sleep for one of them), and involved an omelette, chicken sausage, some fruit somewhere, a pot of yogurt and a banana muffin. And the standard bread roll and butter (again untouched), with a bit of jam to make it more breakfast-y. I may have used the jam on the muffin.

Homecoming meal 1: Beef and stirfried noodles.

Stirfried my arse. Sorry, no more pictures, I was shattered for the whole journey back and sat like a zombie for most of it. But I remember no pros with this meal. None at all. The noodles tasted like instant, the beef was tough and slimy, and that's all I can remember. So I just stuck with the pasta starter and standard cheese and crackers (again giving the roll a wide berth). Dessert was another Cornetto, so at least I was a happy zombie by the end of it.

Homecoming meal 2: Fish curry with rice

Cons: It was spicy enough to make my nose run- make everyone's noses run. Not pleasant when you're stuck in a crowded tin can several thousands of feet up in the air. It also looked a bit like pet food (again).

Pros: It was worth it- the fish was tempura-ed and the curry sauce was good, and the rice was neither soggy nor chewy.

Came with: Standard bread roll and butter (ignored), salad starter, cheese and crackers and chocolate mousse cake.

Homygosh the chocolate mousse cake. I really did want to photo it but it wasn't really presented well- sort of crammed into its container- but it was the kind with three thin layers of light chocolate sponge, with chocolate mousse in between, and glazed with a glossy chocolate ganache.

Breakfast was obligatory noodles. I would have chosen the omelette option after my previous noodle let-down, but it ran out way before the trolley got to me. The noodles were again awful. But the fruit salad was nice, as was the return of the banana muffin and jam. The bread roll and butter were, again, lonely and abandoned. There was also cereal, but I think I drank the milk, forgot about the actual cereal part, and went back into zombie state.

That's pretty much it.