Chef Profile: Elaine Frances, Private Plane Chef
The Chef: Elaine Frances, Executive Chef, Global Aviation, Hillsboro, Oregon.
Frances caters meals for the crew and passengers of private airplanes, working from a professional catering kitchen built in one of the hangars.
The Job: Because her niche is so unusual, I asked Elaine about the specifics of her work. First, how does she determine which dishes to make? “Sometimes flight attendants will call me up with suggestions or ask me for ideas, although they often already know what their passengers like,” she says. “Sometimes I provide them with menus. I like to make dishes that are seasonal and local.” What’s a typical menu? “Last week, I prepared salmon with an herb compound butter and berry shortcakes. People coming through Oregon want Oregon foods.”
She typically prepares enough food for two pilots and one to ten guests, though she’s also catered meals for sports teams, which can be up to 40 people.
Her Tools: “I go through a lot of colanders and ice baths, because food needs to be cooked and shocked,” she says. “The refrigerator is really important because I have to chill things superfast for food safety and quality.” She also relies on a salamander, a commercial broiler, to help sear meat.
Cooking Tools on a Plane: Basically, microwaves and small ovens. “Flight attendants on private planes tend to have a lot more training than on public jets,” she says. “Passengers expect to eat the same way they eat in a fine-dining restaurant, and flight attendants need to know what’s in the food as well as how to sauce, plate, and garnish.”
Strange Requests: Before moving to Oregon, she also worked in Seattle as a private plane chef. “Once I got a call at midnight because the clients flying out the next day wanted caviar, Champagne, and down pillows, but there was no way for me to get it last minute,” she says.
Pillows? “Yes, because if you call a private-plane caterer in New York or LA, they’ll get you anything you want.”
Cooking Tips: “You can’t cook the food all the way,” she explains. “I cook it part way, so that when it’s reheated on the plane it comes out perfect. So I send a filet mignon to the plane that’s basically raw, just seared a little. I include written instructions on the outside of the container so the flight attendants know how to cook it to temperature on board.”
Her You’re Kidding, Right? Tool: “I get a lot of my tools from the toolboxes of the mechanics who work at the airport, like pliers, for picking bones out of fish,” she says. At the same time, the mechanics also borrow from her toolbox. A particular favorite: flour and cornstarch. “After they polish an airplane, they sprinkle flour on it and all of the greasy polishing residue comes off,” she explains.
Her Holy Grail Tool: “I’d like a Hobart commercial food processor, because I use my Cuisinart home model 25 times a day and I’m always nervous that it’s going to break,” she says. “Plus a Vitamix. I do a lot of pureeing with my stick blender, and a Vitamix would be great.”
