The Flight Kitchen – Part 1: Four Hundred Trays

"Four hundred trays by dawn," said Tomas.

"Is that a lot?" said Amira.

"It is a normal night."

She stared at the vast, brightly lit kitchen, a steel-and-tile cavern humming with ovens and extractor fans, where fifty cooks in white jackets and hairnets moved through a roar of clashing pans. Trolleys rattled. Trays of food gleamed on long conveyor belts. A clock on the wall said 1:10 a.m. The smell was extraordinary: roasting lamb, cumin, charred peppers, warm bread.

She was thirty, a new chef, small and quick, in a crisp white jacket that was a size too big, with her dark hair under a net and a notebook in her pocket. Tomas, thirty-five, the sous-chef, was tall and broad, with kind grey eyes behind safety glasses, a thick moustache and the weary, unflappable air of a man who had packed ten thousand trays. He held a clipboard.

"You do the mezze," he said. "I do the mains. We meet at the pass."

"What if I get it wrong?"

"Nobody dies. Mostly."

She laughed, in spite of her nerves, and set to work. She pitted olives, rolled vine leaves, piped hummus, with the quick precision of a surgeon. The tray after tray slid down the line. At two, a runner appeared with a sheet of paper and a stricken face.

"The dates!" he said. "The consignment of dates for the business class. They did not arrive."

"How many?"

"Two thousand."

Tomas swore, softly, in several languages. Amira thought for exactly four seconds.

"Where are the dried apricots?" she said. "And the walnuts? And do we have honey?"

"Of course."

"Then give me a blender."

She improvised a sweet stuffed apricot: soft, glossy, rolled in crushed pistachio, with a dab of honey and a pinch of cardamom. She made six hundred in thirty minutes. Tomas tasted one. His eyebrows rose.

"That is better than the date."

"It's the cardamom."

"It is the chef."

"Can I ask you something?" said Amira, at the pass, at five.

"Yes."

"Is it always like this?"

"Green?" said Tomas, with a tired grin, a tray, a light.

"Green," said Amira, flushed. "Very green. What's next?"

Continue the story: Part 2 – Last Plane.