Flights of fancy

I was first introduced to Oliver Twist as a 10-year-old up in the air aboard a British Airways flight in the late 1980s. The genial flight attendant (or air hostess as they were called in those politically incorrect days!) with twinkling blue eyes likened me to the Dickensian character as she gently set down a second helping of one of the evening’s main courses on to my tray. Just moments before, I had said to her, “Please ma’am, I want some more,” as I polished off a rather scrumptious portion of beef wellington. I had never experienced anything as complexly constructed before. Succulent slabs of moist, pink meat anointed with an earthy-tasting mushroom duxelle, cloaked in a gossamer thin crêpe, then further ensconced in a buttery puff pastry and finally baked to golden perfection. Like some sort of culinary equivalent of a nesting Russian matryoshka doll.