After completing a Diploma in Culinary Arts, Eva Ng, Head of Learning, Customer Experience at Cathay Pacific, tells us how her day-to-day role helped her excel in her culinary endeavours.
“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” - so the saying goes, and the life of a chef is certainly not a relaxing one. The need to juggle multiple tasks and keep cool under pressure means the culinary world is not one for the faint hearted. For Eva Ng, it was precisely the magnitude of the challenge, as well as a passion for cooking, that inspired her to don her chef’s whites in pursuit of a Diploma in Culinary Arts.
In her day job, Eva leads Cathay’s global learning and development programmes for frontline employees – from cabin crew, and customer care and support staff, to cargo agents. It was the airport lounge teams that inspired her to take her passion for the culinary arts to the next level. “Each day I was working closely with chefs and front of house teams - I was so impressed with the standards, presentation, menu design and efficient operations.”
So, Eva spent 9 am - 5 pm each Sunday for six months in the Hong Kong Culinary Academy kitchen, an institution renowned for its prestigious training courses for professional chefs, where hard work and high standards are essential. One of the most daunting challenges of the course was the final assessment: the black box challenge. In under 90 minutes, participants must create a dish without knowing in advance what ingredients they will be given. “I was given a whole chicken, which meant I could demonstrate the butchering skills I had learnt on the course,'' Eva says. “To challenge myself further, I made hand-rolled fresh pasta and a Florentine sauce to pair with pan-seared chicken breast. The dish earned me some recognition from my chef and my peers.”
Eva says the qualities she uses at Cathay were instrumental in helping her to keep cool during the challenge. “I think it’s a combination of fast-paced decision making, multitasking and a growth mindset.”
Eva (left) runs cooking classes for kids to encourage experimentation and other soft skills.
