Cooking at the bottom of the world

Everyone who cooks a lot eventually faces a challenge or two: finding out that a vegetable went moldy when you are in the middle of making dinner, a malfunctioning oven or stove, or some other malady. Usually solving the problem is fairly easy, like running to the store for a replacement or calling a repairman to fix the equipment. But what if there is no store for a thousand miles? That is the kind of challenge faced by chef Olivier Hubert, who is the full-time catering manager for the British Antarctic Survey. He works with a team to provide food for five different stations at the bottom of the world.

As you can imagine, managing supplies is top of the list of challenges when cooking in such a remote location. At the Rothera station, there is only one food delivery per year – but boy is it a doozy! The food fills up three 20 foot shipping containers. Most items are tinned or frozen, which means that the cooks have to be creative with fruit and vegetables. Because of the increased dietary requirements – the average person has to eat 5,000 calories per day because of the strenuous physical activity in the intense cold – many of the foods are rich and heavy. That sounds like a dream to me, although I find Minnesota winters to be plenty cold enough, so I will pass on living where it is below freezing 24/7 even if I get to eat copious amounts of food.

One item I found particularly interesting was the photo and description of the kitchen. As chef Hubert says, if you didn’t look out the window you would think you were in a high-end kitchen anywhere in the world. For some reason I thought space would be at a premium because of the difficulty in heating large areas. But I suppose it makes sense that creature comforts would be a priority due to the limited amount of recreational activity available to the researchers and staff.