World Cuisine: Antarctica

Now... I know what you might be thinking.
Antarctica?
Really?
Antarctica may be a continent, but it isn't a country...

Therefore Antarctica doesn't exactly have a 'culture'...
And nothing grows there...
So.... Are we looking at what penguins eat??

Believe me, I had full intentions of skipping right to Asia.
I have things planned for Asia.
But then I decided to google "food in Antarctica" just to see what came up.
And here we are.

Surprisingly my search resulted in pages and pages of studies and recipes for survival food. Food that the first explorers of the area ate. Mistakes that were made. Food that is eaten on the current research stations and the developments in nutrition for these items.

Vegetables are scarce. Modern-day research stations receive a supply shipment once a year, which consists mostly of frozen and canned products, but will include some eggs and vegetables. These, however, are used quickly because they don't keep.
Hydroponic gardens appear on the major research stations, but produce only small quantities to offset nutrition in the winter months.
Each station has in-house kitchen staff that live and work on the base to ensure that everyone stays healthy. Several seasonal celebrations are held thorough the year to break the monotony of the allocated food and the assigned work.

This was obviously not always the case.
Early explorers had to carry all of their own food so it had to be compact and high fat and protein to keep up warmth and energy. Even modern expeditions away from base have very limited supplies that have to be rationed properly and are designed to last without spoiling for months.

Two very key foods were mentioned over and over on the pages I read (This great page in particular):
Pemmican and sledging biscuits.

 Pemmican is a meat 'bar' that has it's origins from First Nations food preparation (The Cree nation is mentioned in the article), and is high in fat and protein to keep your body going in cold temperatures.
Sledging biscuits are small, hard, dense biscuits that are easy to keep and we're packed along with pemmican for sledging excursions.

Every article I read was pretty unanimous about one thing: These food items are not something that one would CHOOSE to eat. They are designed for survival.

Preparing pemmican yourself is a long and careful process.
Lean, un-marbled meat needs to be dehydrated beyond 'jerky' stage, ground to a powder, and then combined with rendered fat. The whole process takes a few days.
Meats commonly used were elk, venison, or buffalo - with beef being an acceptable alternate.
We found some local elk at a shop near us, and comparing it to our other options it was the most dense, with no marbling that we needed to cut out.
For a chunk of fat I bought a beef roast with a thick layer on it that I cut off and used.

Because this is a food that is meant to be preserved and last for a long time, the meat and the fat have to cook separately because they 'cure' in different ways.
Drying fat with the meat won't get it hot enough to kill bacteria, and simmering meat with the fat won't cure the meat enough to keep it from going rancid.

I sliced the elk as thin as possible and dried it in a 150 F oven for 12 hours until it was crispy.

Next, we had to grind the meat in to a powder. The powder stage is essential to the process so it will soak up the fat that we will add. Otherwise you get crunchy bits with noticeable fat around it.

The guide I was following said to just put it in a food processor, but 10 minutes later, crumbs everywhere, and scratches on the inside of the processor bowl; I only had rice crispy sized crumbles. At this point something like a coffee grinder would have been useful, but I don't have one so I had to grind up the chunks a bit at a time with a mortar and pestle.
I don't recommend this method unless you are super motivated, have a great deal of hand and upper body strength, and have 2 hours to kill. None of which applied to me.
At the end of this process I had a fine layer of brown powder all over my kitchen counter, which looked like cocoa powder but smelled like burnt hamburgers. The tiny amount of powder in my bowl looked like chili powder. It did not taste like it.

 

Next the fat needed to be simmered slowly on the stove until it stopped bubbling, signifying that there was no more extra moisture to cook off.
Then we combined the fat a bit at a time with the powder until it made a thick paste.
That was refrigerated until it was solid.
I've seen people mix dried and powdered berries or maple syrup in with the pemmican to make it taste better. I've seen recipes where the mixture is so think that they can form it in to little balls.
We kept it basic, and our end result was still pretty soft, so it stayed in the bottom of a bowl and we had to dig it out when we were ready to use it.

 

It wasn't horrible. But like the articles said, not something that one would choose to eat. 
It tasted a bit like canned dog food smells... or the grease trap of a barbecue.
But if you were freezing to death and this was your only food, you could imagine it was burgers and get by.

The sledging biscuits are simply flour, salt, baking soda, and butter.

It's similar to how you would start a pie crust, but more dense.
I also used gluten free flour so I can only imagine that these were 'comparable' to what they typically turn out to be.

 These are supposed to be saved for rations on an expedition, they're not something you'd want to snack on daily. Traditionally they're eaten with copious amounts of butter, marmite, or cheese to add some flavour and make them more palatable.
We had them with goat butter.
Again, they were edible, and if this is what you needed to eat to survive it would be fine.
I added a bit too much salt to mine to they came off as a little bitter, but they would be a nice bland something to chew on if you needed to.

 On their own these two foods are 'meh' at best and definitely crafted for survival.
However, these two foods are also the main ingredients to a survival stew called hoosh that is/was
fairly exclusive to Antarctic expeditions dating back to the early 20th century.
This stew combines these two high fat survival foods, that would likely be mostly frozen while eating, in to something warm and sticky that resembles a bowl of porridge.
Snow was melted in a pot (And yes, we rescued some clean snow from our yard before it all melted so we could be authentic), and then a chunk of pemmican and a crumbled biscuit were added and boiled until soft.

 

The hoosh was actually pretty good. If we had added maple syrup and dried berries like some of the suggestions, it would be very similar to hot cereal. 

Definitely the closest thing to a hearty luxury that you would have while sleeping in a tent on the ice.

See you in Asia!

Happy Eating!

World Cuisine: Africa #2

Africa part 2!

In the last blog we covered western, southern and eastern African foods.
In this blog we go back north.

Northern Africa is heavily influenced by the middle-east, since it is in direct line with countries in Asia like Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan. People are often guilty (including myself) of 'forgetting' that northern African countries are actually a part of Africa and not Asia. 

First we took a look at Morocco.
Moroccan food is maybe what people most identify with when you bring up African cuisine.
It has distinct smokey spices and heat, and is laden with vegetables and meats that are grown on home soil.
The dish we chose to make was harira soup.
Harira is traditionally served during the holy month of Ramadan, but is also made various other times through the year. During Ramadan, Muslims practice fasting and refrain from eating from sunrise to sundown. At sun down a simple meal of harira and bread is eaten to sustain them to the next day.

Harira goes against all of my culinary gut instincts regarding 'too many spices in one dish'.
Because there are a lot.
Cumin seeds AND ground cumin. Several teaspoons each of ground coriander, cinnamon and turmeric. Tablespoons of harissa (roasted red pepper and red chili sauce/paste).
Fresh coriander stalks and leaves, leeks, AND seasoned stock - which is usually the main and only flavouring in most dishes we are accustomed to. Different recipes include different spices in different amounts. Some are quite hot and others mild.
Simmered with the spices are tomato, lentils, vegetables, and chicken (though you can use any kind of meat or no meat).

 

It's topped with plain yogurt, coriander/cilantro and lemon, and eaten with bread and hummus.

A small bowl of this goes a LONG way to filling you up. We ate it with rice instead of bread and I barely made it through my serving.

It's no wonder that this is such a nourishing staple of Moroccan diets.

Next we took a look at Egypt.
Egypt uses a multitude of middle-eastern spices, rice and legumes in their cuisine.
I stumbled upon an interesting looking dish called koshari (or kushari, or koshary) and, when researching further, found out that it's actually the national dish of Egypt (despite the main ingredients not being native to Egypt) - being served in some form in nearly every restaurant and on street corners.
Now koshari, at first glance, looks like something an American college student invented from the leftovers in their fridge - a mix of rice, lentils and macaroni with sauce on top.

 

 But it's so much more than that.
Each addition is cooked separately. Each has it's own spices. Each has it's own cooking time.
And in the end it combines in to something that it surprisingly flavourful and diverse.

One blog I read quoted a man who describes the making of this dish as a symphony. The scooping, pouring, stirring and tapping of each spoon on each pot fills a restaurant with "sound as if it was a rehearsal for a concert". I took this to be a thing I would never experience, since they use certain tools and storage containers there that I don't have here, however because of reading this I paid special attention to the sounds of what I was cooking.
And sure enough, when everything was cooking at the same time and different spoons were used to stir different pots and then 'tap tapped' on the side and lids were shuffled around - it was indeed a culinary symphony.

The macaroni is cooked with salt.
The rice is cooked with vegetable stock.
The lentils are cooked with garlic, cumin, and bay leaves.
And the crowning glory of this dish - the baharat sauce.
Baharat is an Arabic word simply meaning 'spice'. It's a very specific mix of middle-eastern spices that is hard to come by. I followed a recipe to make my own from the whole spices.

 

Cumin seeds, corriander seeds, whole cloves, peppercorns and cardamom pods are gently heated on the stove until they are toasted and fragrant, and then blended to a powder with cinnamon, paprika, and nutmeg. This spice blend is then added to a pan of onions, vinegar, and crushed tomatoes to make THE most amazing tomato sauce I've ever had. This sauce is meant to blend the flavours of the whole dish and can be quite hot with the addition of chilies, which we omitted.

Also from Egypt I wanted to try duqqa, which is described both as a spice blend and a dip.
It's toasted almonds, sesame seeds, cumin seeds, corriander seeds, and salt and pepper all ground up in to a powder.

 

This is then eaten with bread by dipping the bread in olive oil and then in the duqqa powder so it sticks. I found it a little dry in texture for something that is described as a 'dip' but I think mixing the duqqa with olive oil and making a spread, or sprinkling the powder on cooking chicken or fish would be excellent.

Lastly we tried our hand at fig rolls (basically fig newtons), which are a common dessert snack in Egypt. Trying to make the pastry gluten-free and non-crumbly was a bit of a task, but it ended up ok, albeit a little more tough and plump than I would have liked them. Will definitely try these again with a different dough.

I wish I could have somehow bottled the smell of my kitchen to share with you on here. The toasting of the nuts and seeds, the steaming of the seasoned pots on my stove... intoxicating. Making spice mixes from scratch is labour-intensive, but so rewarding when you get to stand there smelling and tasting all these fresh ingredients.

That was our whirlwind tour of Africa!
On to the next continent!

Happy Eating!!