Cpl. Pascal Lavoie is sweating.
The mercury out here has long since hit 100 degrees and beneath the garage-style lighting in his stifling kitchen trailer, the crab legs he's planning to serve up are being uncooperative. Crammed into a giant World War II-era pot, they're finally boiling and, at a length longer than his forearms, their shells have been steamed into thorny, burning spears.
"Oh yeah, we burn ourselves all the time," Lavoie said with a shrug, tossing some errant crab legs into a metal serving pan and pausing to show off the pale underside of his forearms, where several deep pink streaks are branded into his skin.
Burns, though, hardly seem like much of an occupational hazard when you're cooking in a place where the boom of artillery fire is your bass and the whiz of attack helicopters your treble.
It's a place without running water or measuring cups, where you can easily find yourself faced with feeding 100 more people than you planned for; a place where the force of supply choppers taking off nearby threaten to suck up your kitchen. It actually happened one day to a mess tent, which was "sucked up like a Kleenex," but no one was hurt.
All of this sounds like the backdrop for a high-stakes reality show. But it's not.
For Canada's real-life Iron Chefs, it's just a typical day at the office -- and they love it.
While the war effort has worn down many troops, foodies are undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Their cooking -- inside the ramshackle, propane-fueled kitchen trailers that are set up to feed troops stationed at small military outposts dotting the hotbeds of southern Kandahar -- provides salvation for soldiers. It has also become the subject of much bragging among competing platoons, all of whom think their cooks are the best.
"I've had soldiers tell me they're never going anywhere again without their cooks," said Master Warrant Officer Jay Rached, chief of all Canadian chefs deployed to Afghanistan.
This sudden rise in status has given the cooks -- members of an often overlooked military trade that endured substantial cuts in peacetime years -- something to finally feed off.
"In other conflicts, the guys weren't in real danger," explained Sgt. Eric Joly, head chef at Canada's forward operating base in the dangerous Zhari district. "We felt like our jobs were less appreciated. But here in Afghanistan, they don't have beer or restaurants or the discotheque. The morale-building spot is the dining hall at suppertime," he said. "It makes a big difference."
Indeed, on a recent night, troops began lining up to have the dinner plates filled well before the kitchen was even open -- and many lingered to talk and laugh well after dark. The meal that night was a rare feast put on by Joly and his staff: beef tenderloin and the mammoth crab legs Lavoie was tasked to wrestle with; grilled onions and peppers, baked mushrooms and a homemade mushroom basil sauce. There was also a spread of salads and fresh cheese; cakes and Haagen-Dazs for dessert.
"These guys love steak and lobster or crab legs. For us, it's a little break because it's not rocket science," explained Lavoie, happy but tired after a more-than-12-hour day.
While Friday evenings are typically a barbecue feast ("without the beer," one cook points out), hot and inventive meals are served six nights a week at these small outposts, as well as hot breakfast most days. There are few limits to the menus they offer.
"Cookingwise, we can do anything. We can do the same thing as a restaurant can do, even better sometimes," said Lavoie, who said he prefers cooking on a field mission to cooking in a conventional kitchen. "Cooking for guys that are really hungry, I enjoy. Food is morale."
The basic formula the cooks adhere to in the field, Joly said, involves providing troops at least one hot protein, a starch and a fresh-cooked vegetable. That means troops could be doled out anything from veal to Cajun chicken, manicotti or grilled white fish.
And there are the rare nights that nutrition is given a back seat.
"If you want to pick up morale on the camp, you do one night with pizza and chicken wings," Joly said, adding: "With morale boosters, you don't do them that often. If you do it too much, the guys get used to it and you have nothing to make them happy," he said. "When you do it, it's a gift."
Joly's crew bestowed its first gift for the new rotation of troops in the form of homemade pizzas a few weeks ago. They are made in large industrial pans, and it can take an entire day to craft the full complement of pies needed to feed all the mouths on base.
(jleeder(at)globeandmail.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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