Food in Extreme Places: Antarctica (1/3)
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2016
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Across all of the world, weather doesn't get more extreme than the Antarctic winter. The continent is plunged into 24 hour darkness from from March to October with strong polar winds and temperatures that can dip to minus 50. But for the staff of the Halley Research station, work and life goes on.
In 2014 experienced Antarctic chef Gerard Baker joined the base for the cold Antarctic winter to cook for the team. In the first of a special Food Programme series documenting food in extreme environments, Gerard shares his diary with Sheila Dillon. She hears what it takes to be an Antarctic chef. From the daily baking bread, to planning for months of mealtimes with no contact, or supplies, from the outside world. When crisis strikes on base, we hear the real importance of a good meal.
Next week, Sheila Dillon is in an underwater kitchen on board a submarine.
Presented by Sheila Dillon Produced in Bristol by Clare Salisbury.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. |
| 0:10.0 | We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:12.0 | How do you cook in the cold? We hope you enjoy it. |
| 0:19.0 | How do you cook in the coldest place on earth where temperatures regularly dip to minus 50, where for over a hundred days there's no daylight at all. |
| 0:24.0 | Over the next three weeks we're taking the food program to the extremes. |
| 0:28.0 | To the harshest climates humans have been able to colonize into space and under the world's oceans in a |
| 0:35.6 | submarine. This week were further south than most of us will ever travel. |
| 0:40.6 | Antarctica. |
| 0:47.0 | This is the story of one chef's long winter, cooking for the British Antarctic survey. |
| 0:50.0 | A chef in the mold of a long line of cooking Mavericks |
| 0:54.3 | who've helped hold together some of the great British polar expeditions. |
| 0:59.2 | There's not much practical that Gerard Baker can't do. He can butcher and cure and |
| 1:04.8 | build and ski and repair and as you'll hear turn tomato soup powder into |
| 1:10.1 | something comforting, sustaining and delicious. |
| 1:14.1 | I've eaten his food many times over the past 20 years, |
| 1:18.4 | and by anyone's measure he's a great chef. |
| 1:21.6 | Just one who's chosen to practice his skills in the most isolated place on earth. |
| 1:27.0 | Now the plane that's dropped me off is about to leave and that's our last |
| 1:37.8 | link to Antarctica from the outside world and there they go. |
| 1:44.0 | My name is Gerald Baker, and I'm a chef working for the British Antarctic Survey. |
| 1:52.0 | Over the past 20 years I've regularly |
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