Chef James with his creation ready to be consumed.

Scott (or the Canadian Yeti as James coined recently) enjoying one of the final bites of the feast. 

Looking like a tent day today due mostly to poor lighting. So today, we bring you another “Cooking with James” episode base on last night’s meal. Fetch ice from the ice mine 200m away. Chase ice bucket in the wind as it is carried away from you paying careful attention to any crevassing around. Return to camp. Thaw hands until feeling returns. Add butter to a hot skillet. Fetch dried tomatoes (tom-ah-toes, not tom-ay-toes as I call them), they should be scattered around the food box due to an opening in the plastic packaging. Mix dehydrated onions and the tom-ah-toes and add water to the tiny plastic pouch. Add minced beef to the skillet. It has been hanging in the roof of the tent for a couple days now thawing (and freezing and thawing again) since last night’s dinner plans were forgotten and Butter Chicken Nødtvedt was the decided menu. Brown the mince. Add ice-solid bouillon (will take 10 minutes to thaw). Stir in dehydrated onion and tom-ah-toe mix. Add some dried tom-ah-toes from another package whose contents were not scattered around the food box. Dash some Italian seasoning as the beef begins to brown further and the juices sizzle. Stir occasionally with the plastic flipper that still contains some evidence of last night’s delightful dinner. Add frozen carrots that have been kept frozen in the gap between the inner and outer tent wall. Likewise for peas – Chef James loves peas. Thaw some mild cheddar cheese near the flame – but not too near, it’ll melt. Instant potatoes (assuming poh-tah-toes is the pronunciation here) should be handy. They’ll need to be in a ziplock bag with 1:3 potato:milk/water as the only instructions written in black marker. Bring the ancient ice that was mined that afternoon to a boil. Add butter. Pour a little bit of this into the beef for gravy. Season. At this time the previously frozen cheddar cheese should be broken into tiny chunks. Absent the usual cheese slicing equipment, use someone else’s personal steak knife to persuade the cheese into tiny pieces terminating in your own plastic pink drinking mug. Add the instant poh-tah-toes to the boiling water. It should be 1:3 but really who measures it exactly? Remove from heat. Continue stirring the beef-veggie blend. Be sure to keep the second burner running, it’ll keep the tent warm as all the heat from the primary burner goes into the food. Season with sel et poivre as desired. Add poh-tah-toes atop simmering skillet of beef and veggies. Add pie crust imprints on top just because. Add the chunked cheese as the final top layer. Leave to simmer for 5-10 minutes on the slow burner. Et voila! The remaining cheese bits in *your own* pink mug will provide extra flavour for an apple cider drink later or oatmeal first thing in the morning. Consume with gusto. Serves 4-8 (or 2 in Antarctica). For cleanup, use an abundance of paper towels. Since all that’s on hand are the hard brown version you find in public restrooms, you’ll need to apply a liberal amount of pressure to scrape the dishes and pans “clean”. A residue will undoubtedly remain, it’ll serve as a non-stick coating for a future meal. Reviews: Scott – Can’t speak. So full. Had to shed the fleece layers it warmed my stomach and soul so well. Debating if it was a shame Ioannis and John weren’t here or not. 5+ meteorite rating out of 5. James – It’s like a little nuclear reactor in my stomach. As the chef I feel like I had one happy customer. Should feed 4-6, barely feeds 2 in Antarctica. P

Posted by Scott from Chef James’ Nunatak restaurant on 2017-12-30 at 11:45 local.