Journalist Report
02/06/2013
Melanie Newfield
A culinary guide to Mars part four – The Accidental Calzone
When I was writing my story about MDRS as a proving ground, and then
yesterday when we were struggling with the practicalities of how to
collect dust from the exterior of a space suit, I started thinking
about the origin of ideas. Sure, sometimes a stroke of genius appears
in the middle of the night, or from sitting in a brainstorming meeting
with a flip chart, or even while putting the world to rights one night
in the pub. But some of the best ideas occur when things go wrong. In
my experience failure, and not necessity, it the mother of invention.
Never was this more apparent than when I was making pizza last night.
In the absence of any appropriate tools, like a pizza stone, a pizza
peel or even baking paper, I had the idea of heating the oven tray,
making pizza on the bench and transferring pizza to tray. Oops.
Needless to say my beautifully elastic pizza dough did not want to
cooperate.
And so I folded the whole thing in half, pressed the edges together,
transferred it with no problem at all and announced we were having
calzone.
At that point I concluded that the invention of calzone surely
resulted from exactly that situation – a failed attempt to make pizza.
Actually, I have no idea whether that’s true, but it makes a good
story.
Overall, the crew have been fortunate that not too many inspirational
failures have occurred in the kitchen. Nothing has been completely
inedible, although the occasional experiment – such as the “greyberry”
muffins – turned out a little unexpectedly. There was another near
disaster when making the pizza though.
In general, freeze-dried and dehydrated food can be rehydrated with
either hot or cold water. I’ve found that hot is usually best, it just
seems to work more quickly.
All this makes perfect sense, but when I went to rehydrate the cheese
for the pizza, I was very tired and not thinking too clearly. There
was spare hot water in the kettle and so I tipped it over the cheese,
which promptly melted into a gooey lump. While I did manage to use the
cheese on the pizza (and in the calzone), it was a useful reminder –
don’t rehydrate freeze-dried cheese with hot water.
At the other end of the scale, I’ve had some real culinary successes
and have been pleasantly surprised by much of the food I’ve tried. One
positive experience has been the dried chopped onions. Most of the
dishes I make start with frying chopped onions – except the curries,
which start with frying whole spices followed by onions. Now
dehydrated food doesn’t generally fry to well, but if I rehydrate the
onions first, they behave almost like normal onions.
Honestly, if I can find some and get them back to New Zealand, I’m
taking some on my next hiking trip!
Another success has been the freeze-dried meat. Now I admit that those
vacuum bags look a bit scary – we had some discussion about what the
contents actually were, and I had to reassure some of the crew that I
was absolutely confident that they were not pet food. But the dishes
I’ve made with them have been a great success. The spaghetti bolognese
was one of the best things I’ve made here, as was the chicken and
coriander curry – that’s one of my favourite dishes and it was great
to produce it so far from home with such an unfamiliar selection of
ingredients.
Another success has been the yoghurt. Many New Zealanders will be
familiar with the instant “yoghurt and culture” packs which are simply
mixed with water and then left to stand in an insulated flask with
boiling water added. I brought some with me (with permission of the
Quartermaster) and we’ve got good use from it. I used yoghurt to make
my saag aloo (spinach and potato curry), I eat it on my cheerios for
breakfast with freeze-dried blueberries and served it instead of sour
cream with Emma’s chili con carne (since nobody seemed keen on the
powdered sour cream).
We have largely left the more highly processed food and instant meals
for crews with less enthusiasm for cooking, we’ve really embraced some
ingredients that we were initially wary of. Dried egg powder made
French toast and scrambled egges, dried apple flakes and popcorn
butter made a spiced apple scone, freeze-dried bananas made banana
muffins and tomato powder went in nearly everything. While I haven’t
yet tried everything in the kitchen, I feel like I’m really getting
into this space food.
Those that know me well may be surprised by this. At home, I live
mostly on unprocessed foods – and a big part of my diet is fruit and
vegetables from my garden. But I’ve done my bit here too. Tonight we
dine on sprouts and salad lovingly tended in the greenhab. It’s nice
to have something “homegrown” when you are so far from home.