Kylie Cooks the World: Antarctica

I'm so excited to say I've finally found my Antarctica recipe for Kylie Cooks the World.  It seemed like my biggest hardship was going to be finding something that met my standards for a traditional recipe.  There are no indigenous tribes in Antarctica, so I was unsure what I'd do.  I've reached out to chefs from the Amundsen-Scott Station and no real luck.  I thought I would do a recipe from explorers and many I found were made with penguin, skua, or seal, which is pretty hard to find right here in ol' Tennessee.    

Well, Mark and I were sitting on the front porch enjoying the Spring, listening to birds and Brood X, whilin' the day.  I have the book Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day and Other Antarctic Cuisine by Jason C Anthony sitting on my stack to peruse for an Antarctic recipe.  He's reading the true tale The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard [1922] about the author’s hardships on Robert Scott’s Terra-Nova Expedition in the years 1910-13. He tells me that inside this volume of struggle he's found a recipe for me.  

The explorers on the expedition ate what is called Hoosh, which is a meal of pemmican, melted snow and dried biscuits made into a stew. Honestly, I thought he was saying "pelican" and was wondering where I was going to buy pelican meat!

So all I needed to make hoosh is pemmican...but what's pemmican?  I'd never heard of it, Wikipedia helped me out.  A wee bit of research discovers that it's a Native American food made of dried meat, fruit (commonly berries) and tallow.  Tribes used it as a sustenance ration and it was adopted by explorers, especially polar explorers for its protein and fat content, and obviously it's transport qualities.  The polar explorers usually used beef pemmican instead of the wild game pemmican the tribes would have used, then compacted and measured into blocks for rationing.   

There is another version of pemmican stew I learned about called "rubaboo", which is pemmican, water, flour, wild onions or potatoes. Perhaps, another kitchen voyage. 

Online searches show pemmican can be ordered, so I have several varieties on the way.  Mark also has a recipe where he's going to make a homemade version, but for my first attempt at Hoosh—I'll be using some made by the Lakota tribe.  

[Incidentally--The Lakota word for pemmican is wasná, originally meaning "grease derived from marrow bones".  Mmmmm-mmmm—pass the wasná please!]  

Robert Peary of North Pole explorations used pemmican on his explorations for his men and dogs.  In his book from Secrets of Polar Travel [1917] he says "Too much cannot be said of the importance of pemmican to a polar expedition. It is an absolute sine qua non. Without it a sledge-party cannot compact its supplies within a limit of weight to make a serious polar journey successful."  

So, I am thrilled to present to you, Kylie Cooks the World: Antarctica Hoosh with Pemmican!  

Let's see if it's the sine qua non of front porch sittin' in Tennessee!  

For more fun facts on Antarctica and food facts, check out this episode on my podcast "Miss Kylie's Peculiar Guide for Ladies (and Gentlemen) in the Art of Cookery and Household Management" https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/NvpOBW1SRyb