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Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine (At Table)
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About Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, And Other Stories
Product Description Winner of an Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Award - Special Commendation Finalist for a ForeWord Book of the Year Award Antarctica, the last place on Earth, is not famous for its cuisine. Yet it is famous for stories of heroic expeditions in which hunger was the one spice everyone carried. At the dawn of Antarctic cuisine, cooks improvised under inconceivable hardships, castaways ate seal blubber and penguin breasts while fantasizing about illustrious feasts, and men seeking the South Pole stretched their rations to the breaking point. Today, Antarctica's kitchens still wait for provisions at the far end of the planet's longest supply chain. Scientific research stations serve up cafeteria fare that often offers more sustenance than style. Jason C. Anthony, a veteran of eight seasons in the U.S. Antarctic Program, offers a rare workaday look at the importance of food in Antarctic history and culture. Anthony's tour of Antarctic cuisine takes us from hoosh (a porridge of meat, fat, and melted snow, often thickened with crushed biscuit) and the scurvy-ridden expeditions of Shackleton and Scott through the twentieth century to his own preplanned three hundred meals (plus snacks) for a two-person camp in the Transantarctic Mountains. The stories in Hoosh are linked by the ingenuity, good humor, and indifference to gruel that make Anthony's tale as entertaining as it is enlightening. From Booklist One place locavorism does not flourish: Antarctica. Despite its status as a continent, it has no arable land, and native fauna include just penguins, other seabirds, and seals, none of which ranks on most chefs’ lists of tasty ingredients. Anthony has lived and worked in Antarctica over the course of a number of summers, so he knows just what’s available there. Current residents, most of them researchers, have their food shipped in from sponsoring countries. Early explorers ate similar if less healthful food, their main sustenance being “hoosh,” pemmican stew thickened with crushed biscuits. Anthony recounts many stories of early pioneers’ attempts to survive the harsh climate by dining on seal meat. One hardy troop even played music to console grieving penguins, whose eggs they had stolen. A complete culinary collection that aims to represent all seven continents will need this book on its shelves, but don’t expect a lot of call for its recipes. --Mark Knoblauch Review From the New York Times: "What ultimately ensures this unlikely book’s appeal to a larger audience than armchair Antarctophiles and demented foodies is that Anthony is a fine, visceral writer and a witty observer. He paints his cast of questers with a Monty-Pythonesque brush, but balances the telling with a refusal to sneer or giggle. He demonstrates genuine respect, compassion and a kind of hopeless love for his quixotic subjects and their grandiose, miserable hungers." - Rebecca P. Sinkler "Anthony enlivens historical facts with a knack for choice anecdotes... [Hoosh is] a singular, engrossing take on a region that until now has been mostly documented from a scientific angle or romanticized by adventurers." -- Kirkus "One of the most enthralling studies of gastronomy ever published" --Christopher Hirst, The Independent “Anthony's voice truly comes into its own… with the spirited air of one who has eaten well in these hard places.” --Jeff Inglis, the Portland Phoenix From the Back Cover "Historical writing, well presented, is supposed to be delicious, but in this brilliant, insightful book you will find many essential nutrients that tend to be missing from standard treatments of Antarctic exploration. This is a delightfully balanced reflection on human involvement in the Last Place on Earth, from earliest times to the modern day, presented with much gusto and the added sauce of firsthand experience." --Ross MacPhee, curator of the American Museum of Natural History and author of Race to The End: Amundsen, Scott, and the Attainme
