A newspaper article about our Mid-Winter dinner

Written by one of the chefs: http://www.jsonline.com/features/food/the-night-all-of-antarctica-parties-el5qoe5-160274395.html

The night all of Antarctica parties

By Gemma Tarlach, Special to the Journal Sentinel

June 26, 2012

Milwaukee in June is all about the Big Gig, beer, brats, Brewers, bikinis on Bradford Beach and the occasional rainbow after a sudden summer downpour.
June in Antarctica, where I work as a production cook, is a little different.
For the 153 Americans living at McMurdo Station, on Antarctica's Ross Island, June is the height of the austral winter. The sun, which set in late April and won't be seen again in these parts until late August, is a distant memory. So are trees, grass and even dirt - Ross Island, home to the southernmost active volcano in the world, is a mountainous heap of black, shard-like rocks, snow and ice.
The barren landscape is sometimes illuminated by a brilliant full moon or the spectral, shimmering Southern Lights - when it's not storming, of course, which is often. Hurricane-strength winds regularly pummel the island, turning the darkness into a whirl of stinging snow.
On a mild day in winter, temperatures dance around the zero Fahrenheit mark. But they can dip deep into minus territory in a matter of moments. Wind chills of minus 70 degrees are not uncommon.
"Great God, this is an awful place!" declared explorer Robert Falcon Scott, who perished 100 years ago not far from where McMurdo Station now sits.
Apparently, Scott did not know how to party.

June celebration

For one night each June, Antarctica - the coldest, driest, most isolated and, in winter, darkest continent on earth - is one big celebration.
Antarctica is dotted with dozens of bases and camps conducting scientific research in the austral summer months of October through February. In winter, just as the penguins head north, so do the scientists. A few stations, such as McMurdo, remain staffed year-round with limited personnel to maintain equipment and construct ice-ways for planes to use when they start arriving again. From early March through late August, there are no flights on or off the continent.
For the few hundred workers and science support staff wintering across this world of frozen emptiness, Midwinter Dinner, traditionally held on the Saturday closest to the austral winter solstice, marks the halfway point of the long months of darkness and isolation.
Scott and other early-20th-century explorers began the tradition, serving up the finest roast penguin and cuts of seal meat - both now illegal under the International Antarctic Treaty - and drinking and merrymaking long into the night.
Er, "long into the night" of that night, not the six months of night Antarctica experiences. Although, according to early explorer journals, they sure did go through a lot of whiskey.

Cooks show their skills

Midwinter Dinner is arguably the only holiday in the world celebrated by everyone on a given continent, and planning begins weeks beforehand. Stations representing the United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and several other nations exchange email greetings with each other while their decorating committees work hard to transform the utilitarian galleys - a throwback term to when most stations were military-run - into festive eateries.
It's not the Four Seasons, but then, Antarctica itself doesn't have four seasons, just two: Bright and Cold and then Dark and Colder.
The regular daily fare at McMurdo, the largest of the winter stations in Antarctica, leans heavily toward traditional Middle America cuisine: think meatloaf and mashed potatoes, ribs and corn-on-the-cob, and anything that can be smothered in gravy, the unofficial fifth food group of McMurdo.
There are occasional forays further afield: Curry Night and Mexican Wednesdays, for example, but no one would mistake McMurdo for a fine dining establishment.
The culinary staff, however, is made up of cooks, pastry chefs and bakers who have worked in some of the top restaurants in Paris, Las Vegas, New York and New Zealand. Midwinter Dinner is an opportunity for the crew - four cooks, a sous chef, a baker and a culinary manager - to have fun and show their skills. Creations are limited only by what's available for ingredients.
Which means there are a lot of limits.

Using the 'Freshies Box'

McMurdo has a roughly two-year supply of frozen food in various warehouses on-station, but most of it has been here for, well, a while, and freezer burn is rampant.
The final summer flight touches down on the Ross Ice Shelf near McMurdo in early March. The plane, a C-17 flown by the National Guard, arrives to whisk away any remaining summer personnel, but it also comes bearing gifts: its cavernous interior is loaded with refrigerated containers of fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs and other perishables.
But by June, more than three months later, what little is left of the produce isn't looking so great. Even kept in a special walk-in refrigerator - known as the "Freshies Box"-for optimal longevity, cabbages turn to moldy mush, apples shrivel and herbs blacken.
McMurdo's cooks work hard to use as many of the fresh ingredients as possible early in the season to avoid waste while trying to save what we can to make Midwinter Dinner a special occasion.
Let's just say the tears of joy were genuine when we found a case of lemons had survived the first half of winter unscathed.
A small greenhouse operated in winter provides much-appreciated salad greens, tomatoes, peppers, herbs and other treasures, but in limited amounts. A recent harvest of heirloom cherry tomatoes yielded exactly enough for one per person on-station. To ensure fair distribution, a tomato "bodyguard" checked names off a list as each community member took his allotted single fruit.
Midwinter Dinner is no time for such austerity, however. Greenhouse and galley staff put in extra hours in the days leading up to the event to ensure tables and hot wells are overflowing.
This year's Midwinter feast, held on June 16, featured Vietnamese-style spring rolls bursting with herbs and vegetables from the greenhouse, succulent crispy skin duck, bespoke steaks grilled to order and a dessert "bar" in every sense of the word: alcohol was a key ingredient in every sweet offering, from Beer and Pretzel Marshmallows to gluten-free Mojito cakes.
After the meal, the transformed galley turned into a dance party, one that carried over to the station bar and many of the dorm hallways until the wee hours of the morning.
Not that the wee hours of the morning looked any different from any other time of day down here in the long dark of winter.

The weather was very nice last week. The mild conditions ranged from -10 to -31degF with little to no wind. That makes all the difference.

Regional Summary	6/30/2012 5:08:05 AM
Another month draws to the end, alas they never last. Clouds have come in rather quickly, but retreat just as fast. The wind blows rather weakly, and no storms can be seen. The month ends softly with a whisper, not crazy, stout, or mean. Stay Warm McMurdo......