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Globe and Mail Update

May 5, 2009 at 8:24 PM EDT

ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Corporal Pascal Lavoie is sweating.

The mercury out here has long since hit 50 degrees and beneath the garage-style lighting in his stifling kitchen trailer, the crab legs he's planning to serve up are being unco-operative. Crammed into a giant Second World War-era pot, they're finally boiling and, at a length longer than his forearms, their shells have been steamed into thorny, burning spears.

“Oh yeah, we burn ourselves all the time,” Cpl. Lavoie said with a shrug, tossing some errant crab legs into a metal serving pan and pausing to show off the pale underside of his forearms, where several deep pink streaks are branded into his skin.

Burns, though, hardly seem like much of an occupational hazard when you're cooking in a place where the boom of artillery fire is your bass and the whiz of attack helicopters your treble. It's a place without running water or measuring cups, where you can easily find yourself faced with feeding 100 more people than you planned for; a place where the force of supply choppers taking off nearby threaten to suck up your kitchen just as Dorothy's house gave way to that tornado in The Wizard of Oz – it actually happened last week to a mess tent, which was “sucked up like a Kleenex,” but no one was hurt.

Cooking in Kandahar
All of this sounds like the backdrop for a high-stakes reality show. But it's not.

For Canada's real-life Iron Chefs, it's just a typical day at the office – and they love it.

While the war effort has worn down many Canadian troops, Forces foodies are undergoing somewhat of a renaissance. Their cooking – inside the ramshackle, propane-fuelled kitchen trailers that are set up to feed troops stationed at small military outposts dotting the hotbeds of southern Kandahar – provides salvation for soldiers. It has also become the subject of much bragging among competing platoons, all of whom think their cooks are the Forces' best.

“I've had soldiers tell me they're never going anywhere again without their cooks,” said Master Warrant Officer Jay Rached, chief of all Canadian chefs deployed to Afghanistan.

This sudden rise in status has given the cooks, members of an often overlooked military trade that endured substantial cuts in peacetime years, something to finally feed off.

“In other conflicts, the guys weren't in real danger,” explained Sergeant Eric Joly, head chef at Canada's forward operating base in the dangerous Zhari district. “We felt like our jobs were less appreciated. But here in Afghanistan, they don't have beer or restaurants or the discotheque. The morale-building spot is the dining hall at supper time,” he said. “It makes a big difference.”

Indeed, on a recent Friday night, troops began lining up to have the dinner plates filled well before the kitchen was even open – and many lingered to talk and laugh well after dark. The meal that night was a rare feast put on by Sgt. Joly and his staff: beef tenderloin and the mammoth crab legs Cpl. Lavoie was tasked to wrestle with; grilled onions and peppers, baked mushrooms and a homemade mushroom basil sauce – a sign of the Vandoos' francophone culinary flair. There was also a spread of salads and fresh cheese; cakes and Häagen-Dazs for dessert.

“These guys love steak and lobster or crab legs. For us, it's a little break because it's not rocket science,” explained Cpl. Lavoie, happy but tired after a more-than-12-hour day.

While Friday evenings are typically a barbecue feast (“without the beer,” one cook points out) hot and inventive meals are served six nights a week at these small outposts, as well as hot breakfast most days. There are few limits to the menus they offer.

“Cooking wise, we can do anything. We can do the same thing as a restaurant can do, even better sometimes,” said Cpl. Lavoie, who said he prefers cooking on a field mission to cooking in a conventional kitchen. “Cooking for guys that are really hungry, I enjoy. Food is morale,” he said.

The basic formula the cooks adhere to in the field, Sgt. Joly said, involves providing troops at least one hot protein, a starch and a fresh cooked vegetable. That means troops could be doled out anything from veal to Cajun chicken, manicotti, beef bourguignon or grilled white fish – better entrees, many would tell you, than what is offered by the mega-sized, British-run dining facilities at Kandahar's main base.

And there are the rare nights that nutrition is given a back seat.

“If you want to pick up morale on the camp, you do one night with pizza and chicken wings,” Sgt. Joly said, adding: “With morale boosters, you don't do them that often. If you do it too much, the guys get used to it and you have nothing to make them happy,” he said. “When you do it, it's a gift.”

Sgt. Joly's crew bestowed its first gift for the new rotation of troops in the form of homemade pizzas a few weeks ago. They are made in large industrial pans, and it can take an entire day to craft the full complement of pies needed to feed all the mouths on base. The crew's next undertaking will likely be poutine, a Quebec signature dish for which they've already had special requests.

Overseeing all of this – and attempting to be the voice of reason – is MWO Rached, who reviews cooks' food orders from Kandahar to make sure they stay on track.

“We do have to be concerned about the troops' nutritional well being … so the soldier on the ground is well-fuelled,” he explained. “If we're going to feed him junk, is he going to be able to sustain himself and stay in the field?”

Still, MWO Rached isn't out to keep his cooks from pleasing their comrades by cooking specialties like sugar pie, or field doughnuts – peanut butter and jam sandwiches transformed, with the help of a deep fryer, into sugary melt-in-your-mouth morsels. Nor will he discourage them from making things from scratch – rather than turning to frozen meals – even though conditions in Kandahar, particularly during the scorching summer, make cooking a gruelling job.

“The reality is people prefer to have a meal cooked for them,” he said. “When you come back after a long operation, maybe it was a bad day … the little silver lining is the cooks are going to be there with a hot meal.”