Having a field day
When your blender blows or your eight-burner range starts to billow smoke while your extraction fan shudders, grates and grinds to a halt, does the brigade in your kitchen throw a collective wobbly? Does your head chef promise to end the commis chef's life and storm out amid a firefight of pots and pans, while the maître d' is sent out to tell the bemused diners that lunch is off.
If so, perhaps they need to spend some time in the Territorial Army, where - as the four teams who competed in the two-day Combat Caterer showdown which took place earlier this summer will tell you - you can leave your gadgets at home. Forget a blowtorch, this lot make do with nothing more than an old barrel, a hole in the ground, some bricks and a couple of chimneys.
Take the overall winning team from the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (REME) volunteers based in Bordon, Hampshire. For the main Improvised Cookery Skills competition they produced a three-course lunch for 12 people on something resembling a smouldering Victorian go-cart.
And this was no fry-up either. The three-man REME team (two chefs, Jeremy Oughton and Alexandra Bush, plus driver Andy Gilbertson) had to base their menu, designed to be suitable for VIPs, on a box of mystery ingredients - including fennel, dried prunes and kumquats. The result? Salmon and plaice terrine, no less, followed by chicken stuffed with mushrooms, garlic and prunes with braised fennel, or roast lamb with turned potatoes, and finishing with a tower of chocolate and fresh fruit served with a raspberry and kumquat coulis.
Team member Oughton, who trained as a chef before going on to teach at Croydon and Basingstoke colleges, says it's the equipment that's the problem: "It's either hot or bloody hot."
Even the proper army ovens used in the field are just a basic arrangement of metal box fired by diesel burner, with diesel being chosen so that fuel can be taken if necessary from vehicle tanks. But at least this is an improvement on the old petrol ones - apparently they had a habit of exploding.
The competition is held annually at the Prince of Wales barracks, home of the Catering Support Regiment of the Royal Logisitical Corps, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, when teams not only cook, but practise their military skills: firing SA80 assault rifles, competing in driving tests and marching over three miles with 15kg on their backs.
Territorial Army chefs are one of two types: the Independents, who might not be chefs in civilian life but train 35 or more days a year with the TA; and Specialists, usually chefs in real life, who spend about 19 days a year with the Army on training camps. There are more than 41,000 Reservists across the combined Army, Navy, Marines and Air Volunteer Reserve Forces (VRF).
There were two phases: Sunday, the main day, and Saturday, the tactical cooking phase, when teams had to produce breakfast and lunch for 10 and 12 people respectively in tented field kitchens.
When troops aren't at the front line eating ration packs but in positions further back, field kitchens are erected that cater for up to 135 men eating three courses every day. On the menu is a selection from the new ration packs, designed to feed 10 men for one day with lots of dried sauces. But don't worry, there's jam and sticky toffee pud, too.
For this part of the competition, the instructions were: "Come up with whatever."
"It's all about transferring skills across from the commercial kitchen to field kitchen and back again," said judge Captain Gary Young from the Regular Army, who was also captain of the winning army team in the 1996 Culinary Olympics.
Invention was definitely there. Shepherd's pie was made with corned beef; there was balti beef, risotto and bacon fritters, not to mention apple porridge. And anyone who was actually able to improvise with that processed cheese - or "possessed cheese" as it's known in the Army - ought to be regarded as a magician, not a chef. Difficult conditions indeed.
For more information on the Territorial Army, call 0845 603 8000. For more information for employers about Reservists, visit www.sabre.mod.uk.
