GI cook: A bit of scrounge, a dab of make-do

Soldier in 39th fries up fish, potatoes, hush puppies, adds twist of lemon for VIPs

By Amy Schlesing (Contact)

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq - Staff Sgt. Christopher Platt moved between the massive bowl of freshly cut french fries and the pot of bubbling oil on the stove.

He was oddly calm considering that an hour earlier he learned that he was cooking dinner for 16 tired and hungry people. He’d sent his band of Army cooks out to scavenge for ingredients. They’d just returnedwith trout fillets, ice cream and bad news - sorry, no parsley. And no cabbage.

Coleslaw would have to wait for another day.

Platt, of Heber Springs, turned back to the stove, where he was using the same pot of oil to make french fries, hush puppies and tortilla shells for fried ice cream while trying to get all 16 fish fillets breaded and fried.

He looked at his watch, looked at the food and juggled the various foods in and out of the oil so it stayed hot and everything got done at about the same time.

“We need more pots and pans,” he said as he scooped fries out of the oil to make room for the hush puppies.

That was an understatement. Not many cooks could make a meal for 16 people in two hours using a 2-gallon pot and two frying pans.

But this is no ordinary kitchen.

This is the kitchen of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion of Arkansas’ 39th Infantry Brigade, one of the few places in Iraq where Army cooks still cook.

Over the past decade, cooking skills have been traded for quick meals that require little more than a can opener. And since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan kicked off, even that has been outsourced to contrac-tors so that more soldiers can be pushed to the units on the line.

“When I first came in the Army as a cook, the agenda was taking care of troops,” Platt said. “If you had to open early to feed troops heading out, you do. Now [chow halls] are run by [contractors’] hours.”

Chow halls in Iraq are run by civilian defense contractors who rely on workers from third-world countries like India to cook and clean. There are a handful of Army cooks at each dining facility to supervise the civilian cooks, ensuring that they safely prepare the food.

In this war, a cook is more likely to be found carrying a gun on patrol than working in a kitchen.

Sgt. Zain Askew of Texarkana, Texas, is a trained Army cook but during his last deployment in 2004 as an active-duty soldier with the 1st Cavalry Division, he worked as a company armorer, storing and fixing the unit’s arsenal of weapons.

“No, most cooks who come over here don’t work as cooks,” he said. “This is different.”

Platt said he has seen the job of Army cook drastically change during his 24 years in the service.

“I get to do some stuff back at home station, but everything is preprepared,” he said. “I don’t get to use my skills very often.”

Platt’s kitchen is one of a kind.

This is the Joint Visitors Bureau at Camp Victory, where admirals, generals, congressmen and ambassadors from around the world stay when visiting Baghdad.

With dignitaries and big ranks come formal dinners.

This palace on a lake near Baghdad International Airport is called a hotel. But there’s no nightly rate. It’s military housing run by Charlie Company for distinguished visitors. Most meals are carried over to the hotel’s dining room from the big chow hall down the road.

At least once a week, some guest or commanding general who lives on camp reserves the formal dining room for a special dinner.

Since taking over the mission from the Iowa National Guard three weeks ago, Charlie Company has housed about 2,000 guests in the hotel’s various rooms and trailers. The soldiers have seen undersecretaries of defense, congressmen, ambassadors from Canada and Poland, and country music singer Toby Keith.

As Platt shuffled the night’s food in and out of the boiling oil, an Australian sailor walked into the kitchen carrying a notebook and a pleading look.

She asked to book the dining room and Platt’s services for a dinner for a general.

“Please,” she said.

Platt pointed with a pair of tongs to a cubbyhole in the corner of the kitchen, behind metal shelves filled with massive cans of everything from cake batter to beans.

“Write it down over there,” he said.

She smiled and headed for the hidden desk, passing a dryerase board filled with a list of things Platt needs for the kitchen - cooking utensils, pots and pans. “The We Need Board,” was scrawled at the top of the board in red ink.

Spc. Todd Warner of Mena, one of three soldiers who work with Platt, started setting out Saddam Hussein’s old china on trays, preparing them to be loaded with food.

Sgt. 1st Class Neal Badger of Oden poked his head in through the door and asked what time he should tell the party to sit for dinner.

Platt looked at his watch and then back at the half-cooked meal. He needed more time.

“They’ve been on the road all day,” Badger said. “They’re hungry.”

Platt asked for an hour. It looked like an impossible deadline, with more than 50 hush puppies still to fry and 19 potatoes worth of fries being cooked in batches.

The pot wasn’t big enough for all of them.

Warner started dolloping pasta salad on the plates.

“Remember what I told you about the rims,” Platt said as he rolled a trout fillet in his homemade batter. “I don’t like food on the edge of the rim.”

In the chow hall, Askew and Pvt. Matthew Huffman of Fayetteville worked on setting up dinner for the soldiers.

The fancy dinners for VIPs are in addition to their usual cook duties. Soldiers have to be fed, too.

Warner worked scooping ice cream balls for fried ice cream for the VIPs. He dug into the bucket of vanilla with a measuring cup - the only available scoop.

Badger popped back in, looking a bit stressed. It was time to feed Toby Keith and his band.

Platt had one tray of plates ready to go, right on time. He layered the fish next to the salad and piled up fries and hush puppies, topping it all off with a twist of lemon.

Then, another tray was ready, and another.

At last, as quickly as the frenzy started, it ended with a huge pile of dirty dishes.

“Yeah,” Platt said when asked about a dishwasher. “They have two arms and two legs.” The amenities in his kitchen are few.

A former cook at the Red Apple Inn in Heber Springs, Platt hopes to finish his chef classes and open his own restaurant when he returns home.

The next day, the four cooks were once again preparing for a special meal. Every Monday, they cook brunch for the soldiers of Charlie Company and hotel guests.

It is their Sunday brunch, since the chaplain makes his stop there on Mondays.

Askew whipped up waffle batter as Huffman pulled meat from the bone of last night’s chicken. Leftover mashed potatoes sat in a vat nearby to be transformed into potato cakes.

Nothing goes to waste in this kitchen. On the stove, frying pans sizzled with the cabbage that didn’t make it in time for the Toby Keith dinner two days earlier. Fried cabbage is one of Platt’s specialties.

Platt carefully sliced a kiwi, crafting the fuzzy fruit into a bird.

He rummaged through a cupboard of spices, looking for cloves to use for eyes.

“What are you doing?” Huffman asked.

“Just watch,” Platt said as he scooped fruit salad into a basket carved from a watermelon, its skin scored with a knife to look woven. He carefully placed the kiwi bird on top and carried the sculpture out to the dining room as soldiers gathered for brunch.

Soldiers marveled at the basket. Some took pictures.

He plucked the spikes from freshly-cut pineapple and arranged them like grass, making sure it was perfect before walking away.

“Why?” Platt said. “It’s pride in my job.”

He’s an Army cook.

This article was published Thursday, May 1, 2008.

Front Section, Pages 1, 7 on 05/01/2008