That'll Dufour Me
A Dufour 425 optimistically named Pollyanna to be precise.
We, or rather Peter Mackie's and Sam Peckers, organised her charter out of Dunstaffnage and through the Sound of Mull for a nice long weekend of cooking, eating and sailing for six of us.
Thanks guys!
As the designated ship's cook on our four-day, three-dinners-with-two-on-board voyage I paid particular attention to my universal rules for successful Cooking On Boats while developing our menu. Even the rules I broke.
The Sea Is Not To Be Trusted
As any sailing fule know, the sea is a treacherous mistress
so it pays to avoid as much onboard food preparation as possible by doing it all ashore.
Thus our first meal aboard consisted of my own interpretation of a seafood chowder
prepared at home and sealed into my large stock pot with Sellotape.
Or sticky backed plastic as it is inelegantly known to a generation of Blue Peter viewers.
Don't forget to remove the Sellotape before reheating!For dessert I also pre-made a baking-tin-load of individual sticky toffee puddings that only required reheating in the oven. The main difficulty they presented having successfully driven them across the country, was transporting them intact aboard the boat. There was a definite point on the pontoon when I was seriously afraid the whole tray was about to blow out of my hands, to the great amusement of the rest of our heartless crew. A situation not improved by my careful fashioning of a cling film aerofoil covering.
I must admit to defying another cardinal cooking rule by accompanying the chowder (rather well, I thought) with an oven-baked loaf of soda bread:
The Oven Is Not To Be Trusted
A boat's oven is useful for keeping things warm (like breakfast - ladies!), reheating sausage rolls or pastries
or possibly cooking things securely wrapped in tin foil but don't even think about using it to roast a dinner.
The temperature, heat distribution, and vagaries of the gas supply are eager to ruin anything even slightly sensitive.
Fortunately soda bread is quite forgiving of temperature and rises with the activation of its bicarbonate of soda content
more reliably than do fickle yeast cells.
I also reheated my sticky toffee puddings in the oven, but reheating is specifically allowed, so that's alright then.Meal number two needed to actually be prepared on the boat, so I followed the best practice:
Treat It Tidily Stupid
Organise your dishes so that everything cooks sequentially going into pots, pans or the oven as you prepare the ingredients
- so choose recipes wisely.
This avoids the disaster of an unexpected tack (unexpected to the cook, obviously everyone on deck knows perfectly well what is going on,
but to them you slave in an invisible magic kitchen) dumping all your bowls of lovingly prepared components into the bilges.
The best way to arrange this is to have one large pot for browning/crisping/frying and a large warming dish securely lodged in the sink.
Cook each batch of ingredients as soon as they are prepared in this pot, then decant to the warming dish when done,
freeing the pot for the next batch.
Return everything from the warming dish to the pot at the end for their final simmering/stewing/burning.
Beef Bourguignon lends itself perfectly to this kind of single pot preparation -
I served it with mashed potatoes which I first baked in the oven
(which makes for richer, tastier mash and avoids the need for another giant pot of boiling water rolling around the galley).And some green beans which I cooked in a giant pot of boiling water.
Handily both meals also followed an essential rule for shipboard harmony:
All Meals Must Contain Bacon
A generous supply of bacon in their diet acts much like Valium on the crew mood. Lack of bacon can lead to unrest and even mutiny.
Actually this is rather more of a personal rule, perhaps not quite so applicable to vegetarian voyages. Perhaps.Absolutely NO Flambéing on board in the Skipper's Presence
On reflection, the proximity of that porthole's curtains should have argued against having flaming rum bananas with butterscotch sauce for dessert. Fortunately the sauce was very well received and the skipper didn't notice a thing.
Always Have a Backup
Not just a good rule for cooking - it's a good rule for all of your sailing. Maybe a good rule for life!
Since The Sea Is Not To Be Trusted it's a good idea to have at least one backup meal in case you run aground, or get blown out to sea.
I chose a pasta with smoked salmon and cream cheese dish,
all the constituents of which keep reasonably well.
Of course, when it proved surplus to requirements, as the designated chef I was able to take the ingredients home and try the dish out for myself.
It would have been delicious!My favourite non-cookery related bit of the sail was helming Pollyanna between Lady's Rock and Lismore island in an unreliable easterly wind against a stiff tide running Northwards. A much stiffer tide than any of us had managed to predict from the tidal atlases aboard.
As I admired the astonishing disagreement between the chart plotter's Heading and COG tracks I gave some thought to how often I'd been in the position of having to pick the best course through a narrow channel or entry, and what would be a better strategy than just aiming for the middle and hoping for the best. It occurred to me that navigating to avoid the worst-case outcomes might be a smarter plan. In this case the place I definitely didn't want to end up would be being forced to tack mid-way through the gap and risk losing way while being swept energetically towards Robert Stevenson's lighthouse on Eilean Musdile!
Accordingly I made sure to hold the passing tack until I was almost on the skerry before bearing away - much to Scot's consternation.
Hopefully no one else noticed our anxiety!
Other things I learned on this trip:
- Don't attempt to berth sideways onto the end of a narrow pier lest you crush your less agile crewpersons - approach sternwards.
- Don't let women cook your breakfast or you'll be waiting for it one bacon rasher at a time.
Later you might get an egg.
Karl's Clam Chowder
Fish soup
main soup fish nautical experimental
Or at least, a clam* chowder concept.
Funny - ever since that Simpson's episode
I only hear chowDAH, chowDAH!
There's a bit of a story behind this chowDAH as it happens - see it all started with a visit to Rosy Ogden's Dad John's fabulous Temple to Seafood in Oban. His chowder was simply exquisite, and ever since I've been trying to prise its secrets from first John, and then Rosy. All to no avail.
So when I promised a seafood meal for Rachel's prize-winning girly 707 team, one of whom being that very same Rosy, I immediately thought of presenting my own competing chowder. Just to show them I don't need their stinking secret recipes. So I set about developing one.
There are as many American clam chowders as there are states, or even kitchens, so there's plenty of inspiration to choose from. Most of them are thickened, or at least decorated, with crackers, some with potatoes, most are made with milk or cream (New England) some heretically with tomatoes (Manhattan) and even combinations of the two (Long Island).
Many thanks to the inspiring amount of research put into the making of a real New England Clam Chowder by The Food Lab. It has to be said, though, that their clams look a whole lot more edible than the ones that came out of my fishmonger's shells. Perhaps that's what you get from American tins?
Anyway, I decided to go with a uniquely Greek twist on the New England style - flavouring the milky soup with Ouzo and thickening it with beans.
Unfortunately, due to the impossibility of getting 4 girls and their partners to schedule a single free evening this side of the apocalypse the dinner never materialised, but I decided to parlay the chowder into one of the meals for this Charter holiday.
So without further ado, on with the process...
* May not contain clams
There's a bit of a story behind this chowDAH as it happens - see it all started with a visit to Rosy Ogden's Dad John's fabulous Temple to Seafood in Oban. His chowder was simply exquisite, and ever since I've been trying to prise its secrets from first John, and then Rosy. All to no avail.
So when I promised a seafood meal for Rachel's prize-winning girly 707 team, one of whom being that very same Rosy, I immediately thought of presenting my own competing chowder. Just to show them I don't need their stinking secret recipes. So I set about developing one.
There are as many American clam chowders as there are states, or even kitchens, so there's plenty of inspiration to choose from. Most of them are thickened, or at least decorated, with crackers, some with potatoes, most are made with milk or cream (New England) some heretically with tomatoes (Manhattan) and even combinations of the two (Long Island).
Many thanks to the inspiring amount of research put into the making of a real New England Clam Chowder by The Food Lab. It has to be said, though, that their clams look a whole lot more edible than the ones that came out of my fishmonger's shells. Perhaps that's what you get from American tins?
Anyway, I decided to go with a uniquely Greek twist on the New England style - flavouring the milky soup with Ouzo and thickening it with beans.
Unfortunately, due to the impossibility of getting 4 girls and their partners to schedule a single free evening this side of the apocalypse the dinner never materialised, but I decided to parlay the chowder into one of the meals for this Charter holiday.
So without further ado, on with the process...
* May not contain clams
Serves a boat
Ingredients
- ½lb salt pork, pancetta or streaky bacon
- celery
- fennel
- onion
- white wine or Vermouth or what about Pernod or Ouzo?
- 5 oz haricot beans or butter beans
- fish stock made from mussels or clams seems appropriate
- milk
- cream
- clams
- scallops
- lobster
- white fish
Optional Dressings:- lemon?
- coriander
- some sort of bacon foam
This is still more of a plan than a completed recipe, but for what it's worth here goes:
Soak the beans overnight, then simmer until very soft in fish stock. Make sure you have some bay leaves, and possibly fennel flavours in the stock? Strain, retaining the stock, then purée and pass through a sieve.
If using clams, steam gently in a little liquor of choice until they open, strain the liquid through muslin and set aside, remove the clam flesh.
If using scallops, simmer them gently in a huge amount of butter until they colour slightly - set aside.
If using lobster, cook, then cut in half, crack open the claws, extract the meat and cut into decent pieces. If there's any tomalley or roe in the lobster mash it up with butter and set aside.
Dice the salt pork or bacon and fry gently in butter until golden but not browned, set aside.
Add the finely chopped onions and celery and fry until glassy.
De-glaze with the liquor, add the reserved fish, bean, and clam stock and some milk. Purée about half the solids, then add back together with the bacon and the bean puré.
If you are adding fish put this in now, simmer until softened then remove and break into bite-sized pieces.
Add the clams if using and continue to simmer.
Stir in the cream, the tomalley and roe paste if there was any, add the lobster, scallops, fish pieces and warm through.
Dress with lemon doubtful, coriander definitely, or any other likely herbs nope!, spoon over some bacon foam and serve.
Soak the beans overnight, then simmer until very soft in fish stock. Make sure you have some bay leaves, and possibly fennel flavours in the stock? Strain, retaining the stock, then purée and pass through a sieve.
If using clams, steam gently in a little liquor of choice until they open, strain the liquid through muslin and set aside, remove the clam flesh.
If using scallops, simmer them gently in a huge amount of butter until they colour slightly - set aside.
If using lobster, cook, then cut in half, crack open the claws, extract the meat and cut into decent pieces. If there's any tomalley or roe in the lobster mash it up with butter and set aside.
Dice the salt pork or bacon and fry gently in butter until golden but not browned, set aside.
Add the finely chopped onions and celery and fry until glassy.
De-glaze with the liquor, add the reserved fish, bean, and clam stock and some milk. Purée about half the solids, then add back together with the bacon and the bean puré.
If you are adding fish put this in now, simmer until softened then remove and break into bite-sized pieces.
Add the clams if using and continue to simmer.
Stir in the cream, the tomalley and roe paste if there was any, add the lobster, scallops, fish pieces and warm through.
Dress with lemon doubtful, coriander definitely, or any other likely herbs nope!, spoon over some bacon foam and serve.
Sounds yum right? Must try it!
Round One
Round Two
Round Three
The Pernod is a suggested ingredient in the ingredient list.
Round One also uses Ricard. Which is like Pernod ;)
#2 – 20 November, 2022 at 3:25 pm
Is this ther Pernod one?
#1 – 20 November, 2022 at 3:15 pm