Cooking at Sea

Congratulations ! Maybe in time the Forum can attract some more brown water and blue water cooks to post here. It could lead to a lot of specialized sea going recipe swaps with these cooks and interaction with crew for their suggestions of menu ideas. .Everyone could win. :yum:

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A favorite dish that was served on a weekly basis on board Dutch ships was ‘German Potatoes’. Liked by the crew and the cooks since it required a minimum effort to cook the dish as is was made from previous day leftovers. Also the Chief Steward liked it because of the economics.

German Potatoes

Ingredients

500 Gram Leftover boiled potatoes
3 Large Onions
250 Grams cubed leftover pork
or
250 Grams Smoked bacon cubes
or
250 Grams Smoked ham in small cubes
5 spoons peanut or sun flower oil
1 Sea salt and pepper to taste.

Preparation

Cook the potatoes with peel in 15 minutes, not completely cooked. Drain and leave them for a few hours until they are ice cold or preferably use leftover potatoes. In the meantime, peel the onions and cut them into thick half rings. If the potatoes are cold, peel them and cut them into coarse blocks of about 2.5 cm. Put the frying pan on the stove and let it warm up with the oil. Then put the onions in the pan and fry them for a while till soft and shiny, about 15 to 20 minutes, then add the potatoes and pork, bacon or cubed ham and mix well. Add pepper and salt. Let this gently fry and stir regularly until the potatoes get a brown crust. Serve with one or two fried eggs on top, sunny side up.

Bon appetit!

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If I have this right this is called “Pytt i Panne” in Norwegian.
Ingredients can be just about any leftover meat, vegetables and potatoes, but always with an egg or two on top:

Another popular dish made with leftovers are called “Lapskaus”, which is more of a stew:
image

If there are leftover brown gravy as well it becomes “brown lapskaus”:

PS> I found receipts, but Google translate mangle it entirely.

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Yes the dishes are very similar, there are in fact many variations. For instance I like to add frozen peas to the German Potatoes. We call it German Potatoes probably because potatoes and onions are German staple foods. I thought that pyttipanna originally was a Swedish dish but never mind. In Sweden pyittipanne or Swedish hash is served with pickled beets. I understand that in Norwegian ‘eet pyttipanna’ means too lazy to cook…

I sometimes make a simple lapskaus by adding as a last ingredient corned beef instead of the pork etc and diced gherkins. At the moment here eating Ramen, especially Tonkatsu Ramen, is hot, sushi is out.

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The recipe made it all the way down here where it is also known as German potatoes and usually includes gherkins.

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A tasty variant is to add at the end some grated cheese. Try to avoid sprinkling the egg yolks. As meat diced bacon is used here.

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Streaky rashers (US bacon) or the other sort?

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IMG_3998

No rashers but we dice a piece of belly pork as shown. This piece of meat is much fatter than rashers but it looses most of the fat during frying till they are nicely browned.

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Yes – other than not being sliced, this is what USians call bacon.

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I take it that it you mean down under New Zealand also because of ‘Pretty Girl’.

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Yup. I should confess that I have been fully domesticated since; wife, kids, dogs, cat, the full catastrophe.

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Cooking at Sea rule #28- bacon goes with everything

Wow. One of my friends works as a Chef at a Appalachian Historical Farm (park) where thru the spring months Schools bring classes there for field trips. He related this story to some of at a brunch one Sunday. On one of these events, he said, the lunch menu included cookies as a dessert. This park is like a museum with multiple pavilions and it even loans old rare items in their collection to the Smithsonian Institute) It isn’t cheap to visit this place either.

As he recounted this story he spoke of this one kid who came up to the food line and asked him, “do these cookies have gluten in them”.? When he politely replied to the kid that they did, the kid held the cookie up before him and crumbled it in his hands allowing the crumbs to go all over the floor so that other people would track thru it and soil the carpet.

This kid didn’t realize that there was a surveillance camera in the dining room and one of the teachers was eating in the office where she could observe the kids during lunch. (much like they would do at school).

Chef took it a bit personal but the teacher came to him and explained that they had recorded what happened and the kid was known to be a trouble maker. Once back at school this kid would be called before the Principal he learned from the teacher who approached him as his helper was running the vacuum cleaner.

As we spoke of this incident I mentioned that I understood that only about 1% of people are with a “Celiac” condition where they can’t consume gluten and perhaps 10% have a gluten sensitivity condition,

Chef was explaining the park supervisor visited him later that week and told him the kid was just trying to show off in front of his peers. It got him expelled from school for 2 weeks. But I think that if anyone has a condition or is even picky eater…it is their responsibility to themselves to alert the food prep staff early. And not play some kid game of “slap the cook”. Why waste food to make a statement when there may be others who may want it ? Just uncalled for drama.

When I watched the video I thought of the kid in the black apron in the video and the story the Chef related to some time ago.

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Got this when I was visiting a small shipyard down south.

Cajun Crackers
1 box Unsalted Crackers
1-1/2 cups Canola Oil.
1 pk of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing mix
2 Tbs Cracked Red Pepper
2 Tbs of Slap Ya Mamma Cajun Seasoning

Mix up the Canola oil, Dressing mix, Red Pepper and Seasoning and pour over the crackers turning the crackers over periodically to get a good even coat. Put the coated crackers into an empty 1 gallon jar or other suitable container. Enjoy.

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Yet another stellar Ron Swanson quote. “Vegetables are what my food eats.”

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Ron White: “If god didn’t want us to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.”

I like the PETA hats and shirts worn around here. They have a caption “people eating tasty animals”.

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Crawfish Bread

1lb Crawfish Tails
1 Loaf French Bread
½ Stick Butter
½ Cup Chopped Onion
½ Cup Chopped Celery
4 Green Onion Bottoms Chopped
4 Green Onion Tops Chopped
1 TBS Parsley Chopped
1 TBS Cajun Seasoning
1 ½ Cups Mayonnaise
1 TBS Chopped Garlic
1 Large Tomato Chopped
½ Cup Parmesan Cheese
1 ½ Cup Monterey Jack Cheese
Salt & Pepper to taste

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Melt butter in a skillet. Add chopped onion, celery, green onion bottoms. Cook 2 minutes. Add tomatoes and crawfish. Stir over medium/high heat until bubbly. Drain liquid from mixture and return to heat. Add seasonings, mayonnaise, onion tops and parsley. Cook until hot. Remove from heat.

Slice bread lengthwise and then across, making 4 pieces. Put onto a cookie sheet and spread mixture over the bread. Cook for 20 minutes then turn heat to broil and cook until bubbly. (you can add more cheese to the top before broiling) Watch carefully to keep from burning the cheese.

Cut into serving sizes and plate. Serve immediately.

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Sounds like he was cribbing from Flanders and Swann.

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Standby Louisiana I’m on my way!

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