Any professional or hobby cook here who wants to shear their Secret recipe?:
All I can add is if working on a tugboat and making bacon, figure 1 pound of bacon per man. At least thats how we did it.
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In rough weather where a sit-down meal is not possible, I like to bake a fresh loaf of bread with a generous amount of honey added. Both the smell of it baking and eating it seems to settle the stomach and it is easy to rip a piece off and eat it with one hand.
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Many fishing boats here with two or three crew have a breadmaker. The ingredients are all normal pantry items and they typically use about 500 watts only.
Michelle’s Brownies (My talented, charming, and beautiful wife…who is sitting next to me ensuring I give proper credit. The pokey knitting needles are a strong incentive to follow her suggestion) In a microwave safe bowl, melt 2 sticks of butter. Stir in 2 cups of white sugar, 4 eggs, a dash of vanilla, lunch of salt, and a cup of flour. CAREFULLY fold in about 3/4 cup of cocoa powder (Hershey’s Special Dark is the upgrade) and one cup of chocolate chips. Spread in a greased 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake for about 22 minutes at 350 or until a toothpick comes out clean…poke it in a couple of places as the chocolate chips can give false readings. Let cool a bit, then slice. Best when warm w/ice cream and homemade raspberry jam.
Lasagna: Brown 1# of ground beef, add 2TBS Italian seasoning and about 1/4 to 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper. Dump in a 28-32oz jar of spaghetti sauce, then set aside. To a 15oz container of ricotta cheese, stir in one egg, and 1/4 cup of grated or shredded Parmesan cheese.
Spread 2 cups of the meat sauce in a 9 x 13 pan, gently press in 4 UNCOOKED lasagna noodles lengthwise, then break a fifth noodle to fit the gap across the end of the pan. With a spatula, spread the ricotta on the noodles and sprinkle with about 1 cup of shredded mozzarella, and then top with 1 1/2 cups of the sauce. Add uncooked noodles too the top of the sauce as above, put the rest of the sauce on top of everything, then sprinkle another cup of mozzarella across the sauce
Cover and bake for about 50min at 350. Uncover for the last 10min. Let rest for 10-15min then cut and serve
Work Boat food. Easy, tasty.
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I’ve been in a couple of ships that ran out of store-bought bread. The second cook started baking loaves daily, and the galley door would be ringed with heads poking in at coffee-time.
When my wife and I rode a towboat from Alton to Memphis in the early 70’s, the standard crew putdown of lesser boats was “They eat store bread."
The cook was a retired Navy Chief who had been cook for the Kennedys at Hyannis.
Cheers,
Earl
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Easy bread: 1 1/2 cups warm water, stir in 2 tsp dry yeast, a generous squeeze of honey (or a TBS or so of sugar/molasses/maple syrup, etc) and let sit for 15 -20 min. Stir in 3 cups of white flour (add a TBS of salt and 2 TBS of olive / vegetable oil OR melted butter after the first cup). When combined, cover loosely and let rise for at least 8 hrs, or up to 24 hours…do NOT knead.
Preheat a cover cast iron Dutch oven for 30 min in a 450 deg oven. While preheating, dump/scrape out the dough to a well floured sheet of parchment paper, dust the top with more flour. Shape it to something vaguely round and then place the parchment and dough in the Dutch oven and return to the oven. Bake for 45 min, then uncover and let brown for 10-15 min. NOTE: trim the parchment back once the lid is on the Dutch oven or make dang sure it is tucked inside.
Optional: when stirring in the flour, add a 1/4 of dried onion and a generous TBS of dried rosemary (rub it around in your hands to crush it a bit).
Have butter ready when bread is done.
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Sounds good. I don’t know what recipes were used in those ships I mentioned.
My wife’s been making me organic mixed-grain bread for years. She got her start with the book “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day”.
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Has anyone sailed with a cook that has kept a sourdough starter. I have a relative that keeps alive a sourdough starter and makes beautiful bread. He gives us a starter from time to time but the enthusiasm passes and the starter dies through a lack of attention.
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When sailing in the Windward Islands many years ago, we ran out of bread and couldn’t find any on one of the smaller islands. The tiny shop, however was stocking dry yeast and corn flour (no wheat). Onboard, I improvised a 100% corn bread, adding copious amounts of yeast (pure corn flour rarely is used for baking). The bread was delicious on the first day. On the second day, the only use case for it would have been as a mooring weight or cornerstone…
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Going to school or to work in times gone by most of us purchased our lunch on Monday. The bakers did not work on Sunday and the bread available then was not full of extenders and other chemicals and went stale in a day.
The school I wenyt to had a very limited range and for US readers one pound equalled 4 US$. There were 20 shillings in a pound and one shilling was what I was given for lunch. Thus equivalent to 20 cents or 2 dimes.
I could choose between a meat pie (steak encased in pastry) plus one doughnut or 4 doughnuts. The doughnuts were more like a Bismark, about 4 inches in diameter, dusted with icing sugar with cream and strawberry jam.
The health police banished the purchase of such a menu years ago,
Oil is the key, although not sure how any corn based product is good much beyond three days without crumbling into a glass or bowl with milk and sugar!
Cuban bread is another delicious loaf when fresh, but dries out in day two…no oil.
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Pre cooked in seal a meal boiler bags, one pot cooking consisting of boiling water.
when i race yachts in the transpac we used heater meals, a camping store type item. the meal came sealed and didn’t have to be refrigerated. you would punch a hole with a fork into a bag of salt water and it would react to a thin square of magnesium you put it all back in the box with the food and its ready it 15 minutes. the lasagna was the best
Before going to Bermuda we pre-made meals, sealed them, and froze them. They lasted a long time and were easy to cook, just throw the bag in a pot of boiling water.
speaking of freezing.
we took white long sheets of one-inch white styro foam and with silcon made a cooler which we sealed with duct tape. it sat in the saloon sole
we froze the food solid shore side and then packed in in the cooler with dry ice. it stayed block frozen for 5 days.
when we got ashore we would throw away the foam. and fly home.
LA to Hawaii in a Cal forty could take up to 15 days if the seas were flat and the breeze behind you was 10 to 15 constant with the kite up day and night
Good times!
The story goes before GPS you just followed the jet contrails. Who brought the boat back?
They’d break them up for timber for buildings. Wait, what?
sexton all the way in 83 & 85 3rd trip in in 87 we used a hewlett packard hand held computer program to work out the fix. in 85 I held the boats top speed at 19 knots, water on the deck main back winded. it was a wild night
in 2003 we used sat nav. the challenge was that we raced in a one design fleet of all cal 40’s and placed second behind stan honey with his wife both rolex sailors along with skip novak and his girlfriend. it was like placing first considering stans reputation, round the world navigator on play station also he invented the red line that you see as the line of scrimmage in the NFL
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owner brought the boat back. that took 23 days