#5444--COOKING FOR FUN AFLOAT
by Charles Baker, Jr.
"Before any salt-encrusted readers bound on deck and say that this subject has already been done in books and that cooking at sea is never any fun anyway, let me hasten to explain. Now it seems that my good friend Fritz (Cruise of the Diablesse) Fenger has a friend named Sandy Moffett who not only is a very right guy but mighty handy with a seagoing skillet. Now we’ve sailed some quarter million miles in ships, larger and smaller, a sizable slice of which in our own seagoing ketch Marmion, and have seen our share of stove-side police. No one knows better than ourselves that thankless lot of any Galley Slave. He rates every aid and comfort. His life is just one round of damns, dishes, and duckings. He scarcely gets the evening meal cleared up and snugs himself down for a snooze when the midnight watch barges off to drip slickers in his slumbering face and command hot coffee—or else. Hardly is this cross borne, and once more parallel with the keel, when the four o’clock watch stamps below like a brace of fiends to drip more icy slickers down his pants and growl things about hot soup. Barely can the poor Slave doze again before it is full day and the whole condemned ship’s company arises to a man and screams for ham, eggs, hot cakes, coffee—and the entire vicious parade marches on again. Combined with such minor addenda as scalds, burns, broken shins and toes, the whole business is a sort of marine mayhem without benefit either of clergy or court. But we somehow feel that all yacht cookery isn’t done crossing tide rips in a fifty-mile dusting. Even pals like Slim Baker and Sherry Fahnestock do a whole lot of victualing more or less peacefully at anchor—and it is especially true of you cruising folk who are heading south, where we are right this minute—among the Florida Keys. The practical side has been well done in books yes, but the neglected angle is just how to prepare a few really unusual and intriguing dishes out of easily found raw material. There are always important times when we must turn on a little originality with our show afloat. There we are all snugged down, harbor furl, and the new commodore and his wife boarding us for dinner—maybe the new fiancée with two tweaky parents who are expecting the worst and don’t admire seagoing sons in-law anyway. What we need right badly in such zero hours is how to find another one-dish-meal out of leftovers, scare up something by which to acquire merit and commendation. All the usual cookery books on land seem mostly gotten up by church social ladies with prune whip-tapioca complexes, or involve things not easily had at sea, or show the originality of a mail order catalog. So here's a hot grog to all fellow Galley Slaves, at least they know there's one friend out on that great big bunch of salt water who sympathizes with their wretched lot. So good chance!' A practical and funny collection by an experienced cruiser. Here's a couple of samples.
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BAHAMA ISLAND WHELK--OR "WILK"--STEW SOUP
Ernest Hemingway once said "Whelks are strong fodder, but they can save life," which is one reason we list this recipe--should some yachtsman find himself marooned with the larder low. Whelks--called "wilks" by the natives--are hug salt water snails found clinging to tiderocks on may of the Bahama Islands. They are not strong if prepared correctly. This is a tested recipe.
Whelks, 2 doz. per size
Salt pork, 1/4 lb.
Thyme, 1 teaspoon
Bay leaves, 3 or 4
Onion, 1 big one
Black pepper, and salt to taste
Worcestershire, ditto
Tomatoes, option; canned okeh
Put into boiling water, shell and all. After a few minutes drain; tap shell until Mr. Whelk falls out. Cut out sand bag; cut body from tail. Body is white meat--tails are green or yellow. Pound separately in canvas bag or with maul, until tender. Parboil separately for ten minutes and discard water . . . . Now cover white meat with three or four quarts water--cold
WORDS TO THE WISE NO. 9. CONCH BOUILLON IS NOT TO BE IGNORED
Ten minutes parboling of chowder conch meat in slightly salted water makes a broth which is to the stoutest quahog brew as a composite of Madame du Barry, Mae West, and Gypsy Rose Lee, would be to Elsie Dinsmore. . . . Mix half and half with tomato juice, season with 1 tsp onion pulp (scraped) per serving, celery salt, lime juice, and Worcestershire--to taste; shacke with ice or chill well. It'll make the Swiss navy tackle the whole Britsh fleet!
NIGHT WATCH HURRY-UP CHOWDER
Here is our one concession to haste and need--and why is it that everything bad has to happen in frezing rain squalls at 2:10 a.m.? . . . . Anyway it was a tough spot in a bad cross rip off the Delaware Capes shipping with Harold (Around the World in Pilgrim) Peters, and Eric (Blow the Man Down) Devine, when Marmion's nice fancy new wishbone let go and one side started chopping at the triatic stay and spreaders like Father Time's scythe. Well, Pete, having behaved himself much more wisely than others in New York, elected to shinny up the mizzen and button the murderous weapon down. Then later, when we needed something good and hot and quick Devine--the best Galley Slave we've every shipped with--whipped up this accidental masterpiece.
1 can vegetable soup
1 soup can boiling water
Handful stale bread
1 can clams in their juice
Cayenne and Worcestershire, plenty heated pilot biscuit for all hands.
Haggle of can tops, mix, heat hot, eat. Work bread in soup. Dunk with pilot biscuit first heated on top of stove. A bay leaf or two or three pinches of the usual herbs would make this still better--bay leaf discarded when serving.
OYSTER PAN ROAST, a la Marmion .
One November it was blowing great guns off the Virginia Capes and we lay in Norfolk for a couple of days--and Norfolk to us always means Smithfield peanut-fed, smoked hams, and oysters. Eric Devine got the proceeds of a bushel, donated the overflow to all the assembled yachts in harbor, and we ate oysters in divers ways--of which this was one of the best. First comes the sauce:
For each serving of one dozen oysters allow the following: Juice of a lemon, two rashers of smoked pork--browned crisp beforehand--a teaspoon of scraped onion pulp, two dashes of tabasco, a teaspoon chopped parsley, half teaspoon Worcestershire, three tablespoons butter, and salt and pepper to taste. . . .Pork should be minced very fine, mix everything and bring to simmer . . . . Meantime simmer oysters in own liguor until barely starting to curl on edges. Pour on sauce and simmer up until you count twenty---slowly--dashes of paprika top it off, and have we a bottl of chilled Chablis, Rhine, or Moselle handy? . . . . Personally we've later found that a tablespoon of sherry in with the sauce adds a touch not to be ignored.
WORDS TO THE WISE NO 11, ON THE UTTER FALLACY OF PLUNGING LOBSTERS, CRAWFISH, LANGOUSTES, LANGOSTAS, PRAWNS, ECREVISSES, OR ANY CRUSTACEA INTO BOILING WATER.
If you believe that a snake's tail doesn't stop wiggling until sundown and toads give warts, skip this advice. Boiling water makes any flesh tough--from sea or land. Start the process with cold sea water--or cold salted water. Put in the varmint, feth to a boil. He goes bye-bye just as though he'd been put under an ether cone--and can't feel anyway. Result: tender flesh. We've seen many a big lobster made tougher than rubber by the boiling plunge. It takes no longer and the brute is done almost when boiling starts.