Cook for a day
Tuesday, August 30th, 2005
Along with standing lookout, steering the ship, cleaning and doing ship’s work, those of us who are not daymen or lead seamen also have a rotating schedule for working in the galley. Each day one person from each of the three watches is assigned to help Joe the cook. Early in the voyage when the watches were larger each person had galley duty about once every two weeks; now that some people are daymen the rest of us rotate through galley once every 9-10 days. Much of galley duty actually takes place in the scullery where we wash all the dishes, utensils, pots and pans. We also set up and clear the serving area for each meal (breakfast and lunch are aft on the aloha deck; dinner is usually served on the hatch midships).Joe tells the galley crew each day what they need to prepare - salad for lunch and or dinner; wash and cut a large pot of potatoes; slice onions; whatever he needs for the next meal. And there’s usually some additional project to do like clean out the veggie lockers get rid of over ripe fruits and vegetables, wash dish towels, clean shelve sin the scullery. Needless to say, galley duty is a busy day, starting at 0630 and usually ending around 2000hrs.
One day each weeks Joe has a day off from cooking. On his day off the three people assigned to Galley get to cook all the meals as well as doing the usual cleaning, keeping the coffee pots and juice pitchers full etc. This past Monday I was one of the three galley crew working on Joe’s day off. Bruce and Erin were the other two, Bruce had already cooked on Joe’s day off once before, and did quite a fine job of it although he wasn’t eager to be in charge of producing meals again. And Erin claimed to not be a very good cook and was happy to have someone else do the cooking. After asking several people what they might like for meals, I proposed a menu for the day, checked with Joe to be sure we had all the ingredients (there aren’t any supermarkets out here in the middle of the ocean; we have to make do with whatever is in the cargo hold), and asked Bruce and Erin if they if they liked the plan. They did.
The menu started with a simple breakfast of cold cereals and milk, fruit salad and the usual juices coffee, and tea. Bruce and I started at 0630 to get everything ready in time for the first serving of breakfast at 0730 (Erin had been on watch until 0400, so she was allowed to sleep in until 0900). Fortunately for me (and anyone who might drink coffee), Bruce took care if the coffee station- I don’t drink coffee and can’t even pretend to know anything about making it. Meanwhile, I started cutting pineapple, pears, apples, grapefruit, and oranges, for the fruit salad. Bruce made a couple of runs to the cargo hold to replenish our supply of cereals, milk, and juices. Then he helped me with cutting fruit. We had one large bowl ready to go at 0730; while the daymen and the 8-12 watch ate we cut more fruit for the second serving of breakfast at 0800for the other two watches, and started washing dishes. Somewhere along the way I sat down long enough to eat a bowl of fruit.
As soon as the breakfast clean up in the scullery was finished, I went forward to the galley to start lunch; egg salad, chickpea salad, cucumber vinaigrette and, for anyone who doesn’t like that peanut butter and jelly. After a couple of trips to the hold to search for chickpeas, I finally realized that there were none within reasonable access, so the menu was modified and simplified- sliced tomatoes instead of chick pea salad. Serendipitously Joe came by to suggest that we went through the tomatoes and cucumbers. I asked him how many eggs we should use to make egg salad for 51 people (I’m not accustomed to cooking to such quantities). I had thought 60-70 eggs might be enough. He suggested cooking 5 flats of eggs, that’s 150 eggs! It took the better part of the morning to boil and peel all those eggs - thank goodness Bruce and Erin were there to help peel eggs and mash them up. Bruce sliced 6 loaves of bread that Joe had baked the day before. I whisked up the vinaigrette for the cucumbers and dressing for the egg salad. We finished the first batch in time for the 1130 lunch and had just enough time to peel more eggs and make the second batch by 1200 for the second lunch serving. I thought we were making way too much egg salad, yet everyone liked it and there was none left over. Nor were there any cucumbers left.
As soon as lunch was served, I started on dinner. Pasta meals are popular, and relatively easy to prepare, so when our chief mate, Sam, suggested baked Ziti I decided to aim for something akin to that. Also I’d had a hankering for banana nut bread for awhile, but since we were all out of bananas I used plantains instead.
Cooking on the diesel stove and ovens that don’t have any thermostat is something of a guessing game. Because the ship was heeled to port, on a starboard tack, the port end of the grill on the top of the stove was hotter and cooked faster. The upper shelf of the port oven baked much faster than any other oven spaces; after 20 minutes in upper left oven rack the plantain nut bread was burnt on top and raw inside. Moving it to the starboard oven for an hour it finished baking without too much additional burning. I did not master the fine art of baking in unknown temperatures in one day, as evidenced by the fact that the burnt tops of all 6 loaves of bread had to be scraped off before serving. The end result seems to have been quite acceptable as it was nearly all eaten at dinner and several people asked me for the recipe.
Another lesson I learned quickly about cooking at sea is that it’s much better too cook two half full pots of tomato sauce than one very full pot. Not only does it heat up more quickly in two pots, but also it prevents spills when the ship rolls on a swell. Perhaps the most difficult part of making dinner was getting the food out of the hold. It took patience and determination for me to extricate two large bags of pasta from behind cargo netting, under a 2×4 and over the edge of a plastic tote. Erin had an even more difficult time getting 3 large cans of tomatoes for the sauce. Eventually it was all simmering on the stove tomato sauce with sautéed onions, mushrooms, garlic, zucchini, and a generous dose of basil, oregano, thyme, tarragon, salt and pepper. Then two large pots of water to boil for the pasta, cheese to grate, and another batch of plantain nut bread to bake.
Bruce and Erin saved the day for me many times as they came through with exactly what I needed at just the right time — supplies from the hold; slicing and dicing vegetables, garlic, plantains; finding the paprika; and cleaning the mixing bowls, pots on top of the stove, pans in and out of the ovens. And all of this aimed at serving dinner to 51 people at 1800. Late in the afternoon I learned that we were having an all hands drill at 1700, so I had to take the breads out of the oven. I managed to get the pasta cooked in time to mix it with the tomato sauce, layer it in the baking pans with cheese in the middle and the top , and covered it with foil to keep it warm until I could get back to the galley to bake it. We had enough to make two extra pans (beyond the usual 4) of pasta and sauce without cheese. After the muster ended I put the breads back into the oven, rotated the pasta pans through the hottest to the cooler oven racks and served it all by 1825 — just at the same time that a Mahi-Mahi was reeled in at the stern of the ship.
While it was fun to mess about in the Galley for a day, I’m more than happy to let Joe have his job back! And I understand why he likes a drink at the end of the day.
For more of Barbara’s journal go to www.travelswithbarbara.typepad.com