Kaimusailing

It is time to begin provisioning for a long cruise. Food on board is one of the most important factors in maintaining the crew, both physical and morale. Some think the quality of the cook on a vessel is one of the most important factors in a successful voyage.
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In a lot of cookbooks and on celebrity chef TV shows the oven is the professional choice to cook food. On most boats an oven is inefficient, hot, and in some cases not available. If we go back to the cookbooks and restaurants we find Chinese cooking centers around the wok, stovetop preparation, no oven. Japanese cooking styles include the raw ingredients and rice of sushi as well as the seaweed wrappers of sushi called nori.
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I go through cycles of cooking, spending time on one genre then moving on to another. It was time to work with fried rice. It can be cooked on stove top, ingredients that do not require refrigeration, providing balanced nutrition, and having that comfort food effect that raises the morale of the crew.
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In the old days ingredients on a boat would include eggs, onion, root vegetables such as potatoes, and canned meats, pickled products, maybe fruits that could last a while without refrigeration.
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A lot of modern sailors are bypassing cooking difficulties by use of freeze dried meals, just boil water and bingo, you have a tasty meal. The cost of the meals is way out of proportion to the quality and quantity of the food. I have tried several brands of freeze dried meals and I can see little improvement on the taste and texture over what can be achieved using normal cooking methods. It is easier and quicker, sometimes. Certainly freeze dried meals should be kept on board for those times when preparation time is limited, when the cook is exhausted and unable to do it.
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“The Yachting Cookbook” and “Classic Chinese” are two cookbooks that I've found to have excellent recipes that are or can be adapted to the galley. The internet is a great resource, but at sea you have to have your recipes already on board. They should be tested recipes, cook them on shore boat-galley style and work out any problems you might encounter at sea. Save the recipes.
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I made chicken fried rice, something I haven't cooked in a very long time. Chicken needs refigeration though. Fried rice can be made with seafood, such as shrimp, which might be available fresh. An experienced chef can invent a recipe out of a few ingredients, so I decided to use nori, the seaweed sheets used to make sushi, and rice to make a fried rice with canned clams as the other ingredient.
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The rice was cooked the day before using the liquid from the canned clams with enough water added to make up the 2:1 ratio of liquid:rice. I began heating the liquid and decided to add the nori now, before it was boiling, then add the rice later. There are recipes online that use nori in fried rice, but they add it later, cut into julienne style strips. It took a while for the liquid to come up to temperature so I did some laundry in the back room. When I returned the nori/clam stock mixture was all over the stove. It had boiled over. Some had gone down into the oven.
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There are some natural substances that have exceptional qualities, like egg yolks or some cheeses that adhere to a hot surface stronger than an epoxy putty patch. Nori has this quality. It has to be removed before it dries, and it doesn't come along quietly. I had a hell of a cleaning job.
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When I checked the cooking pot, I could see that more than half had vaporized and congealed in those places where the sun don't shine. I had to make a new batch to make up the difference. The cooking pot itself had a new almost ceramic-like coating of nori.
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The nori/rice concoction was cooked as normal and left to cool. Later it was stir fried with the clams, scrambled eggs, garlic and ginger, and some soy sauce. A taste test indicated it needed an extra kick so a little Old Bay seasoning was added and it came out OK, edible.
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It could be made without the eggs and it is probably better to add the julienne nori along with the rice, not boiled all over the stove.
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The picture is not of Marcel, but a painting by Colette van Ojik called “The Cook” from saatchiart.com, it is available for purchase.