I really enjoy cooking underway. I honestly think it might be my favourite part of my job. Which is pretty surprising really considering how little sleep I’ve usually had and how dangerous it can be (We’ve had force 11 winds in the past – I couldn’t count the number of bruises or near misses with boiling water and knives if I tried!). I think it’s a combination of two things. 1) Sailing for weeks on end can get very repetitive and deciding what to cook twice a day gives me something to think about, 2) The satisfaction of serving up a hot tasty meal to cold tired crew in rough weather is like no other.

I do try to keep my passage meals as similar to my normal cooking as I can and as varied as possible, but there are some key things to consider. 

• All meals have to be able to be eaten with one utensil. We usually eat in the cockpit all together so with one hand you hold your bowl and the other a fork/spoon.
• Salad flies away the minute you step into the wind outside as it’s so light.
• Nothing too fiddly to cook if in rough weather. 
• I can only really secure 2 pans at a time on my hob, so nothing with too many components
• For dinner especially, warming carby food is desired to get you through the night.
• Nothing fiddly to eat – no seafood in shells for example. If the sun has gone down before dinner then we often can’t actually see what we’re loading our forks up with!

With all these limitations, it’s no surprise that my go to meals are things like curries, shepherds pie, lasagne, stirfry, pasta bakes, stews etc. Spag bol is always a favourite. I had a theory that no matter how much of it I cooked, it would all get eaten, so I decided to test it on the last passage. For 6 crew I usually work on between 700-800g meat, for this bolognese I used 2kg…. and yep, it all went! Although saucy, sloppy food lends itself well to single-utensil eating, you can still serve up sausages, steak and fish – I just slice it up for everyone before serving to make it easy to eat.

The real gem for passage cooking is when the boys catch a fish. Now everyone has a different opinion on how to treat freshly caught fish (seriously, I made the mistake of asking the question on a yacht chef facebook page and the comment chain reached over a 100 replies – everyone arguing with each other!) so I know people will disagree with me, but this is how I tend to run things. When the fish is caught, it is gutted (checking the stomach for any creepy crawlies) and filleted on deck before being brought down to the galley. If I am planning on cooking the fish, I will put in the fridge overnight to let the flesh relax and then serve it for lunch the following day. If however the fish is to be served raw as sashimi or ceviche (yes I know its technically “cooked” by the lime juice) then I prefer to freeze and defrost the fish to ensure any parasites that might be hiding out are dead.

An example of the sort of meals I serve underway is:

Day 1
Lunch: Chicken and chorizo paella, Dinner: Shepherd’s pie with broccoli

Day 2
Lunch: Pan-fried fish with potatoes and green beans, Dinner: Pork goulash with couscous

Day 3
Lunch: Chicken Souvlaki in pitta, Dinner: Veggie Indian curry with rice

Day 4
Lunch: Prawn pad thai, Dinner: Sausage, mash and onion gravy

Day 5
Lunch: Steak fajitas with guacamole, Dinner: Lasagne

I try to do a mix of red meat, white meat, fish and veggie as well as switching up what carbs we have and the type of cuisine. Although when I’m sleep addled from night watches I have been known to serve two meals in a row with rice without noticing… 

As you can imagine, it’s very easy to get stuck into the same routine of meals, so in preparation for the next passage I’ve just downloaded 4 new Hairy Biker’s cookbooks (my absolute favourite go to recipes!!) which I am going to bury my head in for the next couple of hours.

Night all!