Beware the Russian spirit lamp

MANY OF US have had interesting experiences with cooking stoves on small yachts. Some of those experiences have involved the loss of eyebrows, mustaches, and the hair on the back of the hands. And mostly, those experiences have involved alcohol or kerosene stoves.

The first such experience recorded in the history of yachting, as far as I know, took place in 1869, when a man named Empson Edward Middleton became the first person to sail singlehanded around England.

Middleton was eccentric in several ways and always tried to eat ashore in a hotel or boarding house each evening, but on those occasions when he was stuck at anchor at some roadstead, and needed to cook his own supper, he had a kind of primitive stove in a side locker in the cockpit of his 23-foot gaff-rigged yawl.

Here, from his book, The Cruise of The Kate, is his description of that stove, which, I gather, ran on spirit, or alcohol:

“The lamp used was that usually known as the Russian spirit lamp; and having tested its utility as fully as possible, I have no hesitation in saying that it is an excessively dangerous article to have on board for constant use.

“Its manner of burning is most eccentric: sometimes it will throw up a perfect hurricane of fire, which can be hear roaring at a considerable distance; at others, though trimmed in precisely the same way, it will burn in an enormous sluggish column of flame, which rolls out into the well [cockpit —jv] with the lurch of the boat, threatening to set fire to everything.

“Now and then it varies the entertainment by becoming a fountain, shooting the spirit up from inside, which falls into the tin case, creating a perfect mass of fire outside the lamp, necessitating an instant attention with a teacup full of salt water.

“Again, the fire is such that it persists in coming out at the handle in spite of extra washers and the tightest screwing, creating a great difficulty in putting the lamp out. But the worst feature arises from the fact of the spirit being shaken out of the cuts in the bottom (which are intended to allow a free current of air), compelling constant attention to the furnace if there is any bubble on, [I believe he means bobble, small wavelets in the anchorage. — jv] because the whole chamber will be a mass of flame in an instant, and must be put out.

“I have taken the trouble to mention these peculiarities, for they cease to be dangers when known and properly met. I cannot recommend the lamp, and know of nothing to take its place; but let the engineer be careful that he burns spirit which water will extinguish.”

Well, the Russian lamp sounds like a fearsome beast that makes the later products of Messrs. Primus, Optimus, and Origo seem quite tame by comparison. I don’t think there are any perfectly safe stoves for small yachts, unless you count electric stoves, which are not often found in boats of the size I can afford. They all need to be handled with care, especially at sea. But I’m rather glad the Russian spirit lamp is no longer with us. Cooking on small boats is taxing enough without all that excitement.

Today’s Thought

I am building a fire, and every day I train, I add more fuel. At just the right moment, I light the match.

— Mia Hamm, U.S. national soccer player

Tailpiece

“I see your husband has given up smoking.”

“That’s right.”

“Must have taken an awful lot of willpower.”

“I have an awful lot of willpower.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Hemingway, ham, and apricots

COOKING ON A SMALL BOAT is rarely fun, and even more rarely when that boat is being tossed around offshore in heavy seas. I’ve often said there’s no more thankless task on a boat than that of the boat’s cook, the galley slave, but I recently ran across a description that makes my definition sound very tame.

It comes from an article called “Cooking for Fun Afloat” by Charles H. Baker, Jr. that appeared in The Rudder magazine in February 1938. Baker was truly an old salt, one who had racked up some quarter million miles in ships large and small, and this is what he had to say:

“We 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 a 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 of clergy or court.”

Well, despite his protests, Baker was obviously a skilled cook, and much in demand. He published a lot of recipes for sailors, and here is one that should satisfy my readers who felt that Commander E. G. Martin’s recipe for onion soup, which I published recently, was a little wimpy for a macho crew of working sailors. Those readers were wrong, incidentally, but no matter. They might like to try this Baker recipe instead:

Smoked or Sugar-Cured Ham Steak and Apricots

“This originated on a Bimini cruise to fish with Ernest Hemingway on his good ship Pilar in 1936.

“Slice ham at least 1 inch thick, stand for a while in water, or poach ten minutes to freshen. Brush with any good cooking fat.

“Make a paste of the following: one-eighth teaspoon each ground allspice and clove, one teaspoon hot dry mustard, two-thirds cup brown sugar, enough vinegar to moisten well.

“Put in greased pan, surround with two cups of soaked apricots and brown in medium oven around 350° for an hour. Baste frequently. Apricot likes ham very well.”

Well, that should quell those rumbling tummies for a bit; and if it was good enough for Hemingway it should be good enough for us.

Today’s Thought

My mother was a good recreational cook, but what she basically believed about cooking was that if you worked hard and prospered, someone else would do it for you.

— Nora Ephron

Tailpiece

Then there was the Oriental wife who was most distressed because she produced white twins.

“There, there,” said her husband comfortingly. “Don’t worry about it. Occidents will happen.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Meet the real yachting heroes

CRUISING STORIES often make heroes of deck crews who brave howling winds and fearsome waves to navigate a small sailboat across an ocean. Very rarely do they give credit to the real hero, the cook.

Galley space is very limited on a small boat, and the galley tilts and lurches so violently that in heavy weather it’s impossible to do more than boil water or heat a can of soup.

You have to plan your cooking step by tedious step. You can’t just set a dish down on the counter. It will be flung off immediately. You can’t even perform a simple act such as pouring from a kettle into a mug until you know the trick, which is to hold one in each hand and pour fore-and-aft, never athwartships.

The fiddles and potholders are never high enough, the galley stores are always buried way up forward, and at the end of it all the crew ... well, the no-good crew will either spurn your meal because they’re seasick or complain that you never, ever give them enough.    

The cooks are the ones who deserve the medals.

Finally, here’s a tip to get you into the medal-earning league: Never pick up a hot pan unless you know beforehand exactly where you’re going to put it down. That’s an essential planning skill for a sea cook.

Today’s Thought

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all.

— Harriet Van Horne, Vogue, 15 Oct 56

Tailpiece

Growing and smoking marijuana is now legal in some U.S. states. In Washington state there are now phone messages that say: “If you want to buy marijuana, please press the hash key.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

A gastro-navigation course

ARE YACHTSMEN LIVING LONGER than they used to? This question occurred to me when I was reading an article written in the middle of the last century by Robert Neilson. It described how to make a five-course dinner on a yacht in 30 minutes with a minimum of actual labor.

All the equipment required was one burner of the stove and a two-gallon pot half filled with sea water, to which was added:

Ø A can of soup;

Ø A can or sealed jar of meat balls with spaghetti and tomato sauce, corned beef hash with a boiled egg atop, spaghetti and cheese, or any number of similar items;

Ø Any canned vegetable as desired;

Ø Any fresh vegetable that can be cooked in salt water, such as potatoes, onions, squash, carrots, corn, turnips, and green peppers;

Ø For dessert, a couple of bananas can be thrown in and eaten as a vegetable if desired, or with brown sugar and milk.

The instructions were to place all cans in the pot on their sides with their labels removed. “If placed on end, the boiling will make them rattle like a dozen castanets,” said the voice of experience. “On top and in between, place the vegetables and, later on, the bananas, all with their jackets on. Bring to a boil, cook for 20 minutes, and dinner is ready.”

Now, I could hardly suppress a shudder when I read that list. It seems fairly innocuous at first glance, but I couldn’t help feeling that some of this (maybe a lot of this) was mighty unhealthy fodder according to modern thinking.

Times have changed. How would we get along these days without gluten-free cookies, fat-free milk, and cholesterol free meatballs — in fact, meat-free meatballs? Where would we be without organic vegetables and calorie counts on everything?

Which leads me to another questions: Will we still die if we stop eating the stuff that’s killing us, and eat healthily instead? In other words, what is our excuse for dying now that we don’t derive our meals from cans boiled in a two-gallon pot? All I can say is that anyone who dies from now on has got some explaining to do.

Today’s Thought

I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig’s milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
— Kingsley Amis.

Tailpiece

No doubt you’ve heard a “fly-in-my-soup” joke. Well, I have 30 of them, and I’m not going to waste them by using them all at once. No sir, I’m going to dole them out over the next 30 columns. So stand by with your groans, here goes:

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(1)“It’s all right, sir, he won’t live long in that stuff.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Gastronavigation 3

AS IS ONLY RIGHT and proper, the final column in our Gastronavigation series deals with fellow creatures of the water. They may be fellow creatures, but they’re not as fortunate as we are. These are fellow creatures that we eat. And they’re not even cooked. No, not oysters. Fish.

I first came across Tahitian Raw Fish in Cape Town just before we set off to race across the Atlantic to Rio de Janeiro in a lightweight 33-footer. The chewy little white cubes made a tangy and refreshing appetizer in the hot South African summer.

Here’s a recipe from Florence Herbulot, a talented French sailor, cook, and translator of the Patrick O’Brian books, among many others:

TAHITIAN RAW FISH, from Cooking Afloat, 1965.

For this dish you can use any sea fish as long as it is perfectly fresh: mackerel, whiting, bream.
Place the fish, either in fillets or cut into cubes, in a deep dish. Sprinkle generously with lemon juice; leave to marinate for 1 to 2 hours and then add some olive oil and pepper; marinate for a further 2 hours.

As soon as the fish is really white, with no trace of transparency, it is “cooked,” that is, the flesh has been seethed by the lemon juice just as if it had been boiled in water and vinegar.
The only difference is that it takes longer than cooking, but the flavor is wonderful.

The Latin American version of this is called ceviche, which comes with additional ingredients and many different flavors. One favorite of mine is the Mexican recipe that uses green coriander leaves (cilantro):

CEVICHE APPETIZER, yacht Sangoma, Bellingham, WA, 2009

1 pound fish or scallops
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup lime juice
1 tablespoon diced green chili pepper (jalapeño)with seeds removed
1 tablespoon cilantro
A smidgeon of grated green ginger root
Cut meat into small cubes and marinate in juice for three hours, stirring occasionally.

How you serve up your ceviche depends on your imagination. I don’t have much imagination, so I just put it in a bowl and let everybody spear their own bits with toothpicks.

Incidentally, if you can’t catch your own fish, ask the store for frozen Orange Roughy, a deep-sea perch that lives for nearly 150 years. It’s on the threatened list, but we import millions of pounds annually and it’s perfect for these recipes. Just don’t tell the conservationists John Vigor sent you.

Today’s Thought
All men are equal before fish.
— Herbert Hoover, NY Times, 9 Aug 64

Tailpiece
“So did you wash your parrot with dish detergent?”
“Yeah.”
“And what happened?”
“It died.”
“There, I told you not to use detergent.”
“It wasn’t the detergent. It was the spin-drier.”

Gastronavigation week

The latest issue of the Walnut Street Gazeout (should be Gazette) poses a question of interest to all amateur sailors. The question comes from Titus Aduxass, who, like several of his fellow inmates, is planning to acquire (hem, hem) an ocean-going sailboat and set off for Tahiti as soon as he gets out of prison.

In a letter to the editor of the Gazeout he asks: “What stuff can you cook under way in a moderate-to-rough sea?”

Well, that inspired me to devote all three columns this week to the gentle art of gastronavigation, about which I know practically nothing. But I pride myself on the fact that knowing nothing about something has never stopped me writing about it.

Thus we plunge boldly into Gastronavigation I, featuring one of my all-time favorite recipes, one that you can prepare in heavy weather with a minimum of effort on one of those little gimbaled single-burner stoves hanging from a bulkhead.

This recipe originated with Commander E. G. Martin, winner of the first Fastnet Race in 1925 with Jolie Brise, a 56-foot converted pilot cutter built of wood in Le Havre, France, in 1913.

COMMANDER MARTIN’S ONION SOUP (Circa 1927)

Place four medium-large onions, peeled and cut into quarters, into a covered saucepan with 3 to 4 cups of cold water.

Add 2 tablespoons Bovril (or other strong beef stock), 4 ounces butter, a dessert-spoonful Lea and Perrins Worcestershire sauce, a little black pepper, and (when the cooking is nearly done) a small glass of sherry or rather more white wine.

Boil gently for 30 minutes or until the onions have fallen to pieces and are soft, stirring occasionally.

Okay, now for the translation. Bovril. What the heck is Bovril? Well, it seems to be the distilled essence of British cows. It’s black and bitter and it’s still available at my local supermarket. But I don’t use Bovril. I use enough beef stock cubes to make 4 or 5 cups of bouillon.

And 4 ounces of butter? Just reading about it is enough to clog your arteries and give you a heart attack. On land, I use only 2 ounces of butter. It still tastes delicious. But at sea, when a hungry crew needs lots of quick fuel to burn up, give them a full 4 ounces. They’ll love you for it.

Incidentally, Jolie Brise went on to win another two Fastnets, and is still sailing and racing today at the age of 96. Last year she was first in class and first in fleet in the Tall Ships Race from Liverpool, U.K., to Maloy, Norway.

Coming on Wednesday: A West Coast recipe. How to turn a fresh-caught salmon into delicious gravlox.

Today’s Thought
I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig’s milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
— Kingsley Amis

Tailpiece
“Waiter! Take your thumb off that steak.”
“Very well, sir, but if it falls on the floor again it’s your fault.”

Cooking under way

THE NEW KID on the block came back from a weekend cruise in the islands with a burning question: how do you cook under way? He has a 26-foot sailboat, with an alcohol-fueled double-burner stove, but no gimbals. One chilly day, he had to beat for eight hours in heavy winds and a contrary current. “I could have killed for a hot cup of soup,” he said, “but we couldn’t keep anything on the stove with any degree of safety.”

Most small sailboats don’t have swinging room for a properly gimbaled stove, of course, so cooking is limited to calm water in anchorages. And even there it’s possible to have a nasty accident when an unthinking powerboater comes past dragging a huge wake.

The answer to this dilemma is to invest in one of those single-burner stoves in gimbals that fastens to a bulkhead. You might find it difficult to find one of the original Sea Swing stoves, the aluminum ones that had a place for a kerosene Primus stove to hang underneath, but you can still buy a new Seacook made by Kuuma/Force10.

The Seacooks use the ubiquituous 16.4-ounce propane canisters and stow out of the way until you fit them to a low-profile bulkhead mount. They’ll take a 7-inch-diameter cooking pot. Forespar makes a similar Mini Galley 2000 stove, and both will give you about 3 1/2 hours of very convenient cooking at full blast.

These swinging single-burners are very welcome aboard small ocean cruising yachts, of course, but the cook will need either lessons in one-pot cooking or a large stock of those ready-to-eat entrées that need only be immersed in boiling water.

Meanwhile, here’s a simple, classic, one-pot recipe for onion soup. It came from British naval Commander E. G. Martin whose soup was the object of frequent praise aboard his famous cutter, Jolie Brise, which won the first Fastnet Race in 1925:

“Place four medium-large onions, peeled and cut into quarters, into a covered saucepan with 3 to 4 cups cold water. Add 2 tablespoons Bovril (or other strong beef stock) 4 ounces butter, a dessertspoonful of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, a little black pepper, and (when the cooking is nearly done) a small glass of sherry or rather more white wine. Boil gently for 30 minutes or until the onions have fallen to pieces and are soft, stirring occasionally.”

This recipe makes enough for four to six people but it may be rather too glutinous for modern arteries, so I reduce the butter to 2 ounces and substitute 5 beef stock (bouillon) cubes for the Bovril. It’s still delicious and highly comforting on a cold stormy day.

Resources:
►Sea Swing stoves: Check Craig’s list or eBay for used models. Google “Classic Camp Stoves” for a forum on traditional old stoves and spare parts.
►Kuuma/Force 10 Seacook stoves and Forespar Mini Galley 2000 stoves: Google for list of current suppliers and prices.

Today’s Thought
I believe that if ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.
—Jean Marie Amat

Tailpiece
“Doctor is it true that if you never drink, smoke, or run around after women, you’ll live longer?”
“I’m afraid we’ll never know until someone tries it.”