I once wrote a book entitled "Voyaging on a Small Income" and the parts about provisioning and cooking proved very popular. "The Voyaging Vegetarian" would have followed, but so few people were then vegetarians that I thought no-one would publish it. Now many more people realise that eating dead animals is unkind and bad for the planet. I hope a blog, which I can update with new recipes, will work better than a book for liveaboards and aspiring voyagers, and those living simply in small spaces.
Back in the 80s, I wrote a book called "Voyaging on a Small Income", which was published and sold astonishingly well. It’s become almost a “classic” and is probably why you’ve found this site!
I’ve been living aboard and sailing since the 70s. Nine different boats have been home, sometimes for several months, sometimes for many years. I love the way of life, the small footprint and being close to Nature. I’m a great fan of junk rig and having extensive experience with both gaff and bermudian rig, I wouldn’t have any other sail on my boat. It’s ideal as a voyaging rig, but also perfect for the coastal sailing that I now do. I’d rather stay in New Zealand, not having to keep saying goodbye to friends, than go voyaging, these days.
Between 2015 and 2021, I built the 26ft "FanShi", the boat I now call home. For the last 45 years or so, my diet of choice has been vegetarian and is now almost vegan. I love cooking and particularly enjoy having only myself to please. I am combining all these interests (apart, perhaps, from junk rig!) in this blog. I hope you enjoy it. I also have other blogs: www.anniehill.blogspot.com and http://fanshiwanderingandwondering.wordpress.com
Spreads, Pâtés, Dips, Starters, Snacks And Things To Have For Lunch
Credit: Janette Watson
Most
cruising people that I know, do not have a ‘hot knife and fork
lunch’, but have something much more like a snack – and a
variable feast at that. Because of the limitations of most yachts’
accommodation, a large number of us invite friends around for
sundowners and serve substantial snacks rather than trying to give a
proper cooked meal to more than four guests. And when new people
come alongside for a couple of minutes’ chat, it’s often nice to
invite them aboard and offer hospitality. If we get on well time
passes and soon more than a cup of tea is called for. It seems that
all these occasions require much the same sort of food, which is
why I’ve lumped them altogether in one 'page'. Other quick and
casual food can be found in the pages:‘Pasties,
Empanadas, Samosa and Calzone’,‘Soups’,
‘PastryDishes’,
or even Breakfast!
And if you are looking for ideas for a picnic,
this is a good place to start.
PÂTÉS
AND SPREADS
Pâtés
and spreads are wonderful snack foods. With chunks of home-made
bread, they can provide a substantial lunch and you can use crackers
or MelbaToast for sundowners or a starter. Once
you’re used to making them, you can soon invent new ideas from the
ingredients that you have to hand. Below are some to get you on your
way.
Many
of the following recipes include mayonnaise, yoghurt or lemon juice
and if more of this is added, the consistency can be altered to form
(that ugly word) a ‘dip’, ideal with crudités
if you have some suitable (and suitably fresh) vegetables aboard.
MELBA TOAST
Wafer
thin slices of toast go well with many dips and pâtés. In fact,
this recipe isn’t pukka Melba toast, but works well.
This
is a delicious Middle-eastern creation, which I love. The aubergine
and sesame seeds seem to be made for each other. Interestingly, both
these foods are among the first crops ever to have been cultivated.
Occasionally,
you can find jars of aubergine in brine and if you drain it well, it
can be used for this pâté if fresh ones are unobtainable.
I
may have mentioned that aubergines are one of my favourite vegetables
and this recipe makes the most of their unique flavour. Russian in
origin, it’s usually popular, although very conservative eaters
find its taste and texture too unusual for comfort. The secret of
success is to ensure that the aubergine skin is thoroughly charred –
this is what gives it its distinctive, smokey taste.
I
invented this on the spur of the moment one evening in Trinidad. We
had invited some friends round for drinks and I wanted fairly
substantial nibbles, so that no-one would need to cook more than a
light meal after they left. I had a ripe avocado on board, but none
of the other ingredients for Guacamole, which would have been my
normal choice. However, this recipe worked so well that I reckoned
it was worth adding to the repertoire!
This
always seems to go down well because most people love both avocados
and garlic. I use dried, minced garlic here, rather than chopping
or crushing fresh cloves. It permeates the pâté better and even
garlic addicts don’t always enjoy crunching on a piece of raw
garlic.
It
seems that nearly everyone likes avocados and this is always a
popular way of serving them. Generally, you see guacamole presented
as a smooth, green paste, but I prefer to mash the avocado and dice the
other ingredients. I rather like its appearance when it’s made
this way.
This is a very
useful recipe if you have a few cans of ready-cooked beans on board,
and is capable of a large number of variations. Many people refer to
these spreads as ‛hummus’, but hummus means chickpea, so to do so
is quite incorrect! If you don’t have any canned beans, you will
need to cook 1/2 cup of dried beans to make the equivalent amount.
Sun-dried
tomatoes, especially those sold in oil, have a rich flavour that is
far beyond that of mere tomatoes. This is a great spread or pâté,
depending on how posh you feel! It also makes an excellent sandwich
filling or goes well with thick slices of fresh, crusty bread for
lunch. Use cannellinni beans of butter beans are
unobtainable.
Warning:
blender alert! You could finely cut up the sun-dried tomatoes
and mash the other ingredients; I’m sure the spread would still be
quite wonderful.
This is
another Indian chutney, that most of us would not recognise as such,
and while it may sound unpromising, it’s very good. Like the peanut chutney, it also
makes a very useful spread or dip, particularly with lentil flatbreads. The tempering
adds a bit more spice and an interesting appearance. If you’re
serving it with bread, or crackers, along with other ‛charioteer’,
you might prefer it
without. It will still be both an unusual and pleasant addition.
This
is another recipe capable of many variations. If you make it a
little thinner, it becomes a lovely dip, excellent with raw
vegetables. It can be made with any cheese that has a full flavour,
but would be very bland made with something like mozzarella. You do
need a fine grater for the cheese to blend properly.
This
is another very popular middle-eastern recipe that nowadays appears
in almost every supermarket. I prefer to make it myself, because I
don’t like hummus to be too smooth or light. Ideally, you make it
with a very full-flavoured olive oil.
This
makes a lovely filling for sandwiches and as long as they’re in a
plastic box, works well for picnics, because it doesn’t make the
bread soggy. It can also be used as a dip (although then you do
need to chop the eggs very finely, pass them through a sieve or put
them in a blender) or spread on crackers. However, serve these
immediately or the crackers will go soft.
I’ve
adapted this recipe from one of Rose Elliot’s creations. Most
people are pleasantly surprised at the flavour and after a tentative
spoonful, come back greedily for more. In fact, I like it so much
that I usually make double the amount in the hope of having some left
over the next day. All too often, I don’t!
This
is a simple, basic spread for when you want something for sandwiches
or crackers and have nothing more special to hand. Like most basic
recipes, it’s capable of many variations. This can also be used as
a filling for a pasty.
This is truly deliciousand certainly good enough for a special occasion. It's also inexpensive, keeps several days in a covered bowl, without refrigeration and leftovors go well in a sandwich. They can also be thinned with a little water, milk or wine to make a great pasta sauce.
This
isn’t what most Westerners would think of as a chutney. To us it
is more of a pâté or a spread. However, it tastes surprisingly
good and goes very well withlentil flatbreads.
However,
it’s also very acceptable as part of a ‛charcutérie’
board with bread or crackers. The tempering adds an exotic touch,
but isn’t essential, especially if there are other dips and pâtés
on the board.
With
more than a few similarities to chilli sin carne, this makes a
substantial lunch with crackers, rolls or bread. It can also be used
to fill a pasty.
While this tastes nothing at all like cheese, it is a very pleasant spread, with a similar consistency to soft cheese. The lemon juice gives a hint of sourness, which might possibly remind the more imaginative of goats' cheese. If you can make it well in advance, so much the better: it will let the flavours combine all the more. As you are unlikely to have fresh herbs, don't be mean with the flavouring .
While
many of the above recipes, suitably thinned, will make fine dips,
it’s more difficult to alter the consistency of a dip to make a
pâté or spread. Sometimes, however, you may not have sufficient
warning to prepare a more complicated dip in advance. If you have
some thick yoghurt on board (and if you make your own, you probably
will), the following recipe is an excellent spur-of-the-moment dip
that couldn't be easier to make. I’ve added several variations to
it, but I’m sure you could think of many more.
Any
of the recipes above make excellent starters, of course, and some of
the following make a good snack or lunch. They are however, more
suited to being served as a starter than anything else.
EGG MAYONNAISE
This
always-popular starter is simplicity itself. For a special occasion,
use home-made mayonnaise. (See Recipe)
These make a delicious lunch, with some bread and a salad. However, when arranged attractively on a plate, they also make an excellent snack with
drinks, or a starter.
In
Spain, they sell slices of tortilla to take away and eat as a
snack or for a quick lunch. It also makes a lovely and unusual
starter, especially before a lighter main course. I should like to
offer a vegan version of this, but so far am still struggling to find a decent recipe, and I don't want to use a processed product such as "Just Eggs, even assuming I could find it. I am
very unconvinced that a gram flour 'white sauce' is a substitute for beaten
eggs.
In
much of southern Spain, you can buy long, thin peppers, which look like
an overgrown chilli. In fact they are ‘sweet’ and the locals
tend to cook them on a plancha, which is essentially a sheet
of well-seasoned steel, that's placed at one end of the barbecue.
Hot coals are swept under it and the metal gets extremely hot. When
the peppers are cooked like this, the skins char and the core and
seeds cook to a delectable softness and do in fact, taste positively
sweet. They’re unbelievably good with lots of coarse salt ground
over them. Occasionally, one of the peppers is spicy hot, which causes
much amusement, when the greedy diner has bitten a huge chunk off the
end. Lacking a large barbecue and plancha, I suggest cooking
them in a more mundane frying pan. They
are sublime as a starter, because you just have the peppers alone and
can really appreicate the flavours. The long, thing ones (sometimes
sold as Romano) are full of scalding hot juice - be careful! - which can
be mopped up with bread.
Although
they’re common in both Spain and South America, these slender
peppers are not easy to find elsewhere. However, ordinary peppers
make a good second best, although the seeds don’t cook the same way
and aren't usually worth eating. You can also find miniature peppers which
taste equally appetising when cooked this way - seeds and all.
Roast
peppers have become very popular recently, and many people cook them
over the barbecue. Nothing, however, quite matches the searing heat
of a hot plancha or frying pan.
If
you can get the really big tomatoes sometimes (incomprehensibly)
known as ‘beef’ tomatoes’, they make a gorgeous starter when
stuffed with a savoury filling. There are, of course, countless ways
of making these, but I will give one example and a couple of
variations. Experiment as you wish.
I
use bulgur wheat rather than breadcrumbs, for making
the stuffing, but either gives excellent results.
One
of the easiest and tastiest of quick snacks is a toastedsandwich.
You don’t need to have a special sandwich toaster for this, or
even a grill: toasted sandwiches can be made very satisfactorily, by
making the sandwich and then popping it on your toaster turning it
over when one side is done. It’s worth using tongs for this.
Lacking a toaster, they’re delicious cooked in a dry frying pan,
especially if you’ve been generous with the butter. This soaks
through and makes the sandwich delectably crisp on the outside.
TOASTED
CHEESE SANDWICH
I no longer eat butter and dislike margarine, so if I want to make a
toasted sandwich these days, I tend to fry it in a minimum of olive oil.
However, so far I've been unable to find edible vegan cheese in New
Zealand, so, sadly, toasted cheese
sandwiches now exist only in my memory.
I'm still looking for a
successful vegan "Cheddar cheese" recipe. All suggestions gratefully
received. There are a couple of other suggestions for toasted sandwiches, for those of us who can't find vegan cheese, in the following link. I'm sure you'll be able to come up with heaps of other ideeas.
Sometimes known as Welsh Rabbit, but I can assure you this is a vegetarian meal. Vegans can make the Vegan cheese sauce variation of Basic white sauce, and add the additional flavourings suggested below. Or grate Vegan cheese if you use it. Welsh rarebit is a favourite in England for lunch or a light dinner.
It
may seem silly to include a recipe for this, but not everyone knows
how to make popcorn. This assumes that you are using a fairly large
pan. Do it in two stages in a smaller one – two tbsp, when popped,
will completely fill a 1 litre (1 quart) pan.
Olives
are a good addition to a lunch of bread, cheese and some salad, such as
tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce. They are ahandy standby to have with
drinks, but sometimes you want something a little more special than
simple supermarket olives. This is a great way of turning cheap and
cheerful green olives into something more like a treat!
This makes one sausage, about 170 x 30.
I worked out that it costs no more than a dollar for the vital wheat
gluten. Even if you add another dollar for the rest of the
ingredients, this is a very cheap chorizo. It tastes just like the
real thing and the texture is very similar. I use dried flaked garlic
instead of fresh and reckon 1/2 tsp = 1 clove of garlic. This is very
hit and miss, however, because the flakes are big and the spoon is
small! I smash them up a little bit and the finished appearance is
just fine. Granules would do, but the chunks of flaked garlic look a little bit like the fat that you usually find in chorizo, so add to its verisimilitude.
I can’t recommend this recipe too
much, if you like chorizo: it’s dirt cheap, it’s quick, it’s
easy and it tastes amazing. It’s also great to have as a tapa when
you have friends on board – vegetarian or otherwise.
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