COOKING ONBOARD
Sailing Under Pressure
O
ne of the more interesting observations I made while hanging out in the Panama Canal area was that almost all of the long-distance sailboat cruisers from Europe, England, New Zealand and Australia who were transiting the Canal had pressure cookers in their galleys. Most Americans did not. I puzzled over that phenomenon for some time, and made it a point to start asking American sailors why they didn’t have a pressure cooker aboard. The almost universal reply was that they had heard horror stories about how they exploded. It was interesting to note that none of these sailors had any direct experience with someone whose pressure cooker had exploded. Eventually I did come across one woman who said her mother’s pressure cooker blew its top when she was pressure-cooking spaghetti! She remembered the spaghetti sticking to the kitchen ceiling. Why in the world someone would pressure-cook spaghetti, I’ll never understand. But obviously what happened, the starch in the spaghetti foamed up and stopped up the pressure vent release. All I can say is; read the manufacturer’s instructions. Modern pressure cookers were re-designed in the mid1980s and now have multiple safety features that make it impossible to malfunction.
Gourmet Underway By Robbie Johnson
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CRUISING COOKBOOK YOU’LL EVER NEED! Over 300 quick-and-easy gourmet meals including appetizers, soups, salads, salsas, marinades, tropical drinks, desserts and more!
The advantages of a pressure cooker for offshore sailors are numerous. The two main ones are: (1) the cooking is FAST and nutritious; and (2) because the top locks on, the odds of a rogue wave or rough weather sending your meal flying off the stove top are eliminated. Pressure cooker meals seldom take longer than 10-20 minutes of cooking, and that keeps the heat generated down below to a minimum—a benefit much appreciated in the hot and humid tropics. Using the pressure cooker to preserve meats and vegetables is efficient and cost-effective, and allows you to tailor stores to your palate. And it also makes for an excellent stove top oven for baking bread. Take a look at these two recipes: One is for a marvelous stew that can be a real morale booster during prolonged nasty weather, and the other is for fresh baked bread. How wonderful to be two or three weeks at sea with another week or more to go, and sit down to a meal of beef in a wine sauce, crisp garlic-flavored green beans that you preserved with your pressure cooker months earlier, and a couple of slices of fresh, hot bread. Man, that is living!
Beef in Wine Sauce I usually preserve a half-dozen or so pint jars of this soulrestoring sauce. I invariably retrieve it from galley storage when the weather is acting up, or when I am just not into cooking a big meal. I boil some water, prepare some extrawide egg noodles, open the jar of wine sauce, heat it and then pour it over the cooked noodles. Delicious! The stew is prepared for pressure-cooking first, then ladled into sterilized jars and processed for 75 minutes. Your pressure cooker comes with complete instructions, and there is also a great book published by the Ball Company, makers of the canning jars: Complete Book of Home Preserving, ISBN: 978-0-7788-0139-9. Here’s the recipe for the canning: 1 teaspoon vegetable oil (Canola) 2 lbs. boneless round steak cut into 1-inch cubes 1 cup apple, cored and grated (unpeeled) 1 cup carrot, peeled and grated ¾ cup onion, sliced ½ cup water ½ cup red wine 1 teaspoon salt 2 cloves garlic 2 beef bouillon cubes 2 bay leaves
Tips and techniques on how to preserve food for long-distance voyaging and have fresh vegetables, milk, cheese and meats without refrigeration for weeks at sea!
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Preparation: Heat the oil in the skillet and brown the steak. Add apple, carrot, onion, water, wine, salt, garlic, bouillon cubes and bay leaves. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, then reduce heat and simmer gently for about an hour until meat is cooked and sauce thickens. Remove bay leaves. Ladle sauce into sterilized jars and process for 75 minutes.
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June 2011
SOUTHWINDS
www.southwindsmagazine.com