Jam Out With Your Clams Out

You know, like rock out with your… oh, never mind.

One thing I really miss in the Caribbean is shell fish; clams, oysters, mussels. The waters are too warm down here and just don’t support bivalve life – which makes me sad, because they are just such tasty little critters. So, I ordered frozen clams from a provisioner in Fort Lauderdale thinking that although I may not be able to have a heaping bowl of steamed clams in white wine broth, at least I can use them in another dish such as a seafood risotto, paella or as part of an hors-d’eouvre. The clams and mussels from the provisioner usually come pre-cooked on the half shell, but the provisioner sent me fresh clams by mistake. I called the fishmonger to see what was the best thing to do – steam them and freeze them, perhaps? He said to just throw them in the freezer, whole and in their shell and that they would be just fine. I was skeptical, but curious, so I threw them in the freezer, whole and in the shell.

I made a spicy callaloo soup a few weeks ago and thought a few steamed clams would be a nice garnish for the soup. So, I put a few of the frozen clams in a pot to see 1) if they would steam open. 2) how long would it take and 3) would the clams still taste good. Well, low and behold, you learn something new every day… The clams opened up perfectly in just a few minutes, taking maybe an extra minute or so since they were frozen and they tasted fresh and perfect! I was really surprised.

So, if you ever find yourself with an excess of fresh clams, just rinse them well (if need be, soak them so that they spit out their sand because you won’t be able to do this after you have frozen them), put them in a zip lock bag and throw them in the freezer. Then when you want to use them, just pop them in a pot and steam them open.

Also, oysters will stay fresh in your refrigerator for up to two months as long as you put them in the back part of the fridge (the coolest part) and keep them covered with a moist towel (re-moisten it daily) and drain any excess water out of the bottom of the pan.

Spicy Callaloo Soup:

Something along the lines of a diced up onion, minced garlic and ginger all sweated out. Finely shredded callaloo (a whole lot), cooked chickpeas, a jalapeno pepper, a diced red pepper, a pinch of smoked pimenton, a dash of cumin, black pepper, salt, chicken stock. Finished with a squeeze of lemon and some clams. Or something like that. (No Dave, I guess this means that I haven't yet put any useable recipes on my blog. At least not for someone like yourself who literally burns down the house every time you turn on your stove! Can I suggest induction? Or perhaps reservations would be the safer bet. HA!)

Ok, so bare with me. I am trying to improve my food photography and recipe writing skills, but that's multi-tasking and I'm sitll learning to walk and chew gum.

Virgin Territory

If you asked my bunkmate what I woke up thinking about this morning, or yesterday morning, or the morning before that, or before that, or before that the immediate, off-the-top-of –her-head response would be, “what she’s going to make for dessert”. Because, that is in fact what I wake up thinking about every morning.

At 6am I roll out of my 3 foot by 6 foot bunk, in our 5 foot by 6 foot cabin and take two sleepy steps into our 3 foot by 4 foot head (a.k.a. bathroom), stare into the 2 foot by 1 foot mirror, wipe sleep from my eyes, chase the cobwebs from my brain by splashing water on my face in the 3 inch by 5 inch bar sink with 2 inches of counter space, which ultimately leads to water running down the face of the cabinet and landing on my feet where I reach down to dry it up and connect with the pain in my back from trying to balance on such a tiny bunk, reach back up, put Tom’s of Maine Fennel flavored toothpaste on my toothbrush (come on, you think a chef is going to put just any flavor in their mouth?), count the days remaining until the guests leave the yacht, and wonder what the hell I’m going to make for dessert that day. That’s my pre-galley, morning routine when we’re on charter.

I don’t love dessert. I don’t have a sweet tooth which is why I’m a cook and not a baker. I hate making dessert. Desserts are moody, temperamental and fragile – not unlike my mood early in the morning, before my cup of tea (just ask my bunkmate) – add in the humidity of the Caribbean, and dessert can just be a downright pain.

I made baklava over the holidays, thought I’d introduce the crew and guests to a family tradition that I grew up with – something to remind me of home while I am away from home. Flaky leaves of filo pastry, layered with butter, spiced, ground nuts and orange-flower syrup – when made properly they are light and flaky with a juicy quality when you bite into them. They bring me back to my childhood – making baklava with my grandma and my cousins, rolling the nuts up like cigars in the butter-laden filo, all of us gathered around the chopping block island in my aunts avocado colored kitchen with the Harry and David “Pear” motif wallpaper, baking them and packing them up before we all piled into the shag carpeted Winnebago to go camping on the Oregon coast… But in the Caribbean heat and within hours my baklava “cigars” went irreversibly soggy and shriveled. They looked like an old mans, long, piano-playing fingers after sitting in a cold bathtub for a few hours… Yuk.

So, as my days usually go – around 2pm I think, “oh crap, what am I going to make for dessert tonight?” and I start searching through my cupboards to see what I have. The yacht owners aren’t big on chocolate – so I have the extra challenge of coming up with something suitable without taking the easy exit – because with chocolate, dessert is usually easy. Anyway, on this particular day I had thought I would conquer making ice-cream but after checking through my provisions (I was getting low on everything) I didn’t have enough eggs. I hadn’t made ice-cream before but I’d been thinking about it for weeks. I tend to procrastinate on trying new things, especially when I don’t have time or ingredients to spare for error… So, the ice-cream maker and I had a staring contest for a few weeks until finally said, “what the heck” and jumped, full fledge into the world of ice-cream making …

Time was ticking. I pulled out Grand Fanales: The Art of the Plated Dessert, and Secrets of Baking and started flipping through for ideas on what to make, but no inspiration for the time strapped, ingredient lacking cook was coming at me. Then, I looked in the cupboard – aha, coconut milk! Would coconut ice-cream (although technically a sorbet) require eggs? I searched for a recipe for coconut ice-cream and found one – coconut milk and simple syrup – and that was it. That was it? That was it.

I couldn’t be bothered reading the exact measurements. Who has time for that anyway? I knew that the sugar would be less pronounced as the coconut milk froze so I just dabbled until it tasted right which came out to something around 4 cups of coconut milk and a cup of ginger simple syrup and then I decided that I’d throw in about a cup of Angel Flake sweetened desiccated coconut to add some texture. I poured my concoction into the frozen ice-cream making bowl and paddle attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer and voila, my love affair for homemade ice-cream sprang to life, and I’ve become completely addicted ever since.

To finish the dessert I made a tropical fruit salad with pineapple and mangoes on which I served the ice-cream and topped it with a pepita (green pumpkin seeds) and coconut (desiccated-unsweetened) brittle drizzled with dark chocolate. I had to fight the crew off but once the guests were served, the crew went to town and the coconut ice-cream went the way of the dinosaur.

My dad calls coconut ice-cream ‘crack’, because of his addiction to it. The owners and the crews reaction was similar. I just hope they don’t all get the shakes if I don’t make it again soon as I’m currently devising a Mexican chocolate ice-cream with cinnamon and chili powder, to go with Mexican night (and I’ve already made mango sorbet and strawberry ice-cream).

We’ve since made our way to St. Thomas and spent weeks cruising the British Virgin Islands. I didn’t realize that BVI is the acronym for “excessive partying” – or better yet, “Believe me, there is nothing Virgin about these Islands”, but you’d really have to visit to know what I mean (and more specifically, visit "Willy T's" on Norman Island; the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke, or Bomba Shack for a full moon party on Tortola - the next one is Feb. 2nd)...

That's an affirmative, I do not like Jaeger Meister.

Sooner or later, when this hangover abates, I’ll be sure to do some catch-up writing on my recent foray into bread making…

The Christmas Ketchup...

Traditional Christmas Oyster Stew

Steak Tartar with Dijon, Capers, Shallots and Truffle Oil

White Asparagus Salad with Truffled Sheeps Cheese and an Aged Balsamic Vinaigrette

Fennel Crusted Black Bass with a White Wine Saffron Sauce

Grand Marnier Souffle with Grand Marnier Butterscotch Sauce and Chocolate Sauce

It’s been an exhausting month… After making our way down to Grand Exuma in the Bahamas, we were hit with a front of bad weather; rain and wind marring the guests itinerary for fishing and other off-the-boat activities. On December 23^rd we made a hasty departure from Grand Exuma on less than 2 hours notice, to catch a weather window, and with guests aboard made the 24-hour run to Turks and Caicos. Otherwise, due to incoming bad weather, we wouldn’t be able to make it until New Years and we had more guests joining the yacht the day after Christmas in Turks and Caicos… We rushed to get the yacht packed for the passage – wrapping up vases and decorations, packing glasses and plates, checking portholes, etc. All of this, work enough without guests aboard, but now there were four! There wasn’t time to prepare any meals in advance, this meant I’d be cooking at sea – and with the wind at our nose, 7-foot seas, guests on board and my propensity for seasickness – something I was not looking forward to…

Steak Tartare

Emerald Bay in Grand Exuma is a tricky marina to enter and exit even in good sea conditions. It is a narrow, unmarked channel with a blind entrance, waves breaking across the channel pushing any entering or departing vessel straight into the reef. Our captain, an experienced delivery captain bringing yachts to locations around the world and having braved many a storm, was white knuckled at the helm as we entered the marina towing our 32-foot Boston Whaler, the crew positioned on the aft-deck, radios in hand giving the captain the grisly details of how close we were to hitting the all-too-short craggy, sea wall. Once inside, the marina was barren and desolate but for a few small sailboats and sport fishing vessels. A Greg Norman golf course and an endless expanse of construction for a new Four Seasons resort would be pretty in the right season, when the work on the marina was complete. But at this time, it looked like a post-modern utopia abandoned by its inhabitants forewarned of an alien invasion. But the golf course did make for a nice run; sit-ups and push-ups at the 14^th hole against the backdrop of a tumultuous sea and foreboding skies…

Fennel Crusted Sea Bass

We set out of the marina in rough seas, the guests paying witness to the veracity of the life us crew live every day. Our mate drove the Whaler out of the marina rather than risking the harrowing passage with the whaler in tow and instead decided to tie the tow lines once we were outside the reef. This proved to be equally hazardous as the crew were practically washed off of the transom trying to tie up the Whaler, and the anchor smacked into the yacht before we could push the tied up Whaler back… We (the crew, not the guests) kept watch in 2-person, 4-hour shifts and since we are only a 4 person crew, this meant sleeping in shifts of 4 hours. The seas were rough; the guests were seasick and decided to camp out on the settee in the pilot house and main salon.

After the Whaler was secured and we were underway, I made myself comfortable on the settee in the galley and as seasickness set in contemplated my current situation wondering what “simple” thing I could throw together for the guests to eat. Of course, nothing about cooking at sea is ever simple. The captain suggested lasagna. This meant making a sauce – not going to happen. Stir fry? That would mean making rice – not going to happen. Everything I thought of cooking would require boiling something. I sat in the galley; knackered from a month without a day off, a tiring watch ahead of me, scratching my brain and wondering what I could possibly prepare for dinner that would be easy to cook, and easy to eat, in high seas. Fortunately, the guests turned out to be too seasick to eat so it was frozen pizzas for the crew, saltines and ginger ale for me.

Grand Marnier Souffle

We arrived in Providenciales (Provo), Turks and Caicos at 8 a.m. Christmas Eve. And, of course, the first sign of the passing of seasickness is that the appetite comes back with a vengeance - and so it was, with the guests and crew. After unpacking the galley and getting it back into (somewhat) working order, I busted out breaky for guests and crew. The crew set to doing an exterior wash-down which would take the better part of the day and after breakfast I immediately set into prepping for a 5-course Christmas Eve Dinner – a day behind on my prep list…

(More updates and pictures coming soon - our bandwidth is too low to upload! AGGGGggggg... and, I'm just plumb exhausted...)

Mojito's, Bahama Style

Fresh Ginger-Lime Mojitos

Pear and Arugula Salad with Miso-Yuzu Vinaigrette

Sesame Crusted Seared Tuna with Long Beans and a Pyramid of Sushi Rice

Bittersweet Chocolate-Almond-Raspberry Cake with Gold Leafed, Rose Scented Raspberries and White Chocolate Shavings.

The birthday celebration continued throughout the day, Wahoo kabobs for lunch and while I was throwing that together with my right hand, my left hand was whipping up a chocolate cake… and with my other four spare arms I made a batch of Mojitos and also prepared dinner – another meal where we all sat together and once again celebrated our 1^st Mates god dam birthday. What’s next, a national holiday?

I made two chocolate devils food cakes, recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipes cookbook – but rather than Hershey’s cocoa powder, I used Valhrona, my personal fave. It’s a failsafe recipe, works every time. I filled the cake with raspberry jam and did a crumb coating with raspberry jam as well. As I prepared to frost the cake with a deep, bittersweet chocolate ganache, I folded up four pieces of parchment paper and slid them underneath the cake so that when the frosting and decorating of the cake was complete, I could remove the parchment and the plate would be clean. I put a thick layer of chocolate ganache on the cake, and then pressed toasted almonds around the outside. I tossed fresh raspberries with rose-flower water and powdered sugar to give them a nice sheen and add a little flavor, and then I brushed them with gold leaf and rimmed the cake with them. I piped a layer of ganache on the inside ring against the raspberries and then filled the circle with grated white chocolate. Then, the piece d’resistance – 30 curly birthday candles…

The owners were calling for cocktails and since I’d boasted about making a good Mojito, I was put to the test – but time was running short and I still had to make dinner! I had made gingered simple syrup a few weeks ago which I had poached star-fruit in to make star-fruit chips for garnishing a panna cotta. I figured the gingered simple syrup would be a nice touch to the Mojitos.

Cristina’s Ginger-Lime Mojitos:

Simple Syrup:

2 cups water

2 cups sugar

2 lbs. fresh ginger – roughly chopped (don’t bother peeling, it gets strained out)

Bring water, sugar and ginger to a boil. Turn down heat and simmer 10 minutes. Turn off heat, cover and allow steeping for another 20 minutes or so. Strain through a strainer and then through cheese clothe to remove any bits of ginger.

Mojito’s:

(This is a rough estimate of what I put in, I didn’t really keep track)

1 1/2 – 2 cups fresh squeezed lime juice

4 sprigs fresh mint, picked

Ginger Simple Syrup to taste (maybe a ¼ - ½ cup?)

½ liter Club Soda

750 ml. Bacardi Rum

Put ice and mint in a large pitcher and meddle with the back of a wooden spoon – smashing and breaking up mint. Add the rum, lime juice, simple syrup and club soda. Taste and adjust ingredients accordingly. Tasting and adjusting is essential, and when you get the formula just right – pour yourself one as reward, and a second because they’re that good...

For dinner I made a simple salad of pears, avocado, arugula and a miso-yuzu vinaigrette. I found a bottle of yuzu juice (a Japanese citrus fruit similar to grapefruit – only tart, tangy and addictively acidic) at a specialty food store in Fort Lauderdale and have fallen in love with the flavor. I hope one day I can find some fresh to play with! I made vinaigrette with about a teaspoon of miso, a few tablespoons of yuzu and canola oil. Simple, straightforward and tasty. Dinner was sesame encrusted pan-seared tuna with a pyramid of sushi rice garnished with flecks of nori, bonito and dried wasabi and a long beans with fennel and peppers sautéed in sesame oil. And dessert was, of course, the cake.

After dinner we went out for yet another night on the town. This time starting at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club and finishing up dancing the night away to some reggae at a tiny island club called Happy People.

And yet another early morning the next day. At least the owners were flying back to Florida so I knew that I’d be able to get in an afternoon nap and have an easy evening as I’d prepared some Bolognese and froze it before the trip… Dinner the next night consisted of defrosting the sauce and boiling some water. Fortunately, the rest of the crew were all tired too. Our stewardess put together a lovely arugula, pear and honeyed-goat cheese salad and I made some garlic bread. We all enjoyed a simple dinner and an early night to bed…

Kiss My Whisk!

I cursed the heavens and the stars; I cursed the aquamarine ocean that I floated upon. I cursed my job; I cursed the yacht and the whole industry. But mostly I just cursed… as I whisked and whisked trying furiously to emulsify my cracked hollandaise.

In actuality, I cursed our 1^st Mate because it was his birthday and I was tired from the previous night’s festivities and this morning the owners asked him what he wanted for his birthday breakfast; his request? A bed of spinach with artichoke hearts nestled in it, poached eggs on top and hollandaise (which just happens to be the owner’s favorite breakfast, too. Coincidence?). I hadn’t made hollandaise since culinary school – 7 years ago! It was a challenge I was not intimidated to take on, but I had to put out breakfast for seven hungry guests and crew and I knew they wouldn’t wait all day while I figured out how to make the sauce! And yes, I believe in shortcuts, but sauce from a packet just doesn’t fly with me. I have an aversion to powdered, just-add-water foods and/or anything with an ingredient list that reads like a HazMat identification manual…

OUR 1ST MATE, ENJOYING HIS BIRTHDAY

-obviously, oblivious to my pain and suffering in the galley!

Having only a vague memory of what goes in hollandaise and how to make it – I thought about my father who always seemed to be able to whip up a tasty hollandaise in a blender, and in a snap… So, going into MythBuster mode, I decided to give the blender method an attempt. I figured that if I warmed up my clarified butter (which I had in abundance in the fridge) it would provide the necessary heat to cook the eggs. Right? Well, not exactly. My first attempt with two egg yolks and about a half cup or more of clarified butter and some lemon juice turned out a thin, very unappealing looking sauce. This just wouldn’t do. I tried adding another egg yolk - to no avail.

I quickly put together a bain-marie over the stove and began whisking. My already thin, anemic looking sauce began to separate. Discernable little droplets of clarified butter forming around the edge of my bowl, like the pearls of sweat now forming on my brow... I looked up at the heavens and shook my whisk. What was I going to do?

Attempt #3 was to pull out the trusty hand-blender, fixer of all manners of broken emulsifications. But again, to no avail. My sauce came together slightly more, but was still way too thin and I was not about to serve anything less than a perfect sauce. I had to put on my chef thinking cap – and quickly.

I started thinking about emulsified sauces and the process of emulsifying - and what, my friend, is the easiest and first emulsified sauce you learn to make in culinary school? Mayonnaise! And what is hollandaise other than mayonnaise with the oil replaced by clarified butter? I quickly whipped out another egg, cracking the yolk into a mixing bowl and adding the tiniest amount of Dijon mustard (Dijon mustard has a thickening quality which assists the emulsification process, with a bit of flavor!). I started getting busy on my yolk mixture with my hand blender and then slowly, very S-L-O-W-L-Y, began drizzling my broken sauce into the yolk while I blended away. Drop by drop, my sauce began to come together, the broken sauce going un-wasted, and thickening up perfectly. I added a bit more clarified butter, lemon juice, and salt – and voila, I had a perfect, and I’d recon to say, almost unbreakable, hollandaise sauce. When it came time to serve, my sauce was a bit thick and it needed reheating. I simply put it in my bain-marie on the stove, thinned it with the tiniest amount of hot water and whisked it until it was warm.

And yes, you purest out there rolling your eyes and cursing me for not knowing how to make a hollandaise – well, you can just kiss my whisk because my sauce was beautiful and tasty. And what is the cardinal rule of professional cooking, yacht cooking and catering? Make it work, baby, make it work…

After getting my sauce together, my next order of business was to poach off 14 eggs. How exactly would you serve eggs benedict to your guests, hot, and all at the same time? I didn’t happen to have my 14 egg-at-a-time-poaching mechanism on hand, which, again did pose a bit of a challenge. But once again, I looked at the wonderful learning opportunity I had in front of me and figured I would test out a method that a friend had told me about a while back. Poach off your eggs a few at a time, being careful to leave them very soft and slightly under-poached (which called for some very delicate handling), pull them from the hot water and shock them in an ice-bath to stop the cooking. Keep them aside and simply reheat them by plunking them back into the hot water for a minute before serving.

I’ve had some poaching failures in the past – everyone has a different method and I’ve tried them all; swirling the water before dropping the egg in, adding vinegar, etc. and those just haven’t worked for me. The method I use is to fill a frying pan (yes, a frying pan) with water and bring it to a boil. Crack an egg into a cup and when the water boils, pour the egg into the water – turn off the heat, cover the pan with a lid and let it sit for 3 minutes or so, until it’s done. So, this is the method I employed this time, poaching off three eggs at a time, dunking them (very carefully) into an ice bath and then scooping them out onto a plate. In the meantime, I cooked up my spinach and heated my artichoke hearts.

When it came time to serve, it all worked out really quite simply. I plunked my eggs back into some hot water, then scooped them out and plopped them (gently, of course) onto the artichoke heart and dressed them with a spoon of my golden, tangy, warm and perfectly unbroken hollandaise. 7 orders up at the same time, and hot. The owners and crew all sat down for breakfast together and I couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride that I had met the challenge…

Lesson learned? Well, hollandaise is one of those things that, working on a yacht, I should really know how to make. And now, I can make it in abundance, hold it and reheat it without it breaking. And, I can also do poached eggs for the masses and get them all up at once, hot and perfectly cooked.

How ‘bout them apples?

Swimming With Sharks

We cruised down to the Exumas on Friday afternoon, and of course, just when I couldn’t imagine a place being any more gorgeous than where we were – we arrived at a place even more so – dropping anchor at Big Majors beach, on a small, unpopulated island near Fowl Cay, Sampson Cay and Staniel Cay. I looked out my galley window at a white sand beach and the bluest ocean I had ever seen, the sun smiling its shining face upon us. Two un-human looking mounds on the otherwise unpopulated beach caught my attention. I thought they were piles of sand – but one mound was dark brown and the other had a pinkish tinge. I stared hard wondering if it was driftwood or what those mounds could possibly be. Then they moved! And low and behold, it was two fat pigs – working on their tans! Local folklore says that the pigs were put on the island so that if a big storm ever wiped everything out, the locals from the other islands could come over and eat the pigs; another story being that pigs are put there every year, fattened up by the visitors coming by to feed them and then slaughtered and eaten on Easter. Whatever the truth, I won’t ever know – but there were two big, fat sows on the beach and about six all together on the island and all day long people pulled up in dingies and skiffs to feed and pet the pigs. Used to being fed, the pigs spend their day lounging in the sand and whenever a boat pulls up, they just trot right into the water and swim right up to the boat to be fed and petted!!! Now, those are some lucky pigs…

That afternoon I helped with the wash down of the yacht as our 1^st mate had jumped on the Boston Whaler with the owners’ son about 50 miles back and they were fishing their way to us. The sky was smudged like a painter’s palette with pink, turquoise and gold as the sun began to set – a Boston Whaler off in the distance cutting across the skies reflection on the water, like a razor blade through a painting. The mate radioed in, and when we answered his call, he just yelled “WAHHHOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, over the din of a roaring engine and VHF crackle. And Wahoo it was as they pulled up aside us with four giant fish in a cooler of ice on the back of the fishing boat. Within moments of tying up to us, our mate had whipped out a huge knife (I was waiting for the ubiquitous, “that’s not a knife. THIS is a knife”, Crocodile Dundee style. But it never came) and began filleting the Wahoo, handing me eight large fillets and tossing the bones, heads, skin and guts overboard. Apparently, Aussies don’t have the same affinity for eating fish eyeballs and cooking the heads as the South Africans and local islanders do. Those fish heads would start a war on some of the other yachts I’ve been on…

I carried the fillets to the galley in big, plastic bags. I’d never seen Wahoo before. It had a firm, white flesh, slightly transparent – I’d heard it was tasty so I was eager to cook with it. I cut out the blood line, trimmed it up and began portioning; wrapping the steaks in plastic wrap and sticking them in Ziplocs for the freezer – of course, leaving some aside for the next days lunch... I ended up freezing over 10 lbs. of Wahoo!

It was our mates 30^th birthday and the owners were taking all of the crew out to celebrate! We had dinner reservations at a beautiful restaurant on a private resort on Fowl Cay. As time was cutting short to get ready for our reservation, I made a bee-line for my cabin and changed into my swimsuit. I had been wet and sweaty all day from the wash down, and now I smelled like fish. I ran down the corridor of the crew mess, out the door to the transom and dove off into the cool, clear Bahamian waters – feeling instantly refreshed. The fact that I was diving into freshly chummed waters not quite registering enough to give me pause. I pulled myself up onto the Whaler, rinsed off, and ran back inside to finish getting dressed.

We have underwater lights on the yacht which glow for another 80 feet off of the back end and as I was standing on the transom waiting to climb onto the tender to head to dinner, I looked out at the water just as a 7 FOOT SHARK swam out from underneath us! I hollered out, “SHARK! SHARK!”. We all watched in awe as this giant, beautiful creature swam off into the darkness. That vague notion that I’d had about diving into freshly chummed waters suddenly became very poignant. I don’t think I’ll be so quick to do that in the future!

Don’t think for a second that our 1^st Mates birthday celebrating ended with our evening out… It extended into a weekend long event! After a beautiful dinner of steak and lobsters, margaritas and plenty of wine, we zoomed off in the tender heading for Clube Thunderball on Staniel Cay to hear a rake & scrape band. Rake & Scrape is the Bahamian answer to the reggae of the Caribbean. With a faster tempo and a definitively Latino flair, it’s like Salsa or Marengue, only island style… Oh, and the reason for the name of the music being called “rake & scrape”? It’s played with a washboard, saw and drums of course!

We pulled up to the doc at Thunderball and walked up the hill to a small, open-air, building sitting atop the island. Music blared out of the screen windows, but when we walked inside the band was sitting at the bar having drinks and the music was coming from a stereo. We ordered drinks – Anejo rum and ginger-ale being the beverage of choice for the evening. An hour or so later the band came on, played two or three songs then went back to the bar to drink. That’s island life for you, three songs and it’s time to call it a night…

In the wee hours of the morning we headed back to the yacht. It’s great going out and having fun with the owners – but the challenge is that we have to work the next day while the owners get to sleep in and relax!

For lunch the next day I made a spicy, gingered cole slaw with cabbage, carrots, peppers, scallions, and cilantro and sesame seeds. For the vinaigrette, I put into a blender a few shallots, lemongrass (the soft inner part, finely minced), ginger (peeled and minced), lime juice, rice wine vinegar, curry paste and a bit of coconut milk and blended it up.

After cutting the fish into big cubes for kabobs I marinated it in fresh orange juice and orange zest, a small amount of lime, Chinese 5-Spice, soy, ginger, scallions, lemongrass and sesame oil. I skewered the Wahoo and threw the skewers onto a very hot grill and pulled them off while the inside was still just a little pink so they would stay nice and juicy.