PIZZA! Oh yes.....

I'd be remiss if I didn't include this:  As you've probably gathered, we love using dutch ovens for stuff, both aboard and on the charcoal grill.  They're a really versatile tool, virtually immortal, and can make some tasty stuff.

One of our favorite things is do make breads in the dutch oven.  We do crusty bread to go with meals, foccaccia, and KILLER pizzas, all from the same recipe:

So here's what you do:  In a bowl mix:

3 Cups of Flour (your choice, everything seems to work pretty well)
1TBL salt
1/2 tsp of yeast
and about 1 1/3 cups of water (the water will vary with the humidity and how dry the flour is)

Mix together to make a sticky dough.  Don't overwork, just completely combine the ingredients.  Then cover the bowl with a cloth and ignore it til tomorrow.

The next day you will have a larger amount of an even STICKIER dough.  If you're making bread, flour the living daylights out of your hands and form it into a ball (again, don't overwork) and place on a floured towel or cloth and cover.  If you're doing pizza, I'd recommend dividing the mass, putting half in an oiled ziplock back in your ice chest for tomorrow and let the remaining dough sit covered.

Let em sit for at least two hours.

Now, the dutch oven.  There are a couple of kinds you can use.  We have both the traditional kind intended to sit on coals and more modern ones.  The traditional ovens have legs under them and have a lid with a lip so the coals can stay on top.  We also use a "chicken fryer" which has a lid which is also a frypan.  That's the one we use for pizza, though both will work.

Oil the pan well and stretch out your dough to match.

Then dress with your favorite ingredients.  We like to sautee our vegetables first before adding them. If you REALLY like loading up the pizza, cook the crust for a bit first before adding stuff.

While that's going on, heat the top of the cooker.  You're using this as a bake oven, remember, not as a frypan.

Then place the flat pan on the coals (you don't need to overdo the fire here, about 8 coals will do it for the bottom) put the larger pan on top, and add 8-10 coals to heat.  

While this can vary a lot in cook time depending on your ingredients, in about 15 minutes you'll have a wonderful pie, with a lovely browned crust and wonderfully melded flavors.

Seriously, guys, this makes for killer pizza.  We use fresh tomato when available, local sausage, sauteed onion, pepper, and garlic and a nice topping of mixed cheeses (mozzarella and romano work well).

Next foray into this well tell you how to make a great foccacia bread or just a nice crusty loaf for eating.

Enjoy.

M

Hey, check out our other blogs and the sagas of the Shantyboat Floating Empire over at floatingempire.blogspot.com and Life, Art, Water, you'll be glad you did :)

Compact Tools for Small Kitchens

I thought I'd take a moment to show you some of the space saving things we've done here aboard Floating Empire that might work in your small kitchen.

First of all, when not using the hearth, we use one of these single burner catering stoves.

The units are inexpensive (I found ours on the web for all of $10 apiece), compact, self lighting, will take a full sized stockpot or cast iron frying pan securely, and the butane burns quite a bit hotter than propane, so you can get a better sear, faster boils, etc.  The only downside is that the fuel can be a bit tricky to find at times.  Fuel is cheap on the web (as low as $1.50 a can) but we've been charged as much as $7 at marinas when we could find no other source.  Just keep your stock up and you're fine.

For grinding coffee (well, ya gotta) and fresh pepper and spices (well, ya should), we use one of these little Kitchen Aid grinders with removable containers.  It works well and provides us with a way of NOT mixing, say, the flavor of deep roast columbian with the flavor of tandoori spicing.

The most useful toy we've found was the addition of a stick blender in place of a regular bar blender.

They'll do about anything a bar blender will do, from smoothies to iced drinks to blending  cream soups, take up very little room, and are easy to clean.

See?   They break down into a really compact space, and only the blade section needs to be cleaned.  They can do wonderful stuff like making smooth soups out of your leftover cooked vegetables:

Not to mention their utility at turning ice, fruit and rum into some really interesting mixed drinks.

More recipes and ideas shortly, so stay tuned.  And, hey, comment and subscribe, we'd love to hear ideas from you, and we promise to respond.

M

PANZANELLA!

Morgainne makes the classic Italian bread salad in the galley of Floating Empire.

Join us in our other blogs, Floating Empire and Life, Art, Water, you'll be glad you did.

M

Spots before our eyes

...or the charm of "trash fish"

This is a tale of the lowly, prickly, and often delicious Virginia Spot, a fish widely used by fishermen for bait and by locals for lunch.  The fish is small, usually under a pound and less than 5 inches in length, and distinguished by a coloration fading from steel grey on the dorsal to yellow in the ventral side and by a large, eye-like spot behind the gills.  They are often referred to as Spots, or Spot Croaker,  or Croaker Spots.  Like most fish around the Chesapeake, they spend their winter adult lives in the Atlantic and are caught there in nets or with worms, and then they migrate into the brackish waters of the bay and its estuaries to spawn and grow....

...wherein six of them ran afoul of my crab traps.

You know, it seems everywhere I've lived, there are some little swimmers that get derided as "trash fish" or "bait fish" that, if you dig a bit, you discover the locals have been eating for centuries.  Look, guys, unless a fish is poisonous (like Fugu) or raised in a toxic environment, it's edible, and some of the smaller, bonier varieties have amazing, delicate flavors.  Now as to the lowly spot:

The Spots are small, with spiny fins, and a bit of a bear to clean.

 

I've read dozens of recipes on how to prepare these little things, but the one we went with was this:  Scale and gut, removing the fins.  We then tossed them in flour (so the egg will stick), then in an egg wash (so everything else will), then in cornmeal spiced with salt and a generous amount of pepper.

As its summer, we're doing a lot of outdoor cooking in the dutch ovens, which make great fryers.  You just plop the little rascals in, turning occasionally, and fry until golden brown.

A bit of fresh corn never hurts either :)

Now for a bit of a simple side, we did a bit of cole slaw.

And for this one I have to thank Erik over at Garden Fork, a great site for recipes and DIY if you don't know it.

 This is so simple:  Head of cabbage, two carrots(both shredded), half a cup of good olive oil, 2 tbl apple cider vinegar, 2 tbl maple syrup (Erik uses 4, but I find that a bit sweet), salt and pepper.....

and a good tablespoon full of caraway seeds.  Blend well and set aside to mellow for at least an hour.  It just gets better with time.

Yum

The fish is delicate and sweet, with a flavor very much like really good fluke, but bony, so be careful.  We've also heard they make GREAT fishcakes.

More shortly

M

Country Ribs w. Sweet Potatoes and grilled Tomatoes

I had really intended to do more video or at least more pictures of this meal, but we fell to discussing an upcoming event (and dinner) at the Marina, so you get the barest of images….

But the meal turned out so well and was so simple that I really felt I should pass this along.  This cooks on a single outdoor grill (closed is best), on a single heat of coals.

(Morgainne wishes me to note that all measurements are estimates and you need to adjust to your tastes)

You will need for 2 people:

Country ribs (rapidly becoming my favorite cut of pork, these are inexpensive, largely boneless, and yummy)

A large ripe tomato

2 medium sweet potatoes

1 medium sweet onion

garlic (about 4 cloves)

rosemary

salt and pepper

basil

A cantaloupe or other ripe melon

some chocolate

balsalmic vinegar

And for the sauce:

olive (or other ) oil for sautee

onion (part of the one for the rest of the meal, finely chopped)

about 3 cloves of garlic

1 tbl of mustard seeds

salt

black pepper

1/2 fresh jalapeño, diced

1/4 cup of tomato catsup

2 tbl baker’s molasses (not black strap)

2 tbl cider vinegar

a splash of worcestershire sauce

and for the brine:

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup salt

1 qt. potable water

Start by brining your pork, at least an hour ahead of time, three is better, overnight is overkill.  Mix your salt and sugar in a qt of water and immerse your pork, turning occasionally.  Brining makes a huge difference in most meats, rendering them tender and succulent and facilitating the absorption of sauces and spices into the meat.

Start your coals.  We prefer to use lump charcoal, but briquettes will work just fine too.

First, in a small pan, make your sauce.  Sautee the onion until clear, add your garlic, mustard seeds, and the diced jalapeño and sautee for about five minutes.  Add your remaining ingredients, salt and pepper to taste, bring back to a simmer to help it meld and reduce a bit (simmering until you get the consistency you like) , and then set it aside.

Cube your onion and potato, toss with oil, a bit of garlic, pepper, and rosemary.  Put in a slotted grill pan if you have one, and cook until it begins to get color.  Some nice caramelized brown patches really enhance the flavor.  When the potatoes are tender, remove to a covered plate or bowl.

Pat dry your pork, oil lightly, and drop it on the hot grill.  Turn it after about two min (you should be hot enough to see grill marks) and paint with your BBQ sauce.  Continue until just before done to your liking.  Set aside, covered, to rest.

Cut two THICK slices of the tomato, dress with a bit of oil and a LOT of basil, and either use your slotted pan or drop them directly on the grill.  Sear until tender.

Bring your remaining (if any) BBQ sauce up to a simmer for serving with the meat.

Dress your tomatoes on the the plate with a bit of balsamic vinegar, then serve with your potato and onion roast and the pork.

The flavors are amazing, the pork will be tender and spicy, the potato dish heavy with rosemary and aromatic, sweet garlic.

….don’t even get me started on the tomatoes.

Now dessert:  Mix up some chocolate….it can be from cocoa powder or using a chocolate syrup, with a bit of sea salt and some balsamic vinegar.  Cube up some ripe melon and either drizzle the chocolate/balsalmic glaze over it or use it as a dipping sauce.  

The meal, including a glass of decent wine, runs about $5 per plate or less, and you can do it on a single grill or burner.

enjoy

M

Morgainne makes a Pan Sauce (gravy to you Americans)

So here's a simple pan sauce aboard the galley of Floating Empire to accompany a meal of roasted chicken (store bought) and homemade colcannon (potatoes and cabbage, an Irish classic).

Enjoy

We're still working on the video quality, so plan on some better lighting and framing in future iterations.

Also please check out the adventures aboard the MV Floating Empire in our Floating Empire blog and Morgainne's blog of an artist's life on the water at Life, Art, Water

enjoy
M

Decadent eating in limited spaces

So this is a bit of an introduction to what is going to be yet ANOTHER blog we're creating just for cooking aboard vessels and in tiny homes and Vardos.  We're calling it Onboard Cooking, and we're going to explore all kinds of campsite, vessel, trailer, tiny apartment, tiny home, tiny spacecraft, tiny submarine....you get the idea....cuisine.

Eating well is one simple decadence in which any one may indulge.  It only takes a bit of invention and research.  I hear so many people complaining that they'd love to make a decent meal but they only have one burner, or they have no refrigeration, or it's too hot out, or it's too cold out, or they're broke......

....trust me, we've been ALL those places.

And yet we've been able to make really amazing food in limited circumstances.  Full disclosure, we're not only both foodies, we're also living history re-enactors, with a knowledge of older ways of prepping foods, and we're former restaurant owners and caterers, with a great love of eclectic and fusion cuisines.

Take yesterday as an example.  The day was fine, and we hit a lot of the local farmstands for fresh--and inexpensive--food for dinner.  Fresh Zucchini, fresh eggplant, onions, garlic, corn....one of the wonderful things about being around the Chesalpeake is the food.

This time we chose to make dinner on shore, using one of our faves, the dutch oven.  We sauteed chopped onion, garlic, mushrooms, a bit of ground turkey, and some of the scraped out innards of the eggplant in the pot, spicing liberally with toasted cumin and coriander, oregano, thyme, basil, salt and pepper and paprika and a tad of orange zest.  Cinnamon, allspice, or nutmeg would also have been a good taste match.

 We added the filling to the hollowed out eggplant halves

 Placed in the heated dutch oven

 And topped with fresh diced tomatos

 And a mixture of romano, mozzarella, and panko bread crumbs

 Then you bake, about 15 min.  This really only takes about 20 coals to do the whole meal.

 wow

 wow and yum

 And this was the dining room.

And we hated it as you can see.  We're driving the rest of the folks in the marina crazy with the smells of our cooking.

If that seems elaborate, think again.  It was only an eggplant, some onion and garlic, and a bit of frozen ground turkey, and some spices.  The difference between the mundane and the spectacular is just a bit of invention.  

So please visit our original blog Floating Empire to follow our adventures on the water, Morgainne's blog Life, Art, Water for an artist's life aboard, and our new blog Onboard Cooking for great ideas on cooking fine food in limited spaces.  In future I promise more how-to videos, recipes, cooking gear, and lots and lots of great food.

This boat livaboard adventure has been a really great experience for us.  Come share it.

M