HORS SÉRIE – Cuisine en équilibre

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

Julia Child in the New York Times magazine in 1986

This quote resonates with us. Indeed, we travel around the world for 20 months with our sailboat, which is now our home: the kitchen occupies a very important place.

Léo, Émilien and I are all three filled with many common references but also with our own culinary identities. However, "eating well" remains a shared value.

As children of the countryside, our education led us to discover local products, to prepare them, to cook them, to appreciate them. 

We take this heritage around the world and we intend to expand it learning to work with new products, new flavors. 

Feeding the crew in a space in perpetual agitation

Have you ever cooked in a washing machine? No ? Because we think we're perfectly capable of it today. 

Indeed, preparing meals in the small square that serves as a kitchen often turns out to be a balancing act. We grab the utensils, ingredients, pans as well as ourselves otherwise everything crashes violently to the ground. 

The gite being uncontrollable, the helmsman cannot do anything to help his sidekick in the kitchen. So you have to use stratagems to avoid wasting food, or worse: getting hurt. 

We then find on the floor various non-slip strips allowing a better grip, small pieces of rope used to hang all the doors of our drawers and thus prevent them from being unintentionally emptied in the kitchen. The gas stove on gimbals is an essential, in addition to cooking, it allows us not to spill all our cooking by countering the effects of heeling.

Despite all these difficulties this space is now rather well optimized. We all know where the utensils, condiments and food are. After adapting our way of cooking, it's pretty nice.

Speaking of utensils, we have everything you need on board:

• A drainer
• A stove
• A small pan
• A pressure cooker (very practical not to spill anything)
• Four salad bowls
• Six bowls
• Six plates
• Kitchen knives
• Cutlery
• A bursar
• A cork shot (this is an essential)
• A kettle
• A sieve
• A potato masher
• A cutting board

As a bonus we would like to have a small fixable barbecue outside, but unfortunately we are not not yet good enough in fishing to have something interesting to grill... It will come!

Provisioning

A few days before our stopover departures, we scour the markets in search of many fresh products to fill our boat with excellent local fruits, spices and vegetables. We prefer to direct our purchases to farmers' markets as much as possible when we can. 

This was the case in Gran Canaria and in Le Marin in Martinique. For the rest of the supplies, we buy paper towels, toilet paper, garbage bags, toothpaste... in medium or large stores near the ports. Indeed, they often allow us to use large shopping carts to bring our purchases back to the dock: it's very convenient without a car.

Each inch² matter

We then unload the dinghy onto Noddi and organize for 30 to 40 minutes Our purchases in hanging nets for fruits and vegetables that do not stand up well to shocks. The most resistant ones are put in dedicated storage boxes that fill our equipment. Everything else, canned food, spices, starchy foods, cakes, pâtés (dedication to Lou Gascoun)... are stored in the two large boxes on either side of the boat, under Leo's bed and under the "sofa" in the living room. The fridge even allows us to store some fresh products.

This organization is essential in the optimization of space: nothing protrudes and it is much easier to find.

A race against time

Leo is often responsible for reminding us of the state of decomposition of the fruits and vegetables that surround his living space. It's important!

We eat the most damaged ones first, but we are always caught by nature, which, in such complicated storage conditions (heat, humidity, sun), forces us to eat many fruits in unattractive conditions. Emilien often has the misfortune to come across hard-hit mandarins or bananas, to the taste... well done...

I admit that I have more trouble with this aspect. Eating a rotting fruit at the end of each meal is a challenge I sometimes prefer to do without. Imagine a general diarrhea on the boat? A drama...

To each his own style...

But before we get to the meal, it's time to get cooking! As a rule, we do not follow a specific order in the organization of our meals and it may happen that one of us wants to cook a particular dish.

So we work rather on the basis of envy, without overdoing it, so that it is not always the same people who cook.

Personally, my cooking is rather Mediterranean: olive oil, garlic and pastas! I also have a weakness for peppers and chilies. I usually cook quite slowly and accompany my dishes with a sauce when I can. My specialty on board: Home-made fries!

Leo has the most varied cuisine of the three of us, know everything about meat, fish and cooking! He often delighted us with his tuna tataki or his famous sausage puree.

The most "experimental" of us three is without hesitation Emilien. Probably in search of his style or our death, he makes us go through all the flavors: rice drowned in sardine oil, 1.5 kg of pasta too little drained turning into a pasty monoblock... He makes up for it however with these salads that bring a big bowl of freshness as a starter. His favorite dish: Lou Gascoun, a famous liver pâté that we have been sharing together for many years.

Soup plates to satisfy hunger

It's around 7pm when it's time to call out "dinner". At that time, the helmsman is tripping! It is a moment of joy shared around a cold starter for lunch and pies for dinner. 

Then comes the dish, always served in bowls that allow an excellent grip. We also ration a smaller amount of food to ensure our stock. It is in general 80g to 100g of starch per person.

When the sea is rough, it becomes really difficult for the helmsman to hold the bar while enjoying his meal. However, Emilien found the solution by customizing a bowl with fasteners on the top and bottom to block it completely. This allows to have more ease of use to keep your hands on the helm.

Our meals are generally moments of exchange, a meeting place that, after several hours at the helm, resting or entertaining, allows us to renew the dialogue around a hot meal, often very comforting.

Dishwashing on the boat

Happiness never lasts very long because after we have enjoyed ourselves, then it is necessary to wash the dishes. There are different ways of doing things on the boat, and it often depends on the cook.

When I cook, I put it everywhere. It's clear that I don't really pay attention to the number of utensils used. On the other hand, Emilien is meticulous and always makes the kitchen spotless: he often cleans while cooking. 

Oh yes, you should know that the dishwashing is not done like at home. We limit the use of our fresh water reserves to the strict minimum, i.e. for cooking. So for washing dishes, we use sea water. We collect it with a 1.5 gal bucket and fill our sink with it before cleaning our cutlery, bowls, utensils, pans and our casserole. 

Emilien and Léo generally prefer to wash in the bucket directly outside.

Once the dishes are done, we can resume our occupations, steer or entertain ourselves according to the shifts as explained in the article Transatlantic - part one.

I hope to have succeeded in making you understand better the way the kitchen is done on board of Noddi. Noddi.

Please feel free to comment on this article to recommend improvements, we read all your comments with great attention!

See you soon.