Cooking aboard or outdoors

[Boston]

well lets hope our OP doesn't mind smoked salmon cause in about 30 minutes its coming out of the smoke oven. I'll post picts of the process. This stuff is a big hit in the sushi bar at the club I used to work at.

[Squidly-Diddly]

http://www.lodgemfg.com/Logic-fryers.asp

Except my older model has a much shallower top, better for turning pancakes, but not so good for volume.

Handy because it has handles, and you can set things on the flat top when covered. Great for warming plates, bread or tortillas. You can also set the top on the bottom unit 'right side up' as a warming dish, or use it as a plate for stove side eating.

[hoytedow]

This should be on this thread. http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/ope...mbo-30920.html

[CatBuilder]

Drooling! In from work (building a boat) today and looking for something to eat. Too tired to do any real cooking, so I'd like to order one of Daiquiri's peka meals, please!

How much to get it shipped in hours (while kept warm) to the States? Where is that Concorde when you need it???

I will contribute some recipes when less tired and dizzy from hunger. Great thread!

[hoytedow]

Crack open a can of kippers. You'll feel better in no time!

[troy2000]

My last post in Will's forum:


As noted several times already, different strokes for different folks.

Put me in a boat and I'll point it away from all the people, and go looking for a deserted little strip of beach where no one will bother me.

Put my son in the same boat and he'll point it straight into the busiest water, and go looking for a crowded beach where he can bother young women.

I like the idea of a usable galley, even though I do a lot of my cooking outside. For example, I'd just as soon not make an outdoor production out of breakfast. I'd rather have a two-burner stove with a coffeepot on one side making the cabin smell good while I finish dressing, and a frying pan on the other side for Mexican chorizo, nopalitos, potatoes and eggs to cook in, while I'm having my first cup of coffee and keeping the coffee pot warm for a second cup.

Or corn meal mush (basically polenta ground a little finer) with spicy sausage crumbled into it... either fresh and soft, or chilled overnight, cut into slices and fried (simple version of scrapple).
__________________

[hoytedow]

Dutch or Croatian, these recipes should all work well: http://www.cowboyshowcase.com/dutch_oven_cooking.htm

[troy2000]

Originally Posted by Squidly-Diddly

http://www.lodgemfg.com/Logic-fryers.asp

Except my older model has a much shallower top, better for turning pancakes, but not so good for volume.

Handy because it has handles, and you can set things on the flat top when covered. Great for warming plates, bread or tortillas. You can also set the top on the bottom unit 'right side up' as a warming dish, or use it as a plate for stove side eating.

I have a cast iron wok from Lodge, that gets used a lot when I'm cooking outside at home.

[troy2000]

I'm learning... I went looking through the internet. Apparently peka cooking uses a separate metal or clay lid that entirely fits over the cooking pan, instead of just fitting to the top of it likw a normal lid.

Here's a video I found of a clay lid being used in an outdoor fireplace in Croatia. Looks like it would be easier to brown food in than in a dutch oven; mine with its close-fitting heavy lid is basically airtight.

http://secretdalmatia.wordpress.com/...ooking-lesson/

[Boston]

I gotta say I've never even heard of a Peka before but if I manage to find one at least I'll know how to cook it. I do however have a few Salmon fillets in the freezer so I might detail how I manage to cook that up.

Some of us like to cook, its a knack if you have it, a curse if you don't. But any way you slice it if your on a boat somewhere your going to end up eating something. Its so no ones fault but your own if its out of a can, or if its gourmet.

I'm going to start with a piece of fish
salmon to be exact
wild caught Alaskan, frozen but still well worth the trouble.



I get it on sale for about 6 a lb and buy about five of them at a time.

these are the basic ingredients today. There's lots of different ways you can cook this stuff but chili oil and garlic paste seem to be a big hit with my friends



So this is the smoking set up, a cheap smoker is all you need to be doing fish, which is what I primarily smoke in that thing. I use natural charcoal with no lighter fuel either added or included. I don't typically use the Jack Daniels wood chips. Usually I use Mesquite or alder, but this time I was out so I used old ground up whiskey barrels.



Here it is all ready for me to fire up the smoker



Its quick work to get the coals into the smoker, throw some chips on top of them and close the doors before you flame the coals. If you get a burst of flames you can singe the Salmon. So no pictures of that particular process.

but once you get the doors shut is starts smoking pretty fast.



at the temp and altitude I'm at I aim for about 175°F and leave it in for about 40 minutes.

just opening the door after 40 to see how it turned out.



Its obviously done when you see little inklings of fat, the white stuff. beginning to come up through the meet



If you leave it in to long after you see that fat come up your going to dry it out. If I wanted jerky I'd not have started with fish.

Anyway its dinner time, fish and beer, perfect on or off the dock.

[daiquiri]

Originally Posted by troy2000

I'm learning... I went looking through the internet. Apparently peka cooking uses a separate metal or clay lid that entirely fits over the cooking pan, instead of just fitting to the top of it likw a normal lid.
Here's a video I found of a clay lid being used in an outdoor fireplace in Croatia. Looks like it would be easier to brown food in than in a dutch oven; mine with its close-fitting heavy lid is basically airtight.

You're right, that's how peka is used. And part of the particular and very nice taste of the meals done with it is due to the fact that it is not airtight but exposed to some fumes from the charcoal.
The one in your video is very small indeed, and uses very little ammount of charcoal. I am more familiar with the bigger version used on a bigger bed of charcoal. This video shows it all, and will also teach you how to cook octopus or squid under peka :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB00_...eature=related

[troy2000]

Looks and sounds good to me, Boston. Speaking of fish jerky: I used to catch sea cats in Ft Lauderdale. I'd skin them, soak them overnight in brine filled with ice, pat them dry and smoke them for hours in a Brinkman smoker, until they were almost jerky. After the fish air-cooled I'd pull the meat off the bones and stick it in Tupperware containers.

It made great smoky/salty beer snacks, and lasted well without refrigeration. As a matter of fact, I forgot two fish in the smoker when I flew back to California for over a week in the humid summertime, and when I returned they were still good.

After receiving dire warnings from the locals that sea cats weren't safe to eat, I called a Florida Fish and Game biologist. He sighed, told me sea cats were probably the cleanest, least-polluted and safest fish in Florida, and said that Florida was the only place he knew of where people wouldn't eat them.

Daiquiri, thanks for the video. I'm betting the older clay pekas gave a slightly different taste, just like I notice a difference between a chicken cooked in a metal roasting pan and one done in my unglazed clay roaster.

And for some reason I've never figured out, food cooked outdoors in my dutch oven manages to pick up a smoky flavor somehow, even though it seems to be almost airtight.

[Ad Hoc]

Nice set Boston.

I’m however a purest. I cook with all fresh ingredients. When using sauces etc, again I make fresh. The only sauces I cant make, are sauces like soya sauce, miso paste etc, everything else I make fresh myself from base ingredients. Same for curries, whether Indian or Thai or Indonesian, I bash the fresh chillies, galangal, lemon grass etc etc to make the paste, same for all sauces pesto etc etc. Bought pastes etc all contain way too many chemicals and additives. Apart from the obvious (food should be fresh and not from a pharmacy) food that has endless E numbers and meat that has been feed antibiotics/steroids etc, all this “****” comes out in me and I itch like mad for hours sometimes days. So it is more a lifestyle choice rather than a political bandwagon stand, before you ask. If i eat a supermarket meat (ie cheap), i am itching for hours after i eat it. If i eat a free range organic natural feed animal, no reaction. QED.

I simply love cooking outdoors. Well, just love cooking and eating too of course

Originally Posted by Boston

I'm going to start with a piece of fish
salmon to be exact
wild caught Alaskan, frozen but still well worth the trouble.

Frozen fish is not popular here, as I’m sure you understand too. But most here don’t realise that half the fish that is sold is caught a zillion miles away and shipped in, ergo frozen then thawed.

We make a wicked Ebe - which is basically a soup made in one pot- with Alaskan, or other spider crab. This is popular when made outdoors, even in the cold of winter. In the UK, we throw spider crabs back as these are considered vermin. The crabs in the UK are totally different. So, first time for me eating spider crabs.

[troy2000]

I was watching the video Daiquiri linked to about octopus under a peka, and it reminded me: my wife can't eat squid or octopus anymore. Which is a shame. She used to bring home a calamari steak now and then, and do nice things with it.

Ten or twelve years ago we still had foster children, including a pair of teenybopper sisters whose father had deserted them when they were infants. I don't remember what happened to the mother, but eventually the girls wound up with their mother's sister and her husband. When they hit puberty the uncle tried molesting the older one, and the girls blew the whistle. The aunt sided with her husband and accused the girls of lying, so they wound up in foster care.

No surprise about the aunt; that happens more often than not in such cases. Anyway, back to the story. Dear old dad showed up out of the blue one day. He enjoyed playing loving dad for several months, before he got bored and his girlfriend got jealous of the attention the girls were getting. Then he disappeared again.

He owned a couple of trucks and had grown up in a family that was part of a fishing community, so he had contacts and carried a lot of seafood. When he found out we liked squid, he brought us pounds and pounds of it, frozen in boxes; we almost filled a freezer.

So we started cooking it regularly. Most of the squid were small ones, and one of my favorite dishes was squid scampi with garlic and butter, instead of shrimp scampi. Unfortunately, after a few months of having squid on the menu once or twice a week, my wife developed a wicked allergy to both squid and octopus. She can't even cook them now without a severe reaction.

[Ad Hoc]

Here is a small spread I made for the BBQ last summer, when we had a few friends around.



I made Chinese style spicy chicken wings, tandori chicken, teriyaki chicken (half cooked the chicken in oven first), lamb kebabs, beef satay, fresh cucumber relish made with giner sake and soya sauce, some veggies for instant BBQ’g a simple panzanella, a few japanesy things (hard to explain) and also a some red snapper steamed with lemon grass, chillies, lime and coriander in banana leaves (well grease proof paper as couldn’t get the leaves!). Well..you get the idea