Hot Cross Buns for Easter

Happy Good Friday to you!  Lent is almost over (we should all have given up pandemics…) and the resurrection is upon us, so time for a warming, homey, traditional holiday recipe.  Hot cross buns are typically British.  A wonderful nautical bit of lore: The Widow’s Son pub in Bromley-by-Bow had a Royal Navy sailor hang…

Eggs Sardou

I alluded ever so vaguely to it two weeks ago … Caroline brushed up closer last week with making bread, because there is none to buy.  But this week we have to acknowledge full-on: things are a MESS for those not already sequestered in a floating home where non-cohabitants have at least an anchor line-and-chain’s…

Gumbo Des Herbes

Or as they call it colloquially, “Gumbo Z’herbes” or just green gumbo.  Sure, it’s the Friday before Superbowl Sunday and we would normally be serving up a recipe for your game day snacking: something like our bourbon shrimp pops, crab stuffed mushroom caps, jalapeno poppers or — if the Saints were playing — oysters rocketfeller…

Dirty Bird

This pirate is not much of a sports fan.  I like sports … just don’t have the time or bandwidth to follow them fanatically*.  But Louisiana has this fabulous tradition of cooking the opposing team’s mascot — mostly a college football thing, they roast a Cochon de Lait when they play the Razorbacks, alligator when…

Calaveritas

Happy Dia de Los Muertos, Skallywags!  We decided on a slight twist to the traditional cookie for the Mexican holiday, adding cardamom to the mix and … well … eye patches to a few of the mateys, because how can you have a bunch of skulls and not a few eye patches on Galley Pirates. …

Chicken Jalapeno Soup

Welcome to National Soup Month!  In the annals of made-up, commercially-exploitable holidays, this one’s pretty obvious.  It’s cold, you’re plum tuckered out with the challenge of packing a single buffet plate from a choice of twenty holiday dishes on offer, and maybe you’ve got a resolution to eat in a mildly more healthful manner.  Something…

Spinach Salad With Apples and Maple Vinaigrette

  This is a short-but-sweet recipe just meant to get the seasonal culinary juices flowing!  I served this recently with a bacon and sweet potato galette on an evening when we desperately wanted it to be autumn, but were still a couple of days early.  The combination gave us the satisfaction of seasonal flavors, but…

Cajun Singapore Noodles

So by now you all know Pirate Caroline is spending the first two months of her 2018 lounging about a luxury yacht on the passage of a lifetime.  I, on the other hand, have two months full of business travel (and alas, I am not a professional sailor).  That said, some of my destinations have…

Baba Ghanouj

This middle eastern dip is one of my favorite foods, and that’s even after all my other favorite middle eastern dishes!  Captain Peter dislikes eggplant in any incarnation, including this one.  (Or maybe it’s the breath that results from so much raw garlic!)  So I wait for an invitation to a party and then gleefully…

Sweet Potato Salad

Struggling to relate this post to Columbus Day (or Annapolis Sailboat Show) weekend, I typed “Columbus Sweet Potato” into Google…and got the following history of the sweet potato.  I shouldn’t be surprised; I knew it was a great cruising recipe because sweet potatoes store well and are found in most parts of the world where…