A Taste of My Reality

I started this blog because there are a lot of friends out there that think I jet off to Maui and sit my bum in the sun sipping mai tai's and every once in a while bang out some food. NOT TRUE!
Case in point...
Wednesday....no, rewind to Tuesday evening. I had just finished dinner service, was cleaning up and looking forward to a relaxing evening when I was told I was going on the boat Wednesday to handle lunch for those that were going fishing. Sounds fine, right? Well, I can pretty much pull off lunch with a WITF (What's In The Fridge) approach. Issue becomes, what about dinner??
I need to make something that can be cooked very fast, appeal to all the various diets, allergies, etc.
I decide on stuffed shells with smoky marinara. Vegetarian..check, No Nuts...check, speedy...check
Problem....I have NONE of the ingredients and need to hit Safeway, then come back and cook everything, cool it and then pack for the fishing trip.

So, off I head at 8:30pm to the Safeway. If you have ever been to Maui or any island for that matter, they rarely stock shelves throughout the day as they do on the mainland. The delivery semi comes in the wee small hours of the morning, the store get stocked and looks good, then everything sells out. I am holding my breath as I drive to the store. Thankfully, I got the last quart of ricotta and last two boxes of jumbo shells. Oh yeah I forgot, pick up all the Foster's Beer and some Corona as well....Good luck finding beer at this hour!

I'm back at the condo and boiling water by 9pm, bust out a couple of 9x13 pans of stuffed shells, crack a cold beer while the pasta cools in an ice bath and finally think about some shut eye by 10:30pm. We meet the boat at 7am for fishing, that means I need to be up and ready-to-go, packed by 6:45!

Thankfully, the Captain's better half shuttles me to the boat in the car as all the beer and supplies are quite a load for the walk down the beach. All aboard, we cast off the mooring ball and head north towards Molokai. 40 minutes into the trip the seas start to build and the wind really picks up. We check the updated marine forecast and it doesn't look good for fishing. We bang into 15+ foot swells for another few minutes and then decide to head the other direction and fish off the back side of Lanai. Still pretty rough seas for the 3-hour trek at 7 knots. I started to get woozy. I am a sailor, and usually do not have problems with motion. But I could feel it coming on. Captain Mark said it best regarding seasickness, "Nothing worse than feeling hung-over when your not hung-over" Right about the time I'm realizing my condition, my other boat mates start asking when lunch is going to be ready! The LAST THING I can do right now is go below and try and balance enough to make lunch. It's going to have to wait an hour or so until the motion medication kicks in.

Did I mention we have been trolling the entire time and have not seen ONE fish!?

I regain my stability and make lunch. A protein-rich Mexican salad; romaine, cheese, grilled chicken, black beans, cucumber, tomato and salsa. Quite good, give it a try.

Mid-afternoon we are still bobbing and slamming off the coast of somewhere beautiful, the knife block is safely in a cabinet, coffee maker snug in the sink, everything that could 'fly' has been secured. Get the point? I mention all of this because the Captain has just requested popcorn as a snack. No problem, right? Just pop a bag in the microwave. Nope. He wants it the old fashioned way, with oil...yes HOT oil on the stove. In case you missed it, re-read the above conditions. I hated to do this, because as a private/personal chef 'No' is not something you ever say. I told the Captain I was not comfortable heating oil with the way the boat is rocking around. He was not happy. I hope he understood, but somehow I do not. I suggested pistachios as a stand in, and I think it did the trick.

Still no sign of fish.

Getting to be around that time where we need to start the 3-hour tour back to port before sundown. I text the Captain's Better Half with heating instructions for the stuffed shells because it's looking like we will not be in by 6pm, the usual dinner hour.

A STRIKE! Fish ON!

Click the above link for a video of Suze catching her fish and some commentary by Robin Leach of 'Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous'

Thanks if you read this far, more to come but this tropical gig is coming to a close soon.

Eat Well, Mahalo,
Chef Theo

The Flip

Valentine's Day.
Making a pan of crispy hash browns to go with steak and shrimp dinner. The prospect of my capability to flip the hash in mid-air was discussed and wagers were placed.
Watch the video by clicking below to see what happened....
:)
The $400 Hashbrown Flip

Boat Appetite

Sunday was 'Family Day on the Boat' We all took the dingy ride out to the sailing vessel 'No Wiki' for an afternoon of whale watching and snorkeling. This all sounds great, right? Sure it is, but I needed to create a move-able feast for lunch and simultaneously have a plan in place for dinner upon our arrival back at the house.



I pulled a technique out of the 1970's, The Crock
Pot!That, paired with a tried and true recipe from the Lovely Chef Melissa and before 8am I had dinner bubbling away with fingers crossed for
a 6pm service.

Unfortunately, there was not enough wind to move the Lagoon 500 at more than a few knots, so we motored out to an area where Captain Mark knew would be teaming with whales. Man, he did not disappoint!

Check out the photo to the right and the video below!
Close Encounter Whale Video

After the whale encounter we motored over to a very awesome reef for some snorkeling. On the way over, I laid out the lunch spread seen below. Also, there is a shot of the galley area.














Here is a quick overview from me in the galley:
One on One with Chef Theo

And for those sailors out there interested in a tour of the boat:
Tour of No Wiki

Aloha for now, next post is the Valentine's Day Experience!
Thanks for reading and tell all your friends.
Eat Well...Or Don't Eat At All!
Chef Theo

Cooking in Paradise, Part One

ALOHA!
February 10-11-12, 2011


Apologies for the delay in starting the Maui-Blog, jet-lag and overall time required to acclimate to the rigors of island life have stymied my intent to blog sooner.

A synopsis of my time since touchdown....

I left Philly on Thursday at 7am...actually I awoke at 4am, quietly showered, hugged the dog, kissed the lovely M goodbye and burned some rubber on I-95 towards PHL airport. A decent flight to PHX even though there was a 28 DAY OLD newborn on my left and an 8-month-old on my right! The newborn was real good, the 8-month old was OK. I grabbed a quesadilla at the airport and scored a cheap upgrade to the forward cabin for the 7-hour glide to Maui.

We landed almost an hour early. I was greeted by my client and we made the 45 minute trex to west maui and their home on Kaanapali Beach. A relaxing evening filled with laughter and adult beverages followed. I lost my ability to function at about 11pm, not from the beverages, but from lack of sleep. The first night was brutal, awakening every couple of hours. Finally at 5am I waved the white flag and got up. My client had caught some 'Jack' fish the day prior so that was the requested breakfast. I crushed some Ritz crackers and roasted the freshly caught fish. A little odd for the start of the day I have to admit, but it tasted good!

The weather was perfect for a sail and since my client had recently purchased a 50-foot catamaran, it seemed appropriate to go sailing and whale watching.

My client's daughter-in-law insisted on bringing lunch food, so I was off the hook. We took the dingy out to the boat and set out for the afternoon. Very shortly we were greeted by whales on all directions. The whale spray looks so cool, but the scent of it is nothing short of fowl. We headed towards Lanai to snorkel. We found a sandy spot within a cluster of coral to drop the hook, let the undersea exploration begin. I stayed aboard to man the vessel as everyone else checked out the undersea life. Within the hour we were greeted by a passing shower, and thus our cue to head back to Kaanapali, where the sun awaited.

I had little time to scare up dinner after we left the Cat, dinner consisted of Grilled BBQ Chicken, Salad, Steamed Broccoil (Trees) and Cauliflower. Appetizers of baguette with tapenade. All appreciated the meal and I even made extra for re-purposing later in the week! Pillow time came fast as I found myself fast asleep by 9pm (shhhhhh...don't tell anyone!)

I awoke Saturday feeling complete rest and ready to go! I made some additional fish for my client as a breakfast and then headed to the fitness center for some exercise. I also tried my hand at paddle boarding. It requires alot of balance and I enjoyed it, but I need more time before I post photos!

I ran out to the market about 11am to grab what I needed for dinner. With a side-by-side fridge, shopping every day, while not the easiest, becomes the norm. Prices were crazy, but I found what I needed.







From noon until 3pm I cooked/prepped dinner. It was tough looking out at the beach, surf and people but that is life cooking in Paradise! Dinner was a success. Tomorrow could be a tough day....

Seems the Captain want's to go sailing with the entire family. Early to rise will be the rule. I need to plan lunch for the boat and also have dinner in my back pocket ready to go as live entertainment has been hired for the evening! Geez! I best get some rest... Here is a view that I see almost every day. More tomorrow, thanks for reading and please tell others!

Eat Well...Or Don't Eat At All!
Mahalo!
Chef Theo

Halibut, Fajitas and I-Da-Ho

Saturday, August 22, 2009 (Cloudy, Fog, Rain and 52°F)

I decided to pull out all the stops for our end of the trip brunch. As you may have noticed earlier, we had a scrumptious crab feast, with about 2 whole crabs left over. I painstakingly extracted all the nuggets of crab from the bodies and created The Crab Cake. To elevate it, I created Crab Cake Benedict. In the home kitchen, benedict in and of itself is a bit of work; hollandaise (from scratch-NEVER a mix!)), poaching eggs free-form, muffins and canadian bacon. So for this version, add sautéing the cakes, fresh bread toasted instead of the muffins, do it all on a 2-burner stove in a tiny galley and you’ve got an idea of the mountain in front of me. I pulled it off with the exception of the egg whites, which ran instead of clotting when added to the simmering water. My thinking is that the water was not hot enough, or I added too much vinegar. It was a HUGE amount of food, but gave us the base we needed for a long day of whale watching, halibut fishing and fog navigating.

About that halibut fishing. Yours truly landed one! Actually, we believe that I had TWO on the line at once. ‘How’ you say? Well, the halibut rig has a 6# lead ball on the end to get it down to the bottom as fast as possible. Halibut is a bottom feeder, and you need to get past all the other layers of species without your bait being thieved. Above the weight are two gigantic hooks onto which you skewer herring. Bounce the weight off the bottom until you get a bite, and believe me, you’ll know when you get a bite, then hold on! The landed halibut weighed only about 12 pounds, but based on the bend in my rod El Capitan theorizes that there must have been two fish and one shook loose.



Filleted weight was about nine pounds. I hope to catch more this week and bring home a 50# box, the Borough Boys and all my new friends in PA will finally taste real, fresh fish!



Dinner was my signature 'Three Saints Halibut' It was created on this boat during my first tour of duty six years ago. Seared halibut atop grilled asparagus and a roasted tomato and onion ragu. That is about as good as a food day gets!

‘Happy 50th Hawai’i

Friday, August 21, 2009 (Dense Fog, Clouds, Rain and 52°…again!)

Our guests for the week also spend part of the year in Maui and share an affinity for the Emerald Isle, so it was only fitting that the 50th anniversary of Hawai’i’s statehood fall during our cruise together. Meals, snacks and evening entertainment centered around this event.

Happy hour snacks were a bit funny, but very in keeping for a snack they are used to in Maui, Maui Onion Potato Chips! If you have never had then, grab some, they are awesome! Prior to departing I was asked to be sure and bake some of my Mac Nut Shortbread cookies, dipped in chocolate too! Also on the menu was my version of kaula pork. Obviously, it is a tad difficult to bury a whole hog or semblance thereof on a yacht, so marinated pork tenderloin would have to do. Asian sautéed veggies accompanied our simple island feast.

By now, I have grown accustomed to grilling in the rain, so after ample marination, the tenderloin was charred to perfection and allowed to rest. Dessert involved more grilling, this time Island Gold pineapple. All the chocolate was used in the dipping of the cookies, otherwise a drizzle of that would have been tasty atop the caramelized pineapple. Movie night feature was ‘As Good As It Gets’.
Lunch was a simple, ‘What’s In The Fridge?’ event. Quesadillas of left-over NY Strip, sweet corn, guacamole and pepperjack cheese. Surprisingly good and just enough to take the coffee jitters away.

We had no idea of the jitters that lay before us as we ventured further into Glacier National Park in search of glaciers, hopefully ones that are calving (see previous post for video). Zig-zaging our way through ice flow of varying sizes, passing Reid and Lamplugh Glacier, we ended up at Johns Hopkins Glacier. We gently ‘tapped’ several chunks of ice as we inched our way to within 1/2 mile of the glacier. At this vantage point we witnessed several calvings, followed 4-5 seconds later by the sonic boom-crack of the ice. The temperature is markedly lower up near the glacier…duh! it’s ice moron! You’ll see from the video/photo below that upon deciding to leave the area we discovered we had been surrounded by ice with no way out! It’s always a tic nerve-wracking when El Capitan states, ‘Gee, this has never happened before’ followed by, ‘Theo, come here and find me a way out of this mess’ We engaged in another Titanic round of ice tapping and pushing to make our way out to ‘clearer’ waters. Another Alaska trip, another story for the ages!











Glaciers calving at Johns Hopkins Glacier.

Things that go ‘pump’ in the night.

Thursday, August 20, 2009 (8:23am, Clouds, Rain and 54°…this is getting old.)

Today was a full food day. Magoo wanted to wet a line so while watching large pods of humpbacks and orcas he jigged for whatever was hungry. Four rockfish later I was busy filleting our pre-lunch snack of pan-seared blackened rock fish. Very delicious, reminded me of a meaty catfish or larger walleye. Now I was quite mistaken after the fish. I assumed (never do this!) that lunch would not be necessary based on the upcoming carnivorous dinner feast. WRONG! ‘What’s for lunch swab?” I broke in our new toaster and created Avocado Club Sandwiches.

They really hit the spot and gave us something to do as Magoo had transitioned to trolling for salmon. He landed a smallish Silver Salmon weighing a respectable eight pounds. Filleted, Vac-Pac’d and flash frozen. All that was left was a little back deck wash-down.

Successfully set the anchor for the evening in Inion Bay. Very picturesque with aqua-green water, dense treeline and steep banks. A classic meat and potatoes dinner was planned. Grilled NY Strip w/ Jack Daniels Mushroom Cream Sauce, Herb Roasted Potatoes, Steamed Broccoli and more fresh bread (plain for El Capitan and Sundried Tomato and Garlic for the rest) Dessert was more of Hayes’ creations, this time biscotti. YUM! Thanks Hayes!!

The evening feature film was ‘Duets’, a light, fun movie about relationships and karaoke. Go figure!


All tucked away snug in their beds I am awakened by a vacuum pump from the starboard head. As my berth (bed) is in the main salon, I hear everything, and having been working on this yacht for 6+ years know what virtually every sound it makes and when said sounds should and should not be heard. Vacuum pump at 3am running continuously indicates that someone didn’t properly flush the head. Hoping El Capitan would hear this and address (as it was his head) didn’t happen, so I made repeated attempts to silence the pump. Upon the fifth try, El Capitan appeared on the scene and rectified the problem. At last, silence. Well, except for the generator, heating system and the anchor being hoisted at 7am! Up and adam sailor!
What’s for breakfast swab?