I’m indebted to Sophie Turner, my firefighting friend from Tavistock, for this summer sailing snack recipe.
You can make this on board, if you like. No fancy equipment needed.
Ingredients
75 grams butter
225 grams strong cheddar
2 tablepspoons sour cream (why do they put a sell-by date on this stuff?)
4 tablespoons Guinness
4 drops Tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons finely-chopped parsley
freshly-ground black pepper
Think you can manage all that? Right. Let’s go.
- Cream the butter until it’s really soft (if the weather’s freezing cold, don’t be tempted to heat it – you’ll end up with ghee, and we’re not making a curry).
- Add everything else and mix it all together, using whatever tools you usually use.
- Pour the mixture into a large bowl or into a number of ramekins – whichever you fancy.
- Cover the bowl or each of the ramekins with clingfilm and do what it takes to chill it for at least 2 hours. If you haven’t got a fridge, bung everything in a tough, waterproof plastic bag and hang it over the side or in the bilges.
- When it’s as chilled as you’re ever going to get it, take the bowl or ramekins out, take off the clingfilm, run a knife round the edges, and tip the contents out onto a plate. Slice it and serve it with fresh, crusty brown bread.
What you drink with it is up to you, but I hope you’ll have finished off the original bottle or can of Guinness – it’ll be a bit flat by now.
Interesting, thanks. It sounds like a cross between a pate and a cheese spread. I imagine it would also be quite high in calories too, which is what the hungry yachtsman seems to want much of the time.
Sour cream and sell-by date? LOL! (At least I *think* you were joking.)
Sour(ed) cream. Yeah. If you leave it too long, I’m sure rogue cultures will eventually gain a foothold, even in a sealed container – but like all things with a sell-by date they should be good for a long time afterwards if they’re kept reasonably cool. You should be able to see and smell the problem by the time it can hurt you.
You wrote “You should be able to see and smell the problem by the time it can hurt you.”
Well, yes. And no. Probably that would be the case with soured cream but contamination of food is a very real problem and can neither be seen, smelt, nor tasted. That’s why commercial catering establishments have such strict rules about food handling and storage.
Sure, most of the time the home (or boat) cook will get away with most things. But it’s better to be aware of the possible dangers if you are going to take risks. Then at least you’re making an informed decision as to what you’re willing to risk and what you won’t. I guess I’m a bit “funny” about the subject of food hygiene. I may sometimes take calculated risks myself but I would never knowingly risk another person’s health.
You’re absolutely right, Kay. In some cases food can get highly toxic without it being obvious. While I was at university, we left a bottle of homogenised, pasteurised milk in a clubhouse for a week. It hadn’t separated and it had no smell, so I drank some.
I was quite ill for more than 12 hours.
On another occasion, the alarm bells should have rung when I ordered a steak cooked medium rare and the waitress said “you’ll have to have it well done – it’s not good enough to be cooked rare”. I had a very painful night.
Like you, I’ll occasionally take calculated risks myself, but would never dream of giving suspect food to anyone else. However, I get fed up with people who throw out stale bread and fresh fruit & veg because they haven’t learned to judge its state, or just because the label says so.
Whew! Thank goodness we haven’t fallen out on this. I’m not an obsessive/compulsive, by any means – I’ll send you a photo of my desk if you don’t believe me!
But I do tend to be very strict about food rules.
I also agree about not chucking out things which are perfectly good, but not risky. You can make breadcrumbs out of stale bread (as long as it’s not mouldy!).
I found a couple of Granny Smith apples lurking in my fridge today and it was “use it or lose it” time. Dave was going to chuck one of them in the bin because it really did look past its best. It was perfectly OK once I’d peeled it. And then I made a really nice apple crumble with them.
I’m the first to agree that good, fresh ingredients make the best meals, but I think we can be a wee bit flexible about that. Gourmet food needs the best. A simple thing like an apple crumble doesn’t have to contain the best apples (although I did use posh imported sultanas and a splash of Cointreau in mine – blush).
When about a third of the food bought in Britain (source: LoveFoodHateWaste) goes into landfill (no idea about the stats for the countries where you or I live), then I think we all have to do our bit not to waste so much. My little contribution to cutting down on waste is my “use it or lose it” attempts. I’ve not blogged about it much yet, but it’s in the pipeline.
The recipe looks interesting and worth a try. Don’t think you need to be on a boat to enjoy making food that’s easy to prepare. I’d say that the guinness would be long gone before the potted cheese was chilled. But it would go very well on our home-made whole grain bread.
My take on the food going off debate is that on a boat I would be even less likely to take any risks!
PS: The RSS feed for your blog came back with a Not Found error message, otherwise I would have subscribed to follow your blog.
Cheers from sunny Oz
I do understand fully the issue of hygiene on a boat…. it’s not normally the place to have a bad case of V and D
“…it’s not normally the place to have a bad case of V and D…”
Your mention of V and D made we laugh, although we used to refer to it as D and V – until someone we knew got mixed up and referred to the condition as “dieting and vomhorrea”.
The recipe sounds good and I’d definitely like to have a go. Thanks!
Yes, I (and wifie, who is a nurse and taught me the name in the first place) call it D & V. Sophie, your version sounds too much like the old name for what’s now called STD…