Cinnamon Swirl Bread, delicious with coffee…toasted and spread with real butter.

It takes a coating of cinnamon and sugar (I like 2/3 brown to 1/3 white sugar) to the flattened dough, a triple fold over on to itself…then smash it flat (I don’t use the rolling pin, just my hands) and then another coating of the cinnamon & sugar, then just rooooll the dough up like you were making cinnamon rolls.  And roll it as tight as you can get it before dropping it into the bread pan.

When folding and rolling use thin coats of cinnamon & sugar with no butter to get great looking (& tasting) results without your bread ’separating’ while slicing after you are done cooling it from baking in the oven.

I was under the impression and education of books and colleagues that minced beef was just the English term for what North Americans call ground beef.  But lately my intrigue in figuring out why my minced beef seems to be so strange to cook, stay pink in the center, and not quite taste exactly like any ground or minced beef I have ever tasted has led me to ask you, the reader, what’s in your minced beef?

Here’s what’s in mine ~

*Beef, water, (ok so far) breadcrumbs, soy, salt, fermented rice (WHAT?!), pepper

Here’s the process in case you ever wondered…our two dumpster’s or bins are JUST for Galley & Dining Room use.

Both bins need to be craned out to the dock.  Then the bins are rolled down to a bigger container for trash, emptied by hand, washed out, rolled back down the dock, and then craned back into the galley cargo hole (above).  It takes about one days work to fill them to overflowing again. BOTH of them.

This whole process usually takes minimum of 30-45 minutes and needs to be done everyday.

How do we keep dairy products, better yet, what do we buy and how do we keep enough of it to feed our crew?

Most of our dairy products don’t even need to be kept in a cooler, reefer, or refrigerator. Nope. Its called Ultra High Temp products and after you get used to them, they do quite well.

We buy them by the pallets: Sour Cream, Whole Milk, 2% Milk, cooking cream (with about 2 or 3 version of fat content), whipping cream, etc… Of course our cheese still needs to be refrigerated but that frees up a lot of space until you need it. And refrigerator space is regarded as a vary valuable commodity. Yes, these products taste better or work better once they are chilled, but you can keep them in dry storage on pallets and move them into refrigeration a little at a time.

You probably wouldn’t believe the milk we go thru just as an additive to coffee and/or tea…So why refrigerate it just for it to be heated back up? Why use chilled dairy products to build sauces that go out hot? No reason, room temperature is good enough.

Here’s a picture of a few of the items:

A continuation of past posts: Red Palm Oil, Banku & Kenkey, Sea Monkey & FuFu

This one will be a little hard to explain, well ok, not really. Its just it may be a little hard for you to replicate if you are the kind of person who needs a recipe of exact measurements.

Elements of this sauce are mostly the basics of a lot of stews, palava sauce (althought it can be argued like most everything food can be nowadays as to origin or authenticity), meat sauces, and other soups & sauces of the West African people.

First I will explain that you can’t really google (search) for this recipe the name is unique and created by a few West Africans and a North American white boy from southern part of the United States, Alabama & Georgia. Why? Because they didn’t know what to call it besides red sauce, which means many different things to many different cultures. And because it was finally nice to make it difinitive in our minds.

First the basics then the story:

Start with oil (red palm oil if you got it) don’t be shy, throw in chopped onions, diced/chopped/pressed garlic, saute till translucent. Add chopped bell/sweet pepper (green, red, etc…), fresh ginger, saute about 3-5 minutes longer (med high heat). Add in cayenne or local equivalent hot pepper ( use for amount of heat YOU can stand) tomato paste and some fresh chopped tomatoes. Tomato paste should be a good wooden spoon size dollop to start, more as necessary…fresh tomatoes should be about 5 or 6 roma tomatoes worth (so we are going for a medium size HOME pot worth of sauce). Let simmer, if sauce gets too thick water it down some more and let simmer. They usually let this sauce cook for at least a half hour and up to a full hour or more (depending what meats, fish, chicken feet, egg or other things they may cook in there with it.

And by the way, Chicken feet put out good taste for soups and sauces and if your not shy you can suck off whatever substance (meat & sauce) is left on them when your done cooking, its tasty.

The consistency has been between soup and a sauce most times when I have had it. Spinach and a few other ingredients can been added to make a palava sauce, goat meat for certain stews…it becomes endless the possibilities.

Check your seasonings, salt & pepper as needed, more cayenne or hot pepper? Need more sauce? Add more paste, tomatoes, and/or water (sauce should not take on a sweet taste from the paste, that would be entirely too much).

We (Reuben, Alex, Alex, Joe, Charles, Kafue, Frank…countries represented: Ghana, Togo, Sierra Leonne, etc..), loved the movie Cool Runnings and since it was one of the favorites on our small ship (Caribbean Mercy, now retired) we watched it over and over again when we got bored on a sail. In the story of the jamaican bobsled team that went to the Olympics was a team member name Sanka, and Sanka had a lucky egg. See where I am going with this yet?

Reuben made this sauce most of the time and everyone else stood around telling him how they thought he should be making it. But I think it was safe to say Reuben made it the best and he usually ALWAYS added egg in the sauce, like you would an egg drop soup. Mix egg or at least crack yolk. Drop egg into Sanka Sauce while it was simmering and then just stir around once or twice, then let it cook.

Meat or additional things could be added almost anytime taking into account you simmered the sauce long enough to cook what was in it, or if it was a bean or pea of sorts then it would go in when the fresh tomatoes and paste went in.

Sanka Sauce. Nothing more than the traditional West African red sauce with an egg thrown in, or not! [now maybe after I post this you can google search for Sanka Sauce and it may start coming up. SMILE]

* I am not an authority by any means on West African food or cooking, these are my personal views and experiences as they have happened to me and many of my friends who are from these regions of the world*

Do you get your ground hamburger or minced beef (Europe) in big round tubes?  Packed in a cardboard box?  Maybe 5 to 10 pound tubes of them frozen solid, or fresh is how they usually come.

First I want to say that YES, if you can mix spices, herbs, or your ’special seasonings/flavors’ into your beef, then that is the way to go…A lot of time I do not have this option (I have the option but not the time) so I move on to the next best thing for time, flavor, and mass production at a cheap price instead of paying for pre-patties and wasting a lot of freezer space.

I won’t waste a lot of time on describing how to do it, but rely on my pictures to tell the tale.

If you have a good slicer (commercial or restaurant grade of course) then set it to the width of burger you would like, take your defrosted ground burger/minced beef (leaving plastic wrap on) and start slicing your burgers.

Use large cambro’s or containers of your choice to layer the hamburger in, we separate our burgers with pre-sized parchment paper that comes large sheet tray size.  For the first layer of burger put your seasonings, flavors, etc…down in the bottom of the container.  Then from there just keep applying it to the top of each layer of burgers.  As the weight of the burger and release of more blood/water happen over a course of time it pushes the flavors down over the rest of the burgers or lends more time for seasoning to dilute and spread. OH!  And of course remember to pull that plastic ring off of the patty!

We just use that wonderful Worcestershire Sauce on each layer.

Later you can move the burgers to large sheet trays and cook them in the oven OR-AND THIS IS WHAT WE DO, sear them on both sides at a high heat poking them in the center on a flat top grill or brazing pan .  This releases juices fat/blood in the burger so it doesn’t swell up and turn into a meatball!!!  Then  continue on to layering them on the large sheet pans and finishing then in the oven as slow or as fast as you want to cook them.

The process I wanted to show you here today was more about creating the burger patties quickly with no filler and without wasting money or space by buying pre-made patties.

Pictured here in this post is Ernest from Ghana, one of our Galley Cooking Team Leaders.

The Importance of Red Palm Oil: Let us quickly delve into my favorite online pedia, Wikipedia for a very nice quick run-down of what the Red Palm Oil is…

Palm oil is a form of edible vegetable oil obtained from the fruit of the oil palm tree. Previously the second-most widely produced edible oil, after soybean oil, 28 million metric tons were produced worldwide in 2004. It may have now surpassed soybean oil as the most widely produced vegetable oil in the world. It is also an important component of many soaps, washing powders and personal care products, is used to treat wounds, and has controversially found a new use as a feedstock for biofuel.

The palm fruit is the source of both palm oil (extracted from palm fruit) and palm kernel oil (extracted from the fruit seeds). Palm oil itself is reddish because it contains a high amount of beta-carotene. It is used as cooking oil, to make margarine and is a component of many processed foods. Boiling it for a few minutes destroys the carotenoids and the oil becomes colourless. Palm oil is one of the few vegetable oils relatively high in saturated fats (like coconut oil) and thus semi-solid at room temperature.

NOW, lets talk about its importance in West African Cooking…

Frankly there is no way to substitute it, if you are using West African recipes and they call for the Palm Oil or Red Palm Oil make sure you use it! If you can’t get it, well that’s too bad.

What’s so special about it? Have you ever smelled different oils? How about that special extra virgin olive oil you love so much? Remember how you can tell when someone is cooking with it because you smell that ‘SMELL’ it gives off when its being heated up? Red Palm Oil is like that, NO, not the taste of Olive Oil…but the distinguishing characteristics of using it.

If you have ever looked at it, smelled it, tasted it (either cold and/or heated up), and/or smelled it heating up…You would never forget it, and especially if your food was cooked in it. And then, every time after that you have a dish that should have Red Palm Oil in it, you will miss it and recognize when its gone. Its distinctive, and its good. But probably not real healthy, maybe within moderation.

Alright, we’ll see you again next with SANKA SAUCE…

* I am not an authority by any means on West African food or cooking, these are my personal views and experiences as they have happened to me and many of my friends who are from these regions of the world AND as I have worked with them and learned from them…*