Follow these sources of inspiration to ensure you always have an answer to “what’s for dinner?”
Let me start this by saying it is written from the perspective of a crew chef. IMHO, the crew chef has a perpetually hard task. The people we cook for don’t tend to change from week to week and crew are renowned for their diverse likes and dislikes. One crew member’s dream meal can be another’s total nightmare.
Something I’ve come to realize over the years is that working as a temp chef can be great. Take a month-long gig. You only actually need one month’s worth of ideas. A week-long job? Even easier! It’s undoubtedly comparably easier to wow guests and crew when your days on board are numbered — you can throw the best you’ve got at them, and your food is already exciting by dint of it being new. At the other end of the spectrum, working full time for the same guests requires more creativity, thought and ingenuity.
While it’s always at the forefront of my mind to keep things varied, I do have dishes that feature time and again. All chefs have them. It’s what you turn to in your time of need, when the river of creativity is running dry. In no particular order, mine are smoky sweet potato hummus, fennel seed and rye sourdough, raw broccoli salad, rosemary farinata, spanakopita, herb-crusted side of salmon, romesco sauce and tiramisu. If I ever find myself stuck in a rut/ill/hungover, I’ll turn to these reliable old friends. And while I try to work with the mantra “Create, don’t imitate,” do we really need to keep reinventing the wheel? Some say that genuinely new ideas are rare — new dishes are essentially a result of chefs stealing elements of other chef’s dishes, which they amalgamate into a new Franken-dish.
Thankfully, creative juices are free flowing. Chefs can look at a cauliflower and in come a thousand ideas. But we all need external sources of inspiration for our ideas to flourish. Here are some of my favorite ways to reignite the ol’ flame so you can keep serving knockout dish after knockout dish.
1. Dine out.
Get off the boat and get out there! Travel when you can, but simply getting ashore and eating someone else’s food as often as opportunity allows can work wonders. Bring those ideas back into your galley. Would I have ever thought of serving octopus from the plancha with whipped feta, compressed watermelon, nduja and black sesame seeds had I not tried it at a tapas bar in San Sebastián? I don’t think so.
2. Sign up.
My New York Times Cooking subscription gives me a treasure trove of interesting recipes and fun menu ideas. It’s decidedly “cheffy,” bringing authentic flavors and techniques from all over the globe. If you want fun ideas for crew food, head here. BBC Good Food is also a reliable workhorse.
3. Learn something new.
Deckhands and engineers are encouraged to further their careers with qualifications; chefs should too. Negotiate a training allowance and learn something new to bring back to your guests. From sushi to sourdough to crafting desserts that look like fruit, there’s a wealth of new techniques out there waiting to be discovered.
4. Stalk social media.
Follow your heroes. Current players hitting it out the park for me are @chefannafrazer on Instagram — she writes and shoots recipes that are quick, easy and inevitable hits with crew. Whether it’s recreating a well-known dish at home (like a classic British Greggs slice) or whipping up a bowl of messy noodles, her food is full of flavor. She creates recipes I go back to again and again. @Thomas_straker is a bit controversial, with a block of butter going into about every dish, but his recipes are fun, flavorful and easy to recreate.
5. Subscribe to a Substack or ten.
Substack newsletters are a real boon for yacht chefs — instead of having to cart cookbooks around or grapple with them on a screen, you can choose your favorite food writers and have their newsletters delivered weekly to your inbox. For baking projects, check out Nicola Lamb’s Kitchen Projects. She extensively researches and tests her recipes, so you’ll have a foolproof recipe and a lot of new knowledge. Rosie McKean writes The Dinner Party, with perfect sharing dishes to cook for friends, which all translate well to crew food.
6. Phone a friend.
If you find yourself truly stuck in a rut, ask around. Some of my most successful dishes have come from simply asking people what they like to eat. Print off a crew food suggestions table and stick it up in the crew mess. Asking for a bit of direction reduces the noise, narrows your focus and takes the thinking work out of your hands.