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| Day 94 |
09 July 2000 |
| South Coast of Irian Jaya |
| "An Interview with Jane the Cook" |
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P: Do you buy provisions with a particular menu in mind?
J: I can't really do any menu planning because you don't know
what you are going to find when you go shopping in Indonesia. I
try to buy stuff that will last, like tinned food. Tins are so
much more expensive than other food up here that the locals
don't buy them. You go into a shop and look on the shelf and
they've got four tins of sardines and two tins of asparagus, two
tins of fruit. I ask them 'Have you got any more?' But that's
it. I get plenty of fresh stuff which will only last a few days,
but this leg will be four weeks.
P: What do you feed us on?
J: It's pretty basic. The evening meal will be one of the the
staples, either rice, noodles or pasta, and something to go with
it. One pot dishes, because once the rice or pasta is on there's
only room on the stove for one other pot. Breakfast was cereals
until we ran out. I thought it would be too hot for porridge but
I've been doing it lately and it's going down well. Lunch might
be bread with salad, sardines, whatever I've got.
P: Tell us more about the bread.
J: I bake four loaves a day. That's how many will fit in the
oven and it's about the right amount for thirteen. With eighteen
or twenty people we could have done with more, say six loaves a
day. We had to slice carefully.
P: How are your working conditions?
J: (Laughs) Andrea is making me a belt thing out of canvas so I
don't fall out of the galley when we are on port tack. That's
the worst time. Trying to reach the stove from the other side of
the ship. Trying to pour ten litres of boiling water off the
pasta uphill into the colander, nearly falling over all the
time, that gets a bit hairy. Or when I bend down to get
something from the fridge and burn my bum on the stove. There's
not much room in there. Sometimes it would be good to get a
helper in there too, but there's definitely only room for one.
P: Any other complaints?
J: Apart from the gas going out every time someone uses the
fresh water, no. [The water pump draws just enough current to
trip out the gas solenoid.]
P: Say something good about the galley.
J: It's easy to reach everything! Iwan took a photo of it in
Banda with all the fresh vegies lying around and it looked
really sweet, really homey. I've hung it up on the fridge.
P: Back in Fremantle we decided not to put freezers in the ship.
Did we make the right decision?
J: Well, if we had freezers the generator would be running all
the time. I prefer the peace. Anyway, there's nothing to buy in
Indonesia that we could freeze.
P: What other limitations are there for you?
J: Stowage is a problem. Everything is in baskets so it can stay
on display when we are in museum mode. Those baskets are a
bastard to get anything out of at sea. I'm always treading on
people or dropping things on their heads, waking them up.
There's not much room either. When we left Broome we had stuff
spilling out of every available space. That was our last place
to stock up on cans and stuff. Probably should have used them
more judiciously in retrospect.
P: What are some hit recipes?
J: I've picked up some local dishes, like stir-fried kangkung
[local spinach] with shrimp paste. That goes over well. And
nasi-goreng and mee-goreng of course. We had a gado-gado the
other night. There was none of that left over. And green papaya
salad.
P: That was pretty yummy. What was in it?
J: Grated green papaya, fish sauce, lime juice, a bit of oil,
palm sugar, grated ginger and a couple of chopped chillies.
P: What about fish?
J: I thought we would be able to catch more fish. It's great
when we get some. I've tried making it into a green curry with
rice which people seem to like.
P: My favourite. So is the job anything like you expected?
J: It's about as hard as I thought it would be, but I just
couldn't imagine it before I started. I talked to other cooks on
sailing ships before we left, but you couldn't imagine it unless
you've done it.
P: Would you do a trip like this again?
J: [Laughs] Yes, but as deckhand, not as cook!
Peter Manthorpe
In Depth Interviewer
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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