I am sbsolutely and positively sure that I'm the only person on the face of the Earth to post online in a food blog the picture of the galley of the Fearless-class patrol vessel (PV) of the Singapore Navy.  And yes, with a Man Utd clock to go with it too.  So what do you do when onboard the PV? Other than keeping the Singapore straits safe and secure so that everyone can swim at Siloso beach, play imported PSPs from Japan and sleep peacefully at night.  You can sleep, you can watch Little Nonya or you can, be crazy, and help the poor chef cook.

Ahoy! And welcome to a day in the life of a PV chef onboard RSS RESILIENCE.  You might have remembered my long ago entry on the LST (aka big big ship) chef.  But the life of a PV chef is somewhat different.  First of all, he works in space no bigger than your average toilet.  Secondly, he needs to cook for more than 30 people onboard.  Thirdly, there is only ONE chef.  And lastly, once in a while, he gets smartass officers like me who try to sneak in on his territory.  But Kang Wei, the featured chef below is the jolly sort who doesn't really mind.  No, he's not trying to say he needs a pair of kitchen scissors.  What he means is that two in the kitchen equals c.r.a.m.p.e.d.

But anyhow, I joined him for one of the days during one of our sailings to whip up some dinner for the crew.  The best thing was that I got to plan the menu (and didn't need to wash the dishes :)))) So below, we roasted some pork marinated with salt and pepper and sliced them.  Then we made some apple sauce using sliced apples and some honey and dried rosemary.  And combined the two.  Tada, one dish done.

Following that,  we got out some frozen prawns, peeled them and roasted them.  Then I mixed some raw chopped garlic with a generous serving of melted hot butter, threw in some chopped chinese parsley and then made our very own prawn salad.  Oh yes, don't forget to squeeze in a generous amounts of lime or lemon juice.  We used calamansi below.

And before we knew it, we had a bit of bad sea state.  No doubt chasing away some pirates.  So our photo for Kang Wei's wonderful roasted chicken got a bit screwed.  But I can tell you that his secret marinate included worcester sauce and honey.  All sold out!

And finally we ended with some staple.  Cooked some rice with a few tablespoons of turmeric powder.  Then cooked tomato puree over low heat till nice and thick.  Spooned in the sauce together with fried cashes and fried shallots.  Voila! Tomato rice on the high seas.

So typing this blog entry was the easy part.  We actually toiled for three hours in a 1m by 3m little space to produce all that food.  A nice little workout no doubt.  After that, it was back to bridge to keep watch with my box of yummy dinner.  But what I find most liberating about cooking onboard? You are not constrained by cost only by availability.  Usually the twin evils of cost and availability wreaks havoc on the aspiring gourmet chef but here you can use the food liberally.  Of course, until you load more rations, some particular types of rations will run out.  Chief among these are eggs which are highly prized commodities.  So let's say you want to cook chicken soup with vegetables, you open the fridge, see a few chickens, well, you can use all of them if you like.  So the soups are usually delicious onboard - in a big roaring pot with two whole chickens flavouring the broth. 

So there, another taste of navy life for you, the land lubbers out there.