Rainbows, recipes and trucks :-)

Well that’s it, the last full week on board the MV Loch Striven is over with, still got half a shift to work before I head sowf but that won’t take long in going by. Same goes for this ‘rest week’ as I’m away tomorrow for ‘confined space training’ down in Linwood on Thursday Still it’s far better than trekking down to Hull for it, nothing against that once thriving port and birthplace (well just next door at Hessle) of the good ship Loch Striven but it is rather a long way to go for a one day course, which is what my ‘back to back’ did.

It’s been a little thin on the ground here of late but wifey just got back on Saturday and wasnae feeling great, boy got back on Friday and wasnae great, and me, well I’ve just been plain ***********  

Don’t ask me what the weather has been doing since Sunday as we seem to have had all four seasons since then, sometimes, like today within a few hours.

The red glow of a ‘sailors warning’ on Monday morning came to naught other than blustery showers

 

though they never appeared until after I’d had a pleasant run into work. The shepherds of the North Raasay Sheep Stock Club having been busy separating lambs judging by the amount of ewes hanging around this little corner at Glame. They’ll soon loose interest as the new tups start sniffing around

 

A little further down the road at that beautiful little corner of Raasay that is Oscaig the silage cutting had not quite been finished and the machinery awaited a little dry spell.

Gourock chicken supreme

Once on the ferry we got on with the serious business of keeping the wheels of commerce turning between Skye and Raasay

 

the first six of which belonged to Ross Sutherland’s Scania.

On the back of which was the largest rock breaker I’ve ever seen, no doubt for the 23ton Cat at the water treatment plant

There was other stuff got done, quite a lot in fact but I don’t remember much about it   What I do recall was the immense dish that ‘the man from Gourock’ served up, just wish I’d have paid more attention. We’ve been kind of taking it in turns to cook, I did the frittata, he did the fishy pasta which I countered with the cep dish to which he responded with this ‘Gourock chicken supreme’.

I was kinda busy so wasn’t taking it all in but he started by getting a full free range chicken, stuffing garlic (lots of garlic) under the skin and roasting it, pulling it out, removing the tinfoil, basting it then roasting it some more. Now that to me would have been just peachy served with a few roast spuds and veg but not ‘TMFG’, no he produced this masterpiece.

 

It was ************* delicious and had a few surprises in it like peanut butter and tomato ketchup!!!!!

I just didn’t know how I was going to follow that after the ‘cordon bleu’ fest of the previous week, I mean chilli, scallops, cep mushrooms, roast chicken, chorizo, what could I possibly make Funny enough, just as I was perusing this very dilemma a man turned up with the answer

 

With five brown crabs at the peak of their condition and a huge lithe (pollock) donated by a local fisherman, the world is your oyster so to speak

I’d no idea what I was going to do with them as TMFG doesn’t actually like fish but I cooked the crab and filleted the pollock anyway. The secret with cooking any shellfish is ‘volume and seawater’, the larger the pan the better and if you’re on a boat then half fill the pan with seawater instead of messing around with salt. To be honest I think that’s a good bit of the ‘secret’ real water with no chlorine and natural salt, obviously in Manchester or Colorado it’s not an option but if you are anywhere near ‘the briny’ use it

The bigger the pan then the less the temperature will drop when you drop something in it, so the quicker it will return to the boil, and that is the secret. You need to cook shellfish ‘hot and quick’ or it turns to 5h1t These bonny cock crabs got dunked in a 50/50 mixture of tap and seawater that was boiling like mad, then as soon as the water returned to the boil they were removed and left to cool. Prawns and squat lobsters  would get similar treatment but would be run under a cold tap rather than left to cool.

Mexican desert crab

That was it really for Monday,

I drove home past 24 tons of ‘ArJay’s’ Cat323E at the water treatment works and went to my bed at 20:30

Tuesday didn’t have Monday’s sky but was much the same

only with a cruise ship

 

and some blurred hinds ‘legging it’ up the road at Tarbert.

Eventually I reached my destination in a blaze of colour

 

or should I say colours, over both the Arduish and Loch Striven

 

Even the ‘wee dug’ was impressed

Sunshine and showers just about summed up the day.

And I’ll finish this off later

3:30 am

Well, it’s much later now, I fell asleep and awoke with a splitting headache on account of several rather large glasses of rum So several paracetamol  and five hours later I’ll give it another go

Awaiting us at Sconser was 18m of commercial in the shape of this fine Volvo belonging to Highland Distribution and loaded with several tons of steel reinforcing bar for the water treatment plant.

 

Followed shortly afterwards by ‘Arjays’ Scania carrying security fencing, most important

In between all the traffic and finishing off the weeks work yours truly got on with the seafood extravaganza.

 

This bonny cock crab being covered in ‘Black spot’ http://www.int-res.com/articles/dao/35/d035p081.pdf an unpleasant looking condition that affects the shell and not the meat. When I fished for crab this would have been rejected by the buyers but it’s purely because of its appearance, it has no effect on the quality of what’s inside.

 

As the ‘Man from Gourock’ didn’t actually like crab very much I set about disguising it once all the white and dark meat was removed from the shell. There’s a lot of work in preparing crab and many folk keep the two types of meat separate, not me, I love the strong flavour of the darker stuff from inside the carapace. Normally I’d just mix the two and give it a squirt of lemon, perhaps some mayonnaise and breadcrumbs if I was short. However I had to come up with something different for my mate with his aversion to shellfish.

Lots of mayo was the first move followed by one ‘Weetabix’ crumbled into it then a good dash of curry powder, pepper and lemon juice.

 

Served with tacos, a salad and some chilli beans it was divine, though the cheese didn’t really do it justice and some tomatoes would have helped, as would guacamole but hey, this is a ship and we were at sea

 Happy anniversary Anne and Chalky

An unusual request from a customer

 

which we gladly complied with was to deliver flowers and a card to celebrated Gaelic singer and actress Ann Martin

who was married here 20 years ago today (well yesterday)

 

 

The twelve cats and kittens caught by the http://www.cats.org.uk/ on Sunday arrived back minus their reproductive organs This lot being just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of what is rapidly becoming a problem here on Raasay. These came from Eyre but there are many more that need dealing with before there is a real explosion in their numbers.

 

Eventually my relief arrived and I headed home

 

to yet more rainbows

loads of them in the frequent and heavy showers.

The hens got fed

 

and now I’m off to bed