What Captain Cook fed his sailors, and other notes for April 21, 2015.

Captain Cook painting at the Captain Cook hotel, copied from the original painted by Nathaniel Dance in 1776.

We spent a little time with Captain Cook today. As part of its Anchorage Centennial celebrations, the Anchorage Museum has a special show, "Arctic Ambitions," about his travels in the Arctic, and especially Alaska, aboard the Resolution and the Discovery. We didn't see a lot of it because time was short, but the display about scurvy and the discussion inspired me to write a bit about wheat and sea voyages in Cook's days.

The entrance to the exhibit.


A major part of sailors' diets for many centuries has been hard tack (tack" being the word for food) or ship's biscuit. It is wheat flour mixed with a little salt and water, shaped (usually into flat squares), and baked several hours until thoroughly dried out. Sometimes it is baked twice to insure dryness. To eat it without losing teeth, sailors dipped it into broth, tea, beer, or whatever was handy. It could be ground into crumbs, mixed with fat and maybe raisins, and baked to make a cake. Or the crumbs could be combined with a little meat and fried in oil. Nauticapedia has more information, including some of the less savory aspects of hardtack.



Hardtack from the Civil War, probably very similar to that eaten by British sailors a century earlier. Holes were punched in before baking, to allow the moisture to escape while it cooked.

At a time when more sailors were lost to scurvy than to battles, none of Cook's sailors ever died of it.. He carried sauerkraut -- pickled cabbage -- because it could be stored, and it retained a small amount of vitamin C.  He bought fresh fruits and vegetables when the ships were in port. He also provided malted barley in the belief that it provided Vitamin C [a digression here -- to make malt, sprout the barley (or other grain), then dry the sprouts with hot air. Then dry it more, then crack it, then put it into heated water to extract the sugars, then concentrate the mash by evaporating the water. At this point (if I'm understanding the descriptions of the process correctly) it's called "wort," and is sweet and syrupy]. It had been cooked and processed thoroughly so that most of the Vitamin C was destroyed, and  as a result was useless against scurvy, but probably tasted better than much else in the sailors' diet.



Barley before it's malted.

Captain Cook and the officers aboard the Resolution and the Discovery typically did not eat hardtack. They had cooks who baked fresh breads, pies, tarts, and cakes. Bakers ashore produced several kinds of crackers that were stored on the ships. These were flour, water, and salt, plus shortening, which made them much tastier than hard tack.  Several of them  --  Carr's "Table water crackers," and cream crackers -- are popular today.



Cream cracker.

Besides hardtack and bread, the sailors ate preserved meats, some fresh meat from animals that they carried on board, fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats that they acquired when they found land, and of course alcoholic beverages -- beer or ale, rum, and wine for the officers.


To round out our Cook's tour for the afternoon, we stopped by the Captain Cook hotel.

Wally Hickel's coat of arms for the Captain Cook hotel, the polar bear for the north and the penguin for the southern extent of Cook's voyages.

We walked through Resolution Park, with its replica of the original statue of Captain Cook in Whitby, England  where Cook lived for part of his life. The same statute is also in Australia (Alaska Dispatch News article).

Captain Cook looks out over Cook Inlet, and a bit west, to Turnagain Arm. He sailed up the Arm looking for the Northwest Passage, but was forced to "turn again."

Below the park, a driftwood log lies on the mud flats at low tide.

In the morning, snow powdered our back yard, but by afternoon, the day turned pleasant and sunny.

Along the Coastal Trail, moms and kids make way for a flock of men on Segways.

Tulips in bud at the State Farm office on Sixth Avenue across from the Museum.

Kirsten and Mandy Dixon Live at the Anchorage Museum

Tutka Bay and the Tutka Bay Lodge



How to spend a pleasant hour: listen to Kirsten and Mandy Dixon demonstrate how to make Alaska Pasta Carbonara at the Anchorage Museum. I went this evening to watch them cook for a small group of people, who took time out on a Thursday evening for food tips from two of Alaska's world-renowned chefs. The room on the fourth floor of the museum was scented with shallots sauteeing in butter, and the subtleness of fresh pasta boiling briefly. For nibbling ,while watching the demo, the Dixons provided little bites of bread with their smoked salmon with cardamom dip from Riversong Lodge Cookbook.

Smoked salmon-cardamom dip appetizers greeted guests at the Anchorage Museum cooking lesson.

 At the end, guests at the free event sampled small plates of fresh fettucine topped with a creamy miso sauce, salmon bacon, and shaved bites of hard cheese.

Alaskan Salmon Carbonara with fresh herbed fettucine.

I don't have a recipe for this specific dish for you, but here are recipes for the home-made pasta layered with fresh herbs, and the salmon bacon,. A creamy miso sauce is in Kirsten and Mandy's newest cookbook, The Tutka Bay Lodge Cookbook, at page 160.


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The Tutka Bay Lodge Cookbook

Kirsten discusses influences on Alaska cuisine.


The foods that Alaskans harvest -- the salmon, halibut and other seafoods, the vegetables that thrive in Alaska's summers, the sea plants, and the wild foods that can be foraged all affect what we cook. Styles and flavors have come from Alaska Natives, Russia, Eastern Asia, Scandinavia, and the Gold Rushers and early miners. The sample dish that the Dixons prepared -- salmon bacon, miso sauce, fresh pasta with herbs -- combined many of those influences into distinctly Alaskan tastes and textures.

Mandy breaks eggs for the pasta dough.


Kirsten and Mandy shared dozens of cooking tips with us:

• Use unsalted butter, because it's always fresher.

Ingredients and tools -- rolling pin, miso paste, shallots, unsalted butter.

• Make sure that you're getting extra virgin olive oil from a reliable source. They mentioned that Costco glass bottles of olive oil with the Kirkland label fit that description.

Kirkland extra-virgin olive oil. Mandy rolling out the pasta layered with fresh herbs.

• Make the pasta recipe with gluten-free flour, if desired. They recommended a mix developed by a friend called "Cup-4-Cup," available in stores around Anchorage.

• For the demo cooking, they used lightweight, butane-fueled burners that are available at Asian stores in town. Mandy noted that they're very handy for warming a soup to serve when you're outside grilling other foods, and for a variety of purposes.

Butane-fueled lightweight portable burners, with pasta water on one, and miso sauce on the other.

•  Use heavy stainless steel pans, and wooden cutting boards rather than plastic. They are easier to clean, and work well for both cutting and rolling.

The miso sauce. 

• Kirsten suggested that the sauce should be drizzled over the pasta rather than mixed into it because the fresh pasta will soak up too much and become soggy.

The salmon bacon -- slices of smoked salmon lox, brushed with a rhubarb glaze, and baked for a few minutes until crisp.

The fresh pasta with herb layer.

• Mandy rolled out one layer of pasta, spread fresh parsley, sage and other herbs on it, set another layer of pasta on top, and rolled it all through the hand-cranked pasta machine, before slicing it for fettucine.

The final dish -- herbed fresh fettucine, drizzled with creamy miso sauce, garnished with salmon bacon, fresh herbs, and shaved hard cheese.



Mandy runs La Baleine Cafe on the Homer Spit in the summer, and the Dixon family owns two wilderness lodges, described at Within the Wild.  They offer cooking classes, days and weekends, at the Tutka Bay Lodge.


Tutka Bay Cooking School, inside an old boat next to the lodge.