Cooking up a storm aboard luxury yachts

GRUB'S UP: Chefs Stephen Smith, left, and Roger Wilde in the galley of the luxury charter yacht Yonder Star

Relevant offers

Food & Wine

Stopping in on an old (cafe) friend Cuisine celebrates milestone birthday Humble egg gets a star turn Corn stars in summer menus How do you find food that you'll like? Spice it up with savoury muffins Thinking outside the (lunch)box A healthy take on fish tacos Peach puddings a spicy delight What is the meatiest meat?

Tracy Neal finds out the secrets of cooking fine food when things are all at sea.

Those romantic images of people eating fine food on the deck of a luxury yacht never reveal the effort and sweat that goes into preparing it.

Nelson chefs Stephen Smith and Roger Wilde are among a select few who have managed to transfer the professional skills of a chef from the kitchen to the galley of a yacht.

Mr Smith is a freelance chef who divides his time between contracts on overseas superyachts and short-term contracts on Nelson luxury yacht Yonder Star, owned by Nelson businessman Tom Sturgess.

Mr Wilde, who with wife Anna runs a healthy-eating website and cooking classes using whole foods, is a personal chef to the yacht's owner and also mans the galley for functions on board Yonder Star.

The Nelson-based yacht is available for public charter for lunchtime or evening cocktail cruises, and longer journeys.

The focus is on providing fresh foods and beverages from the Nelson region, says Yonder Star Charters marketing and promotions manager Carolyn Church.

A third chef, Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology tutor Lynette Day, is called upon when needed.

Mr Smith says the main challenge for luxury boat chefs is provisioning for journeys longer than a week. Being able to cook freestyle and improvise is equally important, in the event that an ingredient might be missing from the yacht's stores.

To avoid that problem, the chefs do the shopping, so they know exactly what is available, but sometimes a specific request requires creative thinking.

"We have to meet guests' requirements, which vary from simple, fresh food to fine dining," says Mr Smith, who has been keen on cooking since he was a teenager and trained as a chef in Europe.

"Each charter is different, and so you have to be flexible."

Once, he was the chef for a European couple on honeymoon in the Pacific, and all the young bride required was simple soup and crackers to maintain her model figure. It can be that simple, to needing to come up with a full degustation buffet.

"You have to have the ability to make anything people want – health food to indulgent French reductions," Mr Smith says.

For that reason, and the fact that luxury yacht chefs have to work in an environment that's often on an angle, he likes to prepare the more complicated sauces and reductions ahead of time.

Mr Wilde says people often expect seafood, so he uses the on-board barbecue a lot.

"People like to see their food being prepared, and I tend to do scallops, scampi, calamari and asparagus in season – things that are easy to do up there on the deck."

Mr Smith has come up with a crucial space saver with his online recipe service, theworldrecipebook.com, which avoids the need for him and others in the industry to carry bulky recipe books on board.

"I started the website because you can't take recipe books away, and it means they're available 24/7, wherever I might be."

Other chefs use the site to store their recipes or to search out treasured recipes from around the world.

- © Fairfax NZ News