On the return ferry
A day of eating on the return ferry, and eating notes from nine breakfasts
Hello! My name is Rebecca May Johnson, I am a writer and cook and this is my Substack. This week’s newsletter is about eating on the return journey from the Netherlands to Essex. With eating notes - nine recent breakfast trays.
On the return ferry
A different system in the canteen at lunch. I ponder the logic: you now order at the till located at the end of the canteen tray highway. They give you a number and then you sit down at your table and wait. On on the evening trip over it was a typical canteen set up where you slide your tray along in front of the food on display and are then handed a hot dish. The new system makes the ordering more abstract and stressful – to order by looking at a menu overhead, unable able to see and smell the offerings. It is significantly less pleasurable. There is no explanation given for the new system, which defies the architecture of the canteen. We stand queuing next to the redundant tray highway, display counters empty of food, bored and with nothing to look at – and worse, anxiously contemplating the delay to our gratification. Who knows when the food will arrive? Perhaps it is a measure to deal with staff shortages. This is a daytime ferry, before it was the evening.
I order for us both – Sam requests something not-too-much, something to share. I choose bean chilli which is a smallish portion, and a salad with chicken, and take a number to display on the table.
The dishes arrive at our table. I wave at the server when I see him at a distance carrying the food on a tray, mad keen. He laughs at me. The bean chilli is garnished with slices of avocado and fresh red chilli, and a side of bread. The salad has slices of warm seasoned chicken thigh, chickpeas, tomatoes, lots of lettuce, cucumbers, and a yogurt mint dressing. I upend the bowl of salad onto the plate and toss it. The chilli is flavoured with whole spices and is well seasoned. The garnish goes well, and the avocado is ripe. The chicken is not only warm, but also moist and the tomatoes are ripe and none of the salad leaves are bad or even bruised. The garnishes and detail on the dishes on the ferry are excellent and it tastes fresh. It could so easily have been refrigerated. Both dishes are better than they need to be.
After lunch I go for a hot chocolate at a café bar in a different area of the ship, but the man behind the counter keeps calling me ‘beautiful lady’ and saying ‘beautiful lady…I am going to make you a very special hot chocolate for a beautiful lady. The he tells his colleague what he is doing, and they say, ooh, with Baileys? with Baileys? and then I say no thanks. Then he tells me his name, then his colleague says no, his name is ‘Mr Complaint’ and laughs, and I am unsure whether it means people complain about his advances or whether he complains about work. I decide probably the latter, fair enough. I tell him my name, which seems necessary. This type of interaction hasn’t happened to me in a while, I am still no good at knowing what to say, how to not say my name.
Later, I walk past a man eating Bitterballen at a table in one of the many casual seating areas. I had seen someone eating them on the way over to the Netherlands but could not spot them in the canteen and was mystified. The man says to ask at the bar (a different bar from the hot chocolate, which I am now avoiding). So I order some as a pre-dinner snack with Dutch mustard and beers.
Final note: always ask for cream. At tea time I get a slice of apple pie from the canteen, I ask the man behind the till of there’s cream and he produces a big can of squirty cream that had not been on display and puts a generous heap on the side. Tea and coffee, lots of apples in the pie, flaked almonds on top, not too sweet.
Ferry meals on Sunday 2 July – all dishes are shared
12.30 bean chilli with avocado
chicken salad
1pm hot chocolate
4pm apple tart + cream
tea and coffee
6pm 6 bitterballen + mustard
2 beers
7pm chicken soup + roll
fries – sachets of mayonnaise, ketchup and sambal oelek
spinach and ricotta cannelloni with tomato sauce
fruit salad
beer and water
We eat the chicken soup at dinner with a five-spoon-each-system which originated on the train from Berlin to Amsterdam. On the train journey – which was over seven hours long – the card machine in the cafeteria was broken! We had €7,20. I said to the man what can I buy for €7,20 and he said coconut soup. Which came with a roll. We passed the bowl between us, taking five spoons each and also dipping our half of the roll into the soup. We applied the same principle to the chicken noodle soup on the ferry.
Eating Notes
Nine recent breakfast trays.
Tomatoes with bay leaves, poached eggs on toast and toast with myrtle jam. Coffee and hot sauce.
Fried egg in a brioche roll with ketchup and Louisiana hot sauce. Strawberries and Greek yogurt. Coffee.
Chard and creme fraiche omelette in a brioche bun. Coffee. A few strawberries. Coffee.
Poached eggs on english muffins. Strawberries and greek yogurt. Coffee.
Pitta breads with thin layers of egg pancake. Avocado, tomato and olive oil and salt. Yogurt with raspberries and strawberries. Coffee.
Egg fried with butter and sage leaves on toast. Louisiana hot sauce. Myrtle jam on toast. Coffee.
Poached eggs on toast and myrtle jam on toast. Coffee.
Sliced avocado on toast with olive oil. Cholula hot sauce. Myrtle jam on toast.
Bagel with cream cheese, bagel with scrambled egg and bacon, bagel with butter. Blueberries, raspberry and strawberry with greek yogurt. Carrot orange and ginger juice. Coffee.
News and Events
I am speaking to Nyla Ahmad at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 17th August – tickets here – https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/rebecca-may-johnson-kitchen-confessional
My UK paperback will be published on 1 September, with a new afterword and recipes. Tour details coming soon…!