Turning quarantine craziness into fun

from Triton Fall/Winter 2020 Vol. 17 No. 2

Putting yachting to good use

By Lucy Chabot Reed

Chef Brennan Dates has created Quarantine Kitchen, short videos of anything food related that he feels like discussing – except recipes – while riding out a 50-plus-day charter in which neither the yacht’s crew nor guests will touch land.

While yacht chefs likely already know much of what Dates emparts, plenty of crew and normal people who want to learn from a chef can find humorous and useful advice.

“I realized that I had an opportunity to help friends and family cook that might not have any idea how to,” he said mid charter earlier this summer. “What I had no idea of was how fun it would be to connect with everyone in a lockdown.”

The videos are short, somewhat sassy, and often call on Dates’ sidekick, Patrick, the yacht’s second chef. A recent video discussed how to use a steel to hone knife edges.

“This is a steel,” Dates says, holding the steel up to the camera. “This is not a sharpener. I know you want it to be a sharpener, but it's not. It doesn't sharpen your knife, it hones your knife.”

Quarantine Kitchen, Stuck on a Superyacht, includes more than 30 videos, and they ended when the charter ended.

Several focused on his sourdough starter, comparing it to one Patrick had also begun. Through the course of those videos, the viewer can follow as the starter grows, is fed, and ultimately creates several beautiful loaves of sourdough bread.

Dates was one of three finalists for the 2020 Acrew Best Chef award, which was scheduled to be announced Nov. 28 in Barcelona.

Find the links to Dates’ Quarantine Kitchen videos on his social media channels on Facebook and Instagram under “Olive Oil and Gasoline”.

Lucy Chabot Reed is editor/publisher of The Triton. Comments are welcome at lucy@the-triton.com.

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