Behind me we've got a lot of thunder, in front I 'v seen lightning...
We've been given a whole load of cumi-cumi, and we're going to prepare it. Now we
have never done this before... What's more worrying is we've got one of
these fishing attraction devices very close to us, he has moved it, but he's
moved it closer.
We're about halfway through our trip in the Anambas islands
of Indonesia, and we thought we'd take this opportunity to talk to camera just
a little bit more about the Anambas, just to fill you in on some details, and
our observations so far. But first, in case you missed it, this is where we left
you last...
The thing that sticks in my memory... Just saying Anambas to me, I see two things
immediately. I see incredible crystal clear blue blue water, and I see
incredible smiling faces. It's still fairly untouched, or rather
uncharted in terms of mass tourism. The infrastructure isn't there yet to
support any kind of mass tourism. You know even if you could get a little...
(you've seen the little boats that run people around between the islands)
...there's nowhere to stay on most of the islands. So this is obviously a
good thing for us as cruisers, because we're going to a lot of unspoiled places.
Who knows what the locals think about it you. Maybe they would like
to have the tourism dollar, maybe they wouldn't, you know? I don't know because
we don't know how much they know of what's out there. For instance you look
at this and you look at Thailand and I guess this is what, Anambas is what Thailand
looked like 30 years ago 40 years ago? They had no idea what was about to hit
them. And I just hope it doesn't really spoil it for them, but they get something
out of it. The other thing that occurs to us, going through the episodes, is that
every episode has been quite different. They've been... there is a lot to
do whilst we're there. I had my worries it
was just going to be beautiful drone shots and some underwater stuff, but
every episode is different because every island is different. And in this episode
we are approaching a new anchorage and we have a bit of rough weather, and I think
we probably won't get it in this week's episode, but in next week's episode we
actually go aboard one of those FADs, the floating fish attraction devices.
We get friendly with some more local people who happen to be some young fishermen.
Yeah, so keep watching! 🦑
Well, there's a little bit of serendipity for you. I was thinking today, because
it's quite windy and overcast, I thought we'd go over and have a look at some of
these FADs, these fish attraction devices, these are the floating
platforms that you see all over Indonesia, it's famous for it. Anyway I
figured that because it was overcast we'd go over and invite ourselves on
board one of them, just go and have a look around and show you what they're
all about. Lo and behold, a local boat just came up
alongside, tied up along Esper, and have just given us a bag of cumi-cumi which
is squid! So they've just given us some fresh squid! And it turns out they are the
guys that live on the FADs over there. So I said that we'd go over in a little
bit with the camera. Go and have a chat with them and see what their set-up
is all about. Meanwhile someone is very happy. Oi Millie! Young lady! You cheeky girl!
So we were going to go over and see our new friends on their FAD over there.
But we've got weather. And we've got weather behind you, there. Behind me
we've got a lot of thunder. In front I've seen lightning.... and we've swung round,
we're kind of north-northeast now. And the sea state has picked up. We've got
white horses. But we've got a lot of land around us, protecting us from any swells,
so that's a good thing. Now the only thing I'm a little but thinking about is
wind spouts. When we first around arrived in the Anambas we saw a wind spout in these
sort of conditions, and our friends next door,
Helane and Peter, they saw one two days ago. So obviously it's something that
occurs around here. There's nothing we can do. We are in a bay at anchor, so all
we can do is just bring anything that might fly off down below, which is what we're doing right now.
We seem to be having storms from two directions. It's very
very strange and I can't quite work it all out, but at the moment we're
now facing the other way... But what's more worrying is we've got one of
these fish attraction devices very close to us. He has moved it but he's moved
it closer! So we're keeping a careful eye on it. And that's why we're dressed like this,
just in case we need to take the anchor up if we decide to move.
So we decided to move
because that FAD was getting closer and closer to us. We had 45 metres of
chain out. By the time we got the anchor up we were five, six, seven meters
away from it. So we've literally just moved and we're now about 150 metres away.
Liz is now dumping the anchor, so we're a bit further out. This is where we are.
That's the weather.
That's the FAD.
There's Helane and Peter.
Horrible... It's horrible...
Yesterday this was one of the most beautiful anchorages we've ever seen. Today it's not quite so nice.
Yeah we've moved out, we feel a little bit safer here.
Just hope this bloody rain finishes soon. And I'm gonna go and have a whisky now...
So you really don't want to get caught up in one of those FADs, there's a lot of
gear there to wrap your anchor chain around. The the guys had actually already
been out in their boats. So what they tend to do is they use their boats to
manoeuvre them into position. They're tied off on long lines.
That one in particular had a very long line so when the tide turned yesterday it swung round
about 200 metres or so. Right now there's a lot of activity in the water, there's
quite a few boats out there, they're all kind of helping each other out. The guys
that we were going to go and see over there have remained absolutely
motionless, barely moved because they're in a tiny little cove. Whereas these guys
are exposed and as Liz was explaining we've had weather coming from the
northwest (she said northeast but it's actually northwest). Also from the south we've had
two fronts kind of colliding. So we've got the waves coming in this way, and then we've
got the wind and the rain coming in this way from the south. So it caused a
bit of a confused sea state. Anyway with we've re-anchored. We've actually re-anchored
behind the FAD, directly behind it, but they are now a good 300 meters away or so.
We're hoping that... I think the weather is... well it's not abating at all, actually....
It's still sh!t, it's still p!ssing with rain... And it's still a bit windy.
You can see them now...
And just to show you that we weren't exaggerating... the blob there is the FAD.
And you see where it says 644, that is where we were anchored. So you can see it's actually
moved, and they have definitely dragged along because they were down here so
they've dragged up there now.
We are now anchored up here, so let's just hope it doesn't move any more.
OK, so we've been given a whole load of cumi-cumi, which is Indonesian for
squid. And we're going to prepare it. Now we have never done this before,
but we've talked about this book many many times, the Cruising Chef's Cookbook.
It's one of the most used books on the boat, and this guy Michael Greenwald
actually gives a very good description as to how to prepare squid. It's pretty
straightforward having just done one, so I'm going to show you how we do it.
The first thing he says is to take off the outer skin. You can see that the
squid is actually an orange color, and the skin comes off. What's interesting
though is that the other week when we had squid in the restaurant it was red,
so I think the locals actually keep the skin on. They also keep the cuttlebone -
which is the one bone inside a squid - in the squid that we had the other week.
It seems as if we're doing more preparation than the locals...
Anyway this skin comes off quite easily, peels off nice and easy like that.
Then we have his head and his tentacles. What we do is, we cut just here
and we save the tentacles.
Cut it just by the eyes like so, and then there is his little beak which is this
bit here, which we don't want. So we take out the beak, we save the tentacles and
then we pull out his innards. Now you can see that there's all this lovely black
ink, and some recipes actually call for the ink to stay in the squid. Some people
cook with the black ink. It does have a bit of a flavor. Then inside here we
have his one bone, the cuttlebone which comes out fairly easily. There we go.
So it's this hard plasticlike bone. And we take that out and that is pretty much
our squid. Obviously we need to clean it as well, and so I'm going to work my way
through all of these. We've got about (I don't know) 20 in here, including a rather
big one! And according to the Cruising Chef's
Cookbook the bigger ones you are supposed to beat a little because
they're gonna be a little bit harder. One of the things I love about squid is how
tasty it is. It is fast becoming one of my favorite dishes. I think the problem
in, certainly for us in the UK, traditionally when we think of
squid we always think of calamari, and quite often squid when it's
overcooked or if it's not fresh can be quite chewy. So I think a lot of
Brits when they think of squid think of chewy calamari. I like to think of our
tastes in the UK being rather more sophisticated than they were 20-30 years
ago, but that's really my only experience of squid traditionally. I have
to say having now sampled some of the squid in Southeast Asia it is extremely
tender, very flavorsome, and as you can see pretty easy to prepare.
Preparation done. There we go, that's what we're going to be eating.
That is what we are not going to be eating, these are the innards and you can
see all that black ink. And this is the cuttlebone from the biggest squid.
You can see it's pretty big and we've decided that Liz is going to use this
for fish bait for fishing. So now we're going to prepare some onions and garlic
and capers, fry it up a bit and stuff the squid with them.
So fried up some onions and garlic and found the capers. So I've added the capers, but I'm not convinced
that this is going to be enough substance to stuff all of our squid.
I've got last night's pasta leftover which I've added a bit of olive oil to
and I've completely mashed it up. And actually on a few occasions when we have
eaten it out and had squid, they quite often will stuff it with something.
We've not quite worked out what it is, possibly a rice flour, but anyway
that will give it a little bit of substance and a bit more flavor.
How is it? It's really good! Squid straight from the fishing boat,
into the pan with some Jamie Furlong stuffing... and I love it!
Utterly delicious. It's melt in your mouth creamy, tasty...
And the filling is just perfect. I feel really nicely warmed by this weather...
Might have a nap...