con­tin­ued adven­tures in the shires…

Before I devote myself to the con­tin­u­a­tion of our Wilt­shire sto­ry (ponies!), I must tell you that not only is today the UK Gen­er­al Elec­tion, in which we’ll get a new Prime Min­is­ter, but also tomor­row is the 65th anniver­sary of VE Day, Vic­to­ry in Europe Day, and as such, I’ve been read­ing sev­er­al books that I would rec­om­mend to any­one even remote­ly inter­est­ed in the Sec­ond World War. I con­fess it’s the peri­od in his­to­ry that inter­ests me more than any oth­er, part­ly because it still feels present here in Lon­don (in Amer­i­ca we’re not accus­tomed, for exam­ple, to walk­ing past build­ings with pock­marks labelled as war dam­age). But also we’ve been watch­ing “The Pacif­ic”, the nom­i­nal sequel to “Band of Broth­ers,” not so much as enter­tain­ment, I must say (hideous­ly vio­lent and depress­ing), but as a trib­ute of appre­ci­a­tion to the sol­diers who lived through such horrors.

I offer you Cit­i­zens of Lon­don, a fas­ci­nat­ing account of sev­er­al famous Amer­i­cans who chose to stay in Lon­don dur­ing the Blitz… and Amer­i­cans in Paris, the same sto­ry in that belea­guered, occu­pied city. But per­haps even more over­whelm­ing have been In Mem­o­ry’s Kitchen, a cook­book (imag­ine) writ­ten by Czech ladies in a con­cen­tra­tion camp out­side Prague. A COOK­BOOK writ­ten by starv­ing ladies. And In My Hands, the sto­ry of a Pol­ish teenag­er who became a Holo­caust res­cuer. You will cry with hor­ri­fied sym­pa­thy, you will wish you could meet these peo­ple, express your grat­i­tude, you will look around you at the rich­es and free­dom we have and see the tiny, thin, wav­ery line that sep­a­rates nor­mal life from unbe­liev­able suf­fer­ing. All worth the read. And thank you to my friends Anne, Bina, and Alyssa, who made these heart­break­ing, enrich­ing books known to me.

Hap­py VE Day.

Well, I felt I could­n’t leave you all with the last post, the sto­ry of our adven­tures at Sal­is­bury Cathe­dral, with­out some mar­vel­lous pho­tos of those times, those views, those places. We were up SO HIGH! I can’t explain exact­ly what hap­pened to me in Sal­is­bury — was it lack of oxy­gen? — but it con­tained for me a sort of mag­ic, a cocoon of safe­ty, kind­ness, his­tor­i­cal fas­ci­na­tion and peace that will stay with me always. I can’t sing enough the prais­es of the Land­mark Trust, and I hope you will spend your next hol­i­day in one: to be enveloped in a prop­er­ty who exists for us only because some very far-see­ing bril­liant archae­ol­o­gists and archi­tects decid­ed to save it, to be sur­round­ed by its his­to­ry, to find in each and every house the most min­i­mal but per­fect fur­nish­ings, always quite the same in each one, to read and write in the exten­sive Log Books… to fol­low in some places 30 years of vis­i­tors and their sto­ries! Go, do, and write your sto­ry. I have passed the reins of this job to Avery.

And now for some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent: my cur­rent obses­sion with… teriya­ki sauce. Now, before you jump down my throat, I am ful­ly aware the “terikya­ki” is a method of grilling meats, and does not refer to any spe­cif­ic sauce. In this, I think it shares space with the West­ern con­cept of “satay sauce,” because “satay” real­ly refers to the skew­er method of cook­ing, but we all think it means a peanut sauce.

My point is, drop your skep­ti­cism for a bit and imag­ine what you think of as “teriya­ki sauce.” You know what I mean: dark, salty, spicy, sticky. I know. That’s what I mean, too. And here it is.

Teriya­ki Sauce
(you arrange the amounts, I’m giv­ing the proportions)

2 parts dark soy sauce
1 part Japan­ese mirin
1 part honey
1/2 part sesame oil
zest and juice of limes
fresh grat­ed gin­ger (to taste)
fresh minced gar­lic (to taste)

So imag­ine you want to make enough of this sauce to coat fil­lets of salmon for four. That’s what I typ­i­cal­ly make.

You will want 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup mirin, 1/4 cup hon­ey, 1/8 cup (just a driz­zle, in short) sesame oil, the zest and juice of 1 lime, and a 2‑inch knob of gin­ger, peeled and grat­ed, and 2 cloves gar­lic, minced.

Mix all in a saucepan and sim­mer till the sauce bub­bles like a tof­fee, per­haps 3 minutes.

Cool and pour over the salmon fil­let, then bake at 425F, 210 C for 20 minutes.

*******************

Believe me when I tell you that this sauce is DIVINE. Sim­ple, whole­some, spicy, sticky. Try it on chick­en thighs and breast fil­lets, which you can then saute in a fry­ing pan. For a veg­e­tar­i­an meal, you can eas­i­ly toss steamed broc­coli, pep­pers, cau­li­flower, baked squash, in the sauce and serve with rice. Sub­lime. Make it.

But back to Wilt­shire. At least, it’s strict­ly speak­ing Hampshire.

The New For­est! It’s a pro­tect­ed area much like Exmoor or Dart­moor, with ponies stand­ing by the side of the road, and in the hillocky areas in park­land. Big ponies and small, brown, black and white, as you see: sim­ply there for the pet­ting! Well, actu­al­ly we were told off by a park work­er who at first claimed we might be bit­ten, then once Avery’s extreme eques­tri­an expe­ri­ence was made known, said that pet­ting them encour­aged them to demand pet­ting! And what’s wrong with that! John’s mom was the per­fect paparraz­za, fol­low­ing Avery every­where to get the best pos­si­ble shot. We repaired then to near­by Lyn­d­hurst for a piz­za lunch at Prez­zo, love­ly and relax­ing in the garden.

Oh, the adven­tures we had. Back to town final­ly where the vol­cano hit and forced us into tourist des­ti­na­tions FAR off the beat­en path (plus Avery bliss­ful­ly shop­ping in Regent Street! did you ever see such a hap­py shop­ping face!), and my own per­son­al ambi­tion to cook some­thing dif­fer­ent for EVERY night of John’s moth­er’s stay, which by the end was approach­ing the four-week mark! But I did it. And now I just notice how often I repeat things, our favorites like… teriya­ki salmon.

Qui­et reigns here tonight, then, and elec­tion cov­er­age is begin­ning NOW. So I shall love you and leave you, and tomor­row, we have a new Prime Minister.