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.

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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.