RED, GREEN, AND WHITE WEATHER

In the part of the Netherlands where we used to live after moving there when I was two years old, it is presently fifteen degrees hotter than here in San Francisco. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not there now. I cannot deal well with heat. What with being an Arctic lizard.

According to many Americans, who are all experts, there is no such thing as climate change. And by that logic the Dutch must have seized the East Indies during the colonial age because it reminded them so much of home.

Being of mostly Dutch ancestry, I can attest to that.


My ancestors, having moved to New Amsterdam back in the sixteen hundreds, were a very different breed. Remember that famous painting The Hunters in the Snow (Dutch: Jagers in de Sneeuw) by Pieter Brueghel (a fellow Brabander, but from Breda) which depicts several gentlemen strolling through a bosky undulating winter landscape? That was what the New Netherlands (New York and New Jersey) were like before the English took over in 1664.
And then made a right mess of it.

Which (indirectly) caused Trump.

Anyhow, I expect that many Dutchmen will be celebrating their warm tropical Autumn with Indonesian food, because it is much too hot to cook at home and one might as well go to a restaurant to eat Babi Ketjap or Bebek Panggang while singing sea shanties about taking over someone else's territory. Violently.

That is something I too would like to do, but it is presently only 68°F (20°Celsius) here, so in no way conducive to fits of madness, OR intense discomfort due to peripheral artery disease (perifere vaatziekte, penyakit arteri periferi), and there are very few Indonesian restaurants in the city. So, given that it is by no means too hot to cook, I might actually make something very close to babi ketjap: hong shao rou (紅燒肉 'hung siu yiuk'; red braised pork).

Big chunks of belly pork, nice and fatty, first gilded and blanched (to colour them and drain some of the fat), then slow-simmered in water with a jigger of dark soy sauce, a dash of sherry or rice wine, plus star anise, a small stick cinnamon, and sliced ginger.
When the meat is tender you reduce the liquid till it is glossy.


A feast fit for a king, with stalky mustard green, and white rice.
Sambal on the side. Naturally.


Sadly, there are no Glorie Van Java cigars to cap the meal available in the Bay Area, nor even a decent bolknak. We still have a little way to go before we are truly civilized.
But the weather is rather nice.



==========================================================================
NOTE: Readers may contact me directly:
LETTER BOX.
All correspondence will be kept in confidence.
==========================================================================