Hossenfeffer

A tomato-less pasta sauce cooked for many, many hours until the beef and the onions melt into each other.

The result is a rich, creamy sauce that makes a nice change from the Bolognese.

Relatively low effort as long as you’re staying at home and can give it a stir every half hour or so.

This was the first time I made it so I pretty closely followed this recipe.

Edit to add: this would probably work pretty well as a slow cooker recipe.

Italians, look away now, because guanciale is hard to get round these parts. Besides, I bet your nonna used pancetta at least once in her lifetime and you didnt't even notice.

Carbonara is actually pretty easy, although like all recipes with a very limited set of ingredients it can seem quite intimidating because there's nowhere to hide.

• Slice or chop 150g of the best pancetta you can find (guanciale if you can get it but it's hard to source) and gently fry until golden brown but not crispy. If you can't get either then an unsmoked streaky bacon will work at a push while also upsetting everyone in Italy.
• Cook your chosen pasta (I do 500g for 4 people) to al dente in a pot of well-salted water. I've tried carbonara with various types of pasta: spaghetti, bucatini, linguine, fettuccine, tagliatelle (always tagliatelle with a ragu alla bolognese, I serve a tag bol in my house, not a spag bol) as well as short pastas like rigatoni and cavatappi (the best pasta for mac and cheese). Personally, I enjoy a tagliatelle carbonara.
• While the pasta and pancetta / guanciale is cooking, whisk eggs, cheese, and freshly ground black pepper together. I use one whole, free-range egg per person, and an additional yolk per two people (I really like Burford Brown eggs because of the exceptional colour of the yolks). I use a mix of approximately 50/50 pecorino romano and parmigiano reggiano. Loads of both.
• Once the pasta is cooked, reserve a cup of the cooking water, then drain and chuck it in with the meat. You don't need to be super careful about draining the pasta - any excess water will be incorporated into the sauce.
• Turn off the heat under the meat and pasta. This is important and we're close to the only challenging bit of cooking a carbonara. We're going to add the cheesy egg mixture to the pasta and we want it to cook super gently to avoid serving our guests scrambled egg so we want it to cook in the residual heat, not any direct heat. Spend a minute or two tossing the pasta in with the meat and the oil that's rendered out of the meat as it's cooked.
• Add the cheesy egg mixture and stir vigorously for a minute or so to combine with the pasta. Add as much of the reserved pasta water as necessary to make sure the sauce is creamy and luxurious. It can soak up more water than you expect!
• Serve immediately with a few more grinds of black pepper.

Greek-style roast chicken

To achieve maximum juiciness, I like to brine the chicken for 24 hours before cooking.

• Put a layer of sliced red onion on the bottom of a deep baking tray, a cast iron skillet, or a Dutch oven
• Stuff the cavity of a large free-range chicken with some oregano, onion, a lemon wedge, and a lot of garlic, season all over with salt, pepper, and more oregano
• Place the chicken, breast side down, on top of the onions
• Season some new potatoes and slice them in half if they're biggish, then put them around the sides of the chicken
• Add 250ml chicken stock, 50 ml white wine, and a little lemon juice
• Roast for one hour at ~ 180c
• Turn the chicken over so it's breast side up (the potatoes will fall into the space where the chicken was, but that's ok, just rest the chicken on top of them), and check there's still a little liquid in the bottom of the pan (add a drop more stock if neeed be)
• Roast for another 30 mins to an hour (depending on the size of the bird) until done
• Rest and serve with a Greek salad or a simple green salad.

Chicken Ramen

This is a quick meal which I've done in as little as 20 minutes, start to finish. Using the Itsu broth is a huge time saver but you could elevate things by using a home-made stock.

Serves 2 adults, 2 children

• Season 2 large free-range chicken breasts with salt, pepper, and chinese five spice. Gently fry in toasted sesame oil
• In large pot bring one carton of Itsu classic ramen broth and one carton of Itshu chicken broth to a simmer (the photo is of one I made a while back, with two of the chicken broth cartons, but I prefer the mix)
• Cut the bak choi, separating the white stems from the green leaves, then add the white stems to the broth (reserving the leaves) along with some frozen edamame
• Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil. Add your ramen and cook according to packet instructions. For the four of us I use three servings of Yutaka frozen ramen which only take one minute to cook
• Add the green leaves to the broth and turn off the heat
• Drain the noodles and split between bowls
• I use a slotted spoon to scoop out the veggies and split them evenly between bowls, then pour in the broth
• Slice the chicken and add some to each bowl
• Add more fixin's as desired: chopped spring onion, finely sliced red chilli, chopped coriander, sesame seeds

Rough sort of recipe - I tend to wing it without very accurate measurements of things:

Serves 4 adults.

• Cook 500g of macaroni or other appropriate pasta shape to al dente (I generally go about 2 minutes under the recommended packet instructions)

• Fry up 150g of well-diced chorizo and reserve.
• Melt 125g of butter in the same pan (there should be some oil left from the chorizo)
• Chuck in some flour (I guess about half a cup) and stir to a roux which is roughly the consistency of wet sand
• Stir until not lumpy
• Add some minced garlic, a level teaspoon of English mustard powder, a pinch of nutmeg, a bay leaf, stir and then immediately start adding the milk to bring the temp down a bit and make sure the garlic doesn't burn in the roux/napalm.
• Total of about 2 1/2 pints of whole-fat milk. You have to add it in dribbles to start with and stir vigorously. The roux will glump up into a claggy mess at first but gradually combine with the milk. Once it's a reasonable consistency you can pour in the rest of the milk.
• Bring the milk to about 85-90'C (185-195'F) then stir in some grated cheese. I used a mix of Emental, Extra Mature Cheddar, and Monterey Jack.
• Season with black pepper

• Once that's all thick and cheesy and gooey and nice, return the chorizo to the sauce, then stir in the cooked pasta.
• Pour the cheesy pasta into an oven-safe dish or pot, sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top and bake for 20 minutes at 180'C / 360'F.
• Check it's bubbling nicely under its breadcrumb hat then grill for 5 minutes to get those breadcrumbs golden.

• Let it cool for 5 minutes while whipping up a simple green salad.

  I like it with some OG Tabasco to taste.

https://www.today.com/pets/goat-anxiety-only-calms-down-when-duck-costume-t105482

This is a tough one for me.

I already have the 2018 edition of the Sourcebook. This new edition has - apart from the utterly glorious cover art - an updated layout, updated visuals for dynastic genealogies, and updated maps of the Underworld and previous ages.

If you haven't got the Sourcebook, and want to understand Glorantha, then this is a must-have purchase. But if, like me, you have the previous edition then this is a purely luxury purchase. And with the Lunar cults book coming out sometime in the next couple of months, and so much great content on the Jonstown Compendium it's hard to justify the price for those updates. I make no promises though.

... but I won't spread it.

"Starting 11 March 2024, the price of Ring Protect Basic will change from £34.99/year to £49.99/year per device. If you would like to keep your current plan, no further action is required. Your plan will renew at the new price, unless you cancel your subscription before your next renewal on or after 11 March 2024."

Arse clowns.

Editorialised headline: Man who anticipates making obscene piles of cash through deals with China sez we should do deals with China.