The French foreign ministry said for the first time on Tuesday that it was Russian hackers who had targeted Macron’s campaign team in 2017, adding that other Russian targets had included French media and an organisation involved in the 2024 Olympic games.
‘If you’ve got power on your side, you can do anything’
Daniel Dubois warned Oleksandr Usyk that none of the mind games will matter when they step into the ring for their heavyweight title unification contest and suggested the Ukrainian would simply not be able to “handle the pain” when they meet at Wembley Stadium on 19 July.
On Tuesday afternoon, Dubois and Usyk presented a compelling study in contrast at Wembley as, in separate conversations to officially launch the fight, the two men echoed the differences between them which had already been made plain 24 hours earlier.
In his victory speech early on Tuesday, Mark Carney wasted little time calling for a dramatic reshaping of his government’s relationship with the United States, arguing that threats from Donald Trump cast doubt Canada’s ability to function as a “free, sovereign, and ambitious” nation.
The former central banker and investment executive had for months focused his electoral campaign on the threats from Canada’s largest trading partner and longtime political ally.
Investigators hope hoisting craft will yield clues about last year’s sinking and recover two super-encrypted hard drives
Recovery operations to raise the 56-metre British-flagged superyacht Bayesian from the seabed off Sicily, where it sank last summer killing seven people – including the British tech entrepreneur, Mike Lynch – will begin on Wednesday, weather permitting, according to the Italian port authorities.
On 19 August 2024, the luxury vessel, with a 75-metre (246ft) mast, was anchored just off shore near the port of Porticello, in the province of Palermo, when it was struck shortly before dawn by a violent storm. Lynch, once described as Britain’s Bill Gates, and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, were among the victims.
The assessment, mandated by Congress, is used by federal and local governments to prep for climate disasters
Donald Trump’s administration has dismissed all contributors to the US government’s flagship study on how to prepare for climate change impacts, prompting strong criticism from experts over a “senseless” move.
The climate assessment is used by federal and local governments to understand how to prepare for climate crisis impacts including from extreme heat, hurricanes, flooding and drought.
Kharmel Cochrane responded to criticism of both actors’ ages and of Elordi’s ethnicity being unfaithful to Emily Brontë’s novel, saying ‘wait until you see the set design’
Kharmel Cochrane, the casting director of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights has defended the choice of Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi for the leading roles.
Speaking at the Sands film festival in Scotland, Cochrane responded to criticism of both actors’ ages and Elordi’s ethnicity by saying there was “no need to be accurate” as the source material is “just a book”, Deadline reported.
When it comes to workouts, how much pain – specifically, how much post-workout soreness – is actually a good thing? The answer: it depends
Humans have long glamorized suffering, hailing it as an essential ingredient of growth. In the ancient Greek tragedy Elektra, Sophocles wrote: “Nothing truly succeeds without pain.” In the 1980s, the actor and aerobics instructor Jane Fonda told people: “No pain, no gain.”
But when it comes to workouts, how much pain – specifically, how much post-workout soreness – is actually a good thing? The answer: it depends.
From deportations to human rights to the economy, the president’s actions have resulted in mayhem. Here’s a sampling
Some Democrats fear they’re playing into Donald Trump’s hands by fighting his mass deportations rather than focusing on his failures on bread-and-butter issues like the cost of living.
But it’s not either-or. The theme that unites Trump’s inept handling of deportations, his trampling on human and civil rights, his rejection of the rule of law, his dictatorial centralization of power, and his utterly inept handling of the economy is the ineptness itself.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
The Oscar nominated actor is the most impressive member of a ragtag Suicide Squad-esque team in an often charmingly unusual yet still baggy adventure
Thunderbolts* can be messy. Not just the movie, with its clumsily forced narrative beats and whiplash tonal shifts. But also, its title characters, the broken and lonely souls who ditch the colourful costumes and wear their emotions on their sleeves, as if it’s their brand.
These reluctant heroes, led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, the troubled sister to Scarlett Johansson’s late Black Widow, are defined by how much they need therapy. They wrestle with themselves more than the bad guys, in a way that’s more pronounced than the most unstable among Marvel’s stable of wisecracking world saviors. They’re endearingly vulnerable, at times devastatingly so, and yet still fun and exciting enough to save Marvel.
F1 drivers raised concerns over fines and free speech
The standoff between drivers and the president of Formula One’s governing body over the contentious issue of swearing may have taken a step towards resolution.
Ahead of this week’s Miami Grand Prix, FIA leader Mohammed ben Sulayem posted on Instagram that after “constructive feedback” from drivers across the world of motorsport he is considering making “improvements” to the document which lays out the punishments for a range of offences ranging from physical violence to political statements and swearing.
John Niven’s debut play explores rivalry between the two British bands who vied for the No 1 spot in the charts in 1995
It was the great Britpop showdown in the summer of 1995, billed as a contest between cheeky chaps and lairy lads. Thirty years on, a new play is to revisit the fierce rivalry between Blur and Oasis when both British bands put out a new single in the same week and competed to grab the No 1 spot in the charts. Some purchased both releases, many couldn’t care less, but for a few days it was a decision that defined you: whether to spend £2.99 on Oasis’s Roll With It or Blur’s Country House?
The Battle is the debut stage play of novelist and screenwriter John Niven who said of the era: “Music was so central to the culture that two pop groups could dominate the entire summer, the evening news and the front page of every newspaper in the country. We’re going to take you back there.”
The people of Kashmir have had little or no say in their future for as long as I can remember. This cycle must end
Mirza Waheed was born in Srinigar, Kashmir. His novels include Tell Her Everything and The Collaborator
By all accounts, the 26 people killed last week in a picturesque meadow in Pahalgam in Kashmir were selected for slaughter by the militants on the basis of their religion. We’ve read heart-rending testimony of how the families watched as the men, almost all Hindu, were shot from close range. These were unconscionable killings. We’ve also read how Kashmiri tourist guides and pony operators rescued many Indian tourists, at great risk to their own lives.
Whether this attack was carried out by Pakistani militants, local Kashmiris, or both, is immaterial to the families of the dead. Their lives are destroyed, along with the Indian state’s carefully constructed facade of normality in the region – a facade sustained by the tourism boom of recent years.
Mirza Waheed was born in Srinigar, Kashmir. His novels include Tell Her Everything and The Collaborator
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First 27 satellites launched into space from Florida, part of $10bn effort to beam broadband internet globally
The first 27 satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper broadband internet constellation were launched into space from Florida on Monday, kicking off the long-delayed deployment of an internet from space network that will rival SpaceX’s Starlink.
The satellites are the first of 3,236 that Amazon plans to send into low-Earth orbit for Project Kuiper, a $10bn effort announced in 2019 to beam broadband internet globally for consumers, businesses and governments – customers that SpaceX has courted for years with its powerful Starlink business.
While the last of this season’s three Premier League relegation spots was confirmed the moment referee John Brooks blew his whistle to signal the end of the Championship playoff final between Leeds and Southampton 11 months ago, the late scramble to avoid the bottom three in the second tier has been thrilling by comparison. It couldn’t not be, given that five of the six teams battling to stay out of the two remaining places in the drop zone at stumps on Saturday have each notched up more than the 10 victories Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich have managed between them.
I told them, and I’m not exaggerating here, ‘Guys, bring your boots, bring your shorts, bring your T-shirts, and let’s play every ball together. We want to do something special’. That place has to be something that we haven’t seen before” – John Sitton Mikel Arteta apparently wants Arsenal fans to go the full John Terry when they take on PSG in the first leg of their Bigger Cup semi-final.
If by Barry Glendenning’s reckoning ‘Arsenal are not a serious football club’ (yesterday’s Football Daily), I’m left to wonder how he might assess any of the 18 teams destined to finish below them in the Premier League table. I thank him mightily, however, for not only adding ‘heroic begrudgery’ to my phrase book but providing such a convincing demonstration” – Clinton Macsherry.
I have to disagree that Liverpool’s ‘This Means More’ motto has no meaning for their fanbase (yesterday’s Football Daily). If experience serves me right, for a generation of youngsters who just developed a passion for Liverpool after watching this season’s procession on the telly, This Means More than finding a team within geographical reach and paying to get in and cheer them on, thus actually, y’know, supporting. And This Means More than any concept of sporting loyalty and glory other than who just won. Hopefully, This Means More when Liverpool have a slight fallow patch down the road and they have to deal with the outrage when sometimes you don’t win. There is a widely spread demographic of folk in their 30s who once suddenly developed an affiliation with Manchester who could perhaps give them some tips for the future” – Jon Millard.
Congratulations to Truro on winning the National League South with a burst of three goals in the opening 10 minutes which gave the other contenders an absolute mountain to climb. Six clubs in the running as you reported last week but John Askey’s boys prevailed. Top contender for manager of the season, any league. No doubt the fans will be looking forward to the possibility of Carlisle, Gateshead and Hartlepool away next season” – Dave Step.
In the midst of all the kerfuffle of the weekend – Real Madrid players as petulant as ever, inflated and deflated managers brandishing their egos – it might have been good to see a mention from you of James Forrest of Celtic who collected his 26th trophy in 524 appearances, overtaking the Lisbon Lion Bobby Lennox. What stands out about Forrest is his loyalty to the club and dedication to training and the squad, even when regularly on the bench. He has scored in each of the last 15 seasons so here’s hoping he grabs one before the end of this one. A model club player – something of a rarity these days” – Danny Sullivan.
Microchip implant with data has been required since 2022 but policy is unpopular because of expense and nuisance
Half of the pet dogs in Berlin are being kept illegally owing to a suspected “boycott” of unpopular registration rules rolled out after a surge in ownership during the pandemic, figures have shown.
Dogs have long been taxed in the German capital, primarily for sanitation costs.
Do you like sleeping, eating and scrolling? Me too. What if I told you this was also a way to protest capitalism?
Somewhere in Zhejiang province, China, a woman is living my dream. She gets up in the morning and then, almost immediately, goes back to bed. She lies prostrate all day long, scrolling, eating some food, opening some packages, showering at 2am, then snoozing again. As a longtime sleep enthusiast – and the mother of a child who thinks that 5am is a good time to start the day, all systems go – I think this sounds like bliss.
The woman in Zhejiang is known as @jiawensishi – and also “rat person”. I am not being rude; that’s what she calls herself. There are lots of rat people out there: it’s a whole trend in China. You might have heard of the “lying flat” movement a few years ago, when young people lazed around displaying symptoms of mild depression, and some thinkers, including the novelist Liao Zenghu, theorised that it was a passive-aggressive resistance movement, rebelling against the demands of materialism and capitalism. Well, “rat people” are a rodenty reboot.
People are still debating this online after five years, and suddenly more hotly than ever. Even if it is ever answered, that still leaves us to tackle man v bear ...
Name: 100 men v one gorilla.
Age: The debate seems to have begun in 2020, on Reddit, when a poster asked the question in a r/whowouldwin subreddit, a forum for hypothetical discussions on myriad subjects.
White House accuses Amazon of ‘hostile and political act’ after report says company will display tariffs costs on site
The White House accused Amazon of committing a “hostile and political act” after a report said the e-commerce company was planning to inform customers how much Donald Trump’s tariffs would cost them as they shopped.
The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, was responding to a report in Punchbowl News, which, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported that Amazon would begin displaying on its site how much the tariffs had increased the prices of individual products, breaking out the figure from the total listed price.
Mounting stories of ‘forced disappearances’ of Venezuelans in the US have left their loved ones distraught and disbelieving
Neiyerver Rengel’s captors came one sunny spring morning, lurking outside the apartment he shared with his girlfriend and pouncing as soon as he emerged.
The three government agents announced the young Venezuelan man had “charges to answer” and was being detained.
‘Any strategy based on either phasing out fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail,’ says former PM
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.
Keir Starmer is not expected to campaign in the Hamilton byelection, a critical contest for Scottish Labour which takes place in early June, Anas Sarwar has confirmed.
I wouldn’t expect Keir to be campaigning in the byelection. That’s not to say he won’t, but I’m not expecting Kier to campaign in the byelection.
I’ll be on the stump campaigning for a Labour win. I’m the candidate for first minister next year. I’m the one that wants to remove the SNP from government.
Next year, we’ve got to demonstrate to people that for all Nigel Farage might want to come here with his easy answers and create a bit of a circus, the reality is a vote for Reform only helps the SNP. If you want to get rid of the SNP, only Scottish Labour can beat them.
Actor makes major dramatic bid as UFC fighter Mark Kerr in biopic also starring his Jungle Cruise co-star Emily Blunt
Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt aim for awards glory with the first trailer for fact-based sports drama The Smashing Machine.
The wrestler-turned-actor plays the MMA fighter Mark Kerr in the film inspired by the 2002 documentary with the same name. Kerr won multiple awards and medals in his career and also struggled with substance abuse.
Faye Carruthers is joined by Sophie Downey, Ameé Ruszkai and Marva Kreel to discuss Arsenal’s win, Chelsea’s loss and latest action across the WSL and the Championship
On this week’s Guardian Women’s Football Weekly, Faye is joined by Sophie Downey, Ameé Ruszkai and Marva Kreel. The panel discuss Arsenal’s 4-1 second-leg victory over Lyon, the north London side knocking out the eight-time European champions and securing their place in the final. However, it won’t be a full English affair after Chelsea’s dreams were dashed by a rampant Barcelona.
The panel review the latest action across the Women’s Super League and the Championship as the season nears its conclusion and relegation spots are confirmed.
Donmar Warehouse, London Patrick Marber’s debut play about a group of poker players brims with banter, but this pallid 30th-anniversary revival exposes its weaknesses
In 1995, two British playwrights made their debuts with all-male, six-character chamber-pieces strongly influenced by Pinter and Mamet, and set over one long, tense night in London. Jez Butterworth’s Mojo and Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice proved to be superficially dazzling calling cards rather than enduring classics. Now a pallid 30th-anniversary revival of the latter reveals its weaknesses.
Set in a restaurant where the manager Stephen (the Paul Bettany-esque Daniel Lapaine) and his employees Frankie (Alfie Allen), Sweeney (Theo Barklem-Biggs) and Mugsy (Hammed Animashaun) are gearing up for a late-night card game, the play brims with bants.
Joshua Bonnetta spent 8,760 hours recording a pine – then honed it down into a four-hour album full of creatures, cracking branches and quite possibly the sound of leaves growing
What does a landscape sound like when it’s not being listened to? This philosophical question was a catalyst for film-maker and artist Joshua Bonnetta, who has distilled a year of recordings from a single tree in upstate New York – that’s 8,760 hours – into a four-hour album, The Pines. As Robert Macfarlane writes in his accompanying essay, The Pines is a reminder of the natural world’s “sheer, miraculous busyness”, its “froth of signals and noise”. It is rich with poetic meaning, and resonant amid the climate emergency.
“It started as a personal thing,” Bonnetta explains from his studio in Munich, where he relocated from the US in 2022. For over 20 years he has made sonic records of places as private mementos, but recent experiments with long-form field recording led him to push himself “to document this place in the deepest way I could”. On a residency in the Outer Hebrides between 2017 and 2019, Bonnetta made the sound installation Brackish, a month-long continuous radio broadcast from a weather-resistant hydrophone – an underwater mic – by a loch. “I started to leave the recorder for a day or two, then it just got longer,” he says. “Amazing things happen when you’re not there to interfere … This allows you a different, very privileged window into the space.”
The Nottingham Panthers player died of a neck injury from a skate after a collision with Sheffield Steelers’ Matt Petgrave in a match in October 2023. The Panthers described the incident at the time as a “freak accident”. CPR was administered on the ice at the Sheffield Arena, but Johnson died from his injuries.
The singer delivers a rousing, seven-act spectacle as she performs many of her country songs on stage for the first time while also harking back to her previous dance-leaning era
Beyoncé doesn’t just take the stage – she takes the narrative back. On opening night of her Cowboy Carter world tour at the four-year-old SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, she brings forth a sweeping, theatrical spectacle that reclaims country music, reframes American identity and reminds everyone who’s still driving pop’s evolution after all these years. Her nearly three-hour, seven-act performance draws heavily from Cowboy Carter – her Grammy-winning country epic – and threads in nods to Renaissance, the ballroom-infused predecessor that lit up stadiums barely two years ago. Rather than stake a claim in country, Beyoncé goes deeper: celebrating the Black roots of the genre and exploding its boundaries with precision, power and polish.
Outside SoFi, vendors hawk more cowboy hats than you’d see at a Los Tigres del Norte show. Inside, anticipation sizzles. Projected across the massive stage-length screen: CHITLIN’ CIRCUIT – a nod to the historic Black music venues where blues, country and rock took shape. The show begins with American Requiem – the Sign o’ the Times-drizzled opener from Cowboy Carter – followed by a haunting Blackbiird. Then comes a defining moment: a Hendrix-inspired Star-Spangled Banner, laced with the thunder of Freedom, flashing red, white and blue. The screen reads: “Never ask permission for something that already belongs to you.”
He has a more typically masculine body, is older, more experienced and skilled in bed, and I am finding it increasingly difficult to perform
I am a gay man and have been married to my husband for 12 years. I sometimes lose my erection during sex, leading me to avoid it for long periods. My problem is my sexual script, which intellectually I don’t believe, but still cannot seem to set down. My husband has a larger penis, a more typically masculine and societally attractive body and is older, more experienced and more skilled a lover than I am. I know none of this matters and that sex should be about mutual pleasure and connection, but I cannot help but feel inadequate, leading to performance anxiety. My husband is kind and reassuring, but this has been going on for our whole relationship and I feel stuck and frustrated.
Being distracted during sex , whether it is due to any kind of anxiety, lack of confidence in your body, fear of losing your erection, fear of disease, germ phobia, stress about external life situations – or any one of many possible thought intrusions – will easily arrest your enjoyment of a sexual process, and often lead to sexual dysfunction. Rather than allowing negative thoughts and fears to intrude during erotic experiences, it is important to focus simply on the purpose of eroticism – pleasure. This is not easy for people who have become invested in achieving excellence of performance, or even just being able to maintain an erection. Switch your approach to sex, ask for your partner’s support and cooperation in being able to stop and relax whenever negativity intrudes and refocus on just giving and receiving pleasure. If your anxiety is generalised (it occurs in many other situations) it is important to seek formal treatment or proven methods to calm you.
Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
Crew members jump out of Super Hornet before jet and towing tractor fall into the Red Sea
US sailors had to leap for their lives when a fighter jet fell off a navy aircraft carrier that was reportedly making evasive maneuvers to avoid Houthi militant fire in the Red Sea on Monday.
The F/A-18 fighter Super Hornet jet, along with the vehicle towing it into place on the deck of the USS Harry S Truman, rolled right out of the hangar and into the water, the navy said.
Spanish PM says ‘no hypothesis being ruled out’, after energy providers concluded cyber-attack was not to blame
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has vowed to “get to the bottom” of the unprecedented power cut that hit the Iberian peninsula on Monday, as energy operators in Spain and Portugal ruled out the possibility of a cyber-attack.
The blackout, which plunged cities into darkness and left tens of thousands of travellers trapped on trains, is thought to have led to the deaths of at least five people in Spain. A family of three died from apparent carbon monoxide poisoning after using a generator in the north-west of the country, while a woman died in Valencia after her oxygen machine failed. Another woman died in Madrid in a fire started by a candle.
The prime minister is apparently pursuing ways to land the 2028 Open for the president. With friends like that, POTUS surely won’t be carrying his own clubs
At what point does realpolitik tip over into nakedly facilitating conflict of interest/corruption? I only ask in the strictest hypothetical terms after reading that Keir Starmer’s government has been exploring whether golf bosses could host the 2028 Open championship at Donald Trump’s Turnberry resort in Ayrshire. Sorry, but no. It’s almost as if the prime minister is compiling material for a seminal 2025 business manual. Call it The Art of the Kneel. Perhaps Starmer could ask the Treasury to “explore” buying a load of Trump meme coins.
According to reports, Donald Trump has frequently mentioned in his phone calls with the prime minister that he’d prefer it if the Open returned to Turnberry. As so often with this particular caller, the reply to this should simply be, “And I’d prefer to be talking to Mickey Mouse, but we’re all making compromises.” Failing that, just go with: “God, you always want MORE, don’t you? Scotland invented the great game of golf. Have you said thank you ONCE?” Unfortunately, the actual reply seems to have been: “Capital idea, Mr President! How can we make that happen?”
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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Indus treaty, which had survived 65 years and three wars between countries, has been paused after Kashmir attack
In July 2023, Ali Haider Dogar was one of tens of thousands of farmers in central-eastern Pakistan whose crops were submerged after India released water from the Sutlej River into Pakistan in an attempt to mitigate flash floods in its own northern regions.
Dogar, whose family’s losses in 2023 ran to tens of thousands of pounds, said every farmer in his village in Punjab was fearing the worst in the comings months after India suspended the Indus waters treaty, following a deadly attack on tourists in India-administered Kashmir that India has pinned on Pakistan.
Trump administration has been cracking down on people who leak information to the media since January
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on Monday it has started using polygraph tests to aid investigations aimed at identifying the source of leaks emanating from within the law enforcement agency.
“We can confirm the FBI has begun administering polygraph tests to identify the source of information leaks within the bureau,” the bureau’s public affairs office told Reuters in a statement.
Arsenal had a rest at the weekend. They will have been disappointed to watch Liverpool secure the Premier League title on Sunday, but that missed opportunity should focus minds on the Champions League, their only hope of silverware this season. They are unbeaten in their last 12 matches but have won only six times in that run, and have drawn their last two home games, against Brentford and Crystal Palace.
Activist jailed in Egypt receives medical treatment and family worry his mother Laila Soueif is ‘dying in slow motion’
The family of the imprisoned British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah say they fear for his health along with that of his mother, Laila Soueif, as both continued their hunger strikes to demand his freedom.
Relatives of Soueif said they were worried she was “dying in slow motion” after eight months on full or partial hunger strike. “What are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait to die?” said Soueif.
At the beginning of the year, Canada’s Conservatives had a 25-point lead over the Liberal government, and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, looked certain to be the country’s next prime minister. But as the votes cast in Monday’s election have been counted, the story of the campaign has been confirmed: victory for the Liberals and their new leader, Mark Carney, who have extended their decade of rule by as much as another five years.
With almost all polls counted, it appears likely that the Liberals will fall just short of a majority, and instead be the leading party in a minority government, as in the last two elections. Regardless, it represents a remarkable turnaround, and vindication for Carney’s efforts to present himself as the prime ministerial candidate who would most effectively stand up to Donald Trump. As for Poilievre: the CBC projects he has lost his seat.
People queued calmly for torches and shared radios, but our vulnerability in an internet-reliant world was badly exposed
At the entrance to a healthcare centre on Trafalgar Street, in my densely populated, central Madrid neighbourhood, somebody had stuck a sign: “We ask for patience and common sense.” The door was half open as doctors and nurses calmly tended to emergencies inside.
Patience and common sense is a very good way to describe what I witnessed in Madrid throughout the big blackout. We had no light, no power, no phone signal, not even water in some apartment buildings.
If your evening meals are getting a bit samey, our roster of cooks has a bounty of saucy ideas that might just help transform your dinners for good
What sauces and dressings can I make to rejuvenate weekday meals? Sauces and dressings give dinner life, making even the simplest meals taste better. The formula, says Gurdeep Loyal, author of Flavour Heroes (published in June), goes something like this: “You need two things: a really good fat and a really good sour.” Sure, that fat could be oil, but it doesn’t have to be. “It could be an egg yolk, it could be avocado, but if it’s oil, go for a flavoured one,” Loyal says, and in place of the usual acid suspects (vinegar or citrus), try the likes of gherkins, capers or preserved lemons instead. “My go-tos are preserved lemon whizzed up with a bit of their brine, some garlic-infused olive oil and maple syrup. Or avocado blitzed with gherkins, gherkin brine, a bit of sugar, if you want, and perhaps herbs such as chives or tarragon. Or chilli-infused olive oil blitzed with a teaspoon of tamarind.” These powerhouses are a dream on pretty much anything, he says, from a roast kale salad with chickpeas to baked butter beans or even as a dip for pizza crusts.
For William Gleave, chef-patron of Sargasso in Margate, meanwhile, “Something with anchovies is always nice, because it goes with so many things”. For him, a “classic stolen/borrowed from the River Cafe” comes out tops: “It’s essentially a dressing with lots of chopped anchovy, grated garlic, red-wine vinegar, lemon juice, oil, black pepper and chilli flakes,” which is to say it’s bright, umami-rich and versatile. “Spoon that over everything from grilled fish to lamb or pork to crunchy veg, and it will feel as if you’ve put in a load of effort, even though it’s super-simple.”
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