Make a big batch of this highly customisable dish and keep some for the week ahead

You can use lots of different spice blends here; I like baharat, but for ease you could substitute that with Indian spices or smoked paprika. I sometimes use purple sweet potato, but you get a nicer colour contrast with the bog-standard orange variety. The beetroot will still have a little bite after 30 minutes in the oven, so if you prefer it completely soft, cut it into smaller chunks or use precooked instead.

Atmospheric fantasy sees paladin Bhodie enter a cursed realm and die on repeat to rescue a red-haired maiden

Maybe it’s because of a sense that we are expendable parts in the great capitalist machine, that the endlessly repeating death trope has been increasingly respawning in movies – from Edge of Tomorrow to Mickey 17 and now this Canadian sword’n’sorcery caper. With its sisyphean vibe and implacable mood, it also owes a fair bit to the Dark Souls video games; though it’s not a masterpiece on that level, it nevertheless has a grim self-conviction that grips despite its low-budget limitations.

Paladin Bhodie (Jeremy Ninaber) – who apparently asked the barber for the Gondor bob and beard trim – agrees to enter a cursed realm to rescue red-haired maiden Avalon (Kristen Kaster), who is central to a humanity-saving prophecy. Needing to collect three magic stones to open up an exit portal, he makes a pact with the Keeper demon (Shane Nicely) for a magic talisman that can resurrect him enough times to beat the stones’ guardians. It turns out Avalon – no slouch with the steel herself – has made the same arrangement, only to die multiple deaths at the hands of the first adversaries: a pair of bloodthirsty witches.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, John Brewin and Nooruddean Choudry as Fulham beat Liverpool 3-2 and Southampton are relegated

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On the podcast today; Liverpool suffer a second Premier league defeat of the season thanks to a great Fulham performance. Thwere were three goals in 13 first-half minutes as Liverpool at times looked they were already on the beach.

• Juric has overseen one league win since December arrival
• Danny Röhl thought to be a leading candidate to come in

Southampton have sacked Ivan Juric after 107 days in charge, with the club at risk of recording the lowest points tally in Premier League history. Saints were relegated on Sunday after defeat at Tottenham.

Juric replaced Russell Martin in December but failed to fashion an uplift in results, with the 49-year-old winning only one league match, at Ipswich in February. Saints have lost seven of their past eight top-flight matches.

Bandmates pay tribute to friend and ‘Ace of Bass’ who helped forge the post-punk band’s sound

Dave Allen, the bassist for British post-punks Gang of Four, has died aged 69. His surviving bandmates, vocalist Jon King and drummer Hugo Burnham, said that Allen had been suffering from early-onset mixed dementia.

Burnham said in a statement: “It is with broken yet full hearts that we share the news that Dave Allen, our old music partner, friend, and brilliant musician, died on Saturday morning. He was at home with his family.”

Top employment lawyer issues warning after large US companies roll back policies amid Trump push

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British businesses face a greater risk of legal action if they follow their US counterparts in ditching efforts to improve diversity and inclusion in the wake of Donald Trump’s return to office, the UK’s leading authority on employment law has warned.

The Employment Lawyers Association (ELA), which has 7,000 members, has said British companies could open themselves up to “adverse findings of discrimination” if they unpick policies designed to enable diversity equity and inclusion (DEI).

Newsrooms forced to adapt as writers resign and request takedown of stories to avoid potential repercussions

Fearing legal repercussions, online harassment and professional consequences, student journalists are retracting their names from published articles amid intensifying repression by the Trump administration targeting students perceived to be associated with the pro-Palestinian movement.

Editors at university newspapers say that anxiety among writers has risen since the arrest of Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk , who is currently in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention fighting efforts to deport her. While the government has not pointed to evidence supporting its decision to revoke her visa, she wrote an op-ed last year in a student newspaper critical of Israel, spurring fears that simply expressing views in writing is now viewed as sufficient grounds for deportation.

Kate Folk on Sky Daddy, a book about sex, death and plane crashes that’s taking off in these turbulent times

If we told our forebears that we could soar in the sky nearly seven miles above the ground, they would stare at us agog. But now air travel is one big grumble: it’s degrading, everyone is ill-mannered and you used to get free peanuts in this country, but now the peanuts are not free. Air travel, like everything else, is about the politics of resentment. The skies are feeling a lot less friendly, and that’s before you get to a year in which Americans have experienced profound tragedy in the air , as well as significant cuts to an already strained Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

In this turbulent time for flying lands Sky Daddy, the unusual debut novel by Kate Folk, a San Francisco author and screenwriter whose short story collection Out There was released in 2022. Sky Daddy is narrated by a woman called Linda who, like many of us, lives her life in dogged pursuit of love. She just wants that love to come from a commercial airplane in free fall. “I believed this was my destiny,” Linda tells us, “for a plane to recognize me as his soulmate mid-flight and, overcome with passion, relinquish his grip on the sky, hurtling us to earth in a carnage that would meld our souls for eternity.”

• Yorkshire batter takes over from Jos Buttler
• Key says chance has come ‘slightly earlier than expected’

Harry Brook has been named as England’s new white-ball captain, with Rob Key, the director of men’s cricket, praising the Yorkshireman’s “excellent cricketing brain” but also admitting the opportunity has come “slightly earlier than expected”.

Brook, 26, will take charge of both the T20 and ODI teams despite Key admitting last month he was considering offering the latter to Ben Stokes. Instead, Stokes will remain focused on leading the Test side and next winter’s Ashes moonshot, as well as his own return fitness after hamstring surgery at the start of the year.