Come home to nutty fried rice and cheesy cauliflower

I arrive home wanting something I’ve not been offered on my travels. Something that says, quietly, deliciously, “Welcome home!” The house is cold and empty, and I have a fancy for ham with cauliflower cheese. A dinner that I make so rarely, if ever, and yet for which I have something of a soft spot. The nudge came from a quick trip to the shops and seeing from the most perfect cauli I had seen in ages, its cream-coloured curds crisp and without blemish, complete with its crown of green leaves.

The sauce was left to blip quietly on the stove, seasoned with bay leaves and a fistful of parsley, a sauce just thick enough to see the knubbly clouds of cauliflower beneath. I cooked a ham hock to eat with it, then got the idea to tear the meat from the bones and stir it into the cheese sauce, using some of the cooking broth in place of milk. A side dish instantly became a full dinner.

Apollo; Menier Chocolate Factory, London
Ivanno Jeremiah rivets as Sidney Poitier in Ryan Calais Cameron’s electrifying McCarthy-era three-hander. Plus, a strenuously madcap vampire spoof

The phrase “person of consequence” might have been coined for Sidney Poitier. The pioneering black American actor was not only possessed of huge talent, but of immense dignity and deep convictions, active in the civil rights movement and, later, in efforts to hand more power to artists in Hollywood. He was remembered on his death in 2022 , aged 94, as a person of unassailable decency and integrity.

That decency and integrity is vigorously assailed in Ryan Calais Cameron ’s electric three-hander Retrograde , set in real time in a stuffy NBC lawyer’s office on a sticky LA afternoon in 1955 – the height of the McCarthy era.

Daughter says Barbie Reynolds, 75, is malnourished after being given one meal a day and Peter, 79, is also declining

The family of a British couple in their 70s imprisoned by the Taliban has expressed serious concerns over their deteriorating health after delays to their expected court appearance.

Peter and Barbie Reynolds, who run a training business in Afghanistan, were detained last month when they travelled to their home in Bamiyan province. The couple, aged 79 and 75, who have been running projects in schools in Afghanistan for 18 years, had not been informed of the charges, their daughter said.

Michelin-starred chef Paul Ainsworth tastes and rates Easter treats from ‘wow’ to ‘sickly’

Cake or Death vegan dark chocolate and fondant eggs
£20 for 6 , cakeordeath.co.uk
That’s very good. It doesn’t taste cheap like some plant-based chocolate. The sweet fondant yolk is balanced by the bitterness of the chocolate.
★★★★

Lidl d eluxe layered caramelised biscuit egg
£8.99, 225g, lidl.co.uk
That molasses flavour is nice. Could do with some sea salt. The thickness reminds me of Easter eggs when I was a kid.
★★★

Three characters stuck in the past are given access to the future in the former Observer/Faber prize winner’s mordant and misanthropic sci-fi graphic novel

People who enjoy science fiction love to imagine the future: time travel, spaceships, something wobbly with a green face. But what if those fans really had access to it – the future, I mean – courtesy of something very similar to the internet? This is the possibility Paul B Rainey floats in There’s No Time Like the Present , in which a crowd of misfits from Milton Keynes (once the future itself) are able, if not to visit Mars, then at least to watch episodes of Doctor Who that have not yet been screened.

Mordant and misanthropic in almost equal measure, Rainey’s book has three central characters, each one somewhat stuck, unable fully to escape their childhood. Barry, an obnoxious lazybones, still lives at home with his parents; he makes his living selling bootleg recordings of TV shows he has lifted from the “ultranet”, which provides entry to the future. Cliff, Barry’s friend, and a yoghurt-addicted woman called Kelly live together in her new house, but they’re not a couple; while he secretly pines for her, he’s only her tenant. In the evenings, they watch, with varying degrees of guilt, future episodes of their favourite series ( Doctor Who in his case, Emmerdale in hers): tapes pressed on them by the grisly Barry.

There’s No Time Like the Present by Paul B Rainey is published by Drawn & Quarterly (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply

Deleting stories of Iwo Jima and other diverse US military heroism backfired. For subtle discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion, talk to Lorraine Kelly

In the second world war, Navajo code talkers transmitted sensitive US military information in their own undocumented language. Which was nice of them, as their immediate ancestors had been dispossessed and destroyed by white settlers, and then had all their water poisoned with uranium . “Were it not for the Navajos,” concluded major Howard Connor, at the time, “the marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” And that famous photo of the American soldiers raising a flag would just have shown some Japanese boy scouts letting off a party popper.

But last month Trump’s defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said: “I think the single dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our diversity is our strength’.” Predictably, some Navajo code talkers had to have bodyguards to protect them from white American servicemen who thought they were Japanese. Plus ça change, as they say over there in that Europe.

Chippewa member Todd Thompson sold cannabis after Minnesota legalized it, but police still seized all his merchandise

A Minnesota judge ’s order earlier this month upheld the state’s authority to prosecute cannabis-related crimes on tribal lands, raising questions about Indigenous sovereignty and the efficacy of “social equity” provisions in state-level cannabis laws.

Todd Thompson – a member of the White Earth Band of the Chippewa Tribe, began selling cannabis from his licensed tobacco shop on the White Earth reservation on 1 August 2023 – the same day Minnesota passed a law permitting adult-use recreational cannabis. Thompson says the first day went well, but on the second day, the store and his home were both raided by Mahnomen county sheriff’s deputies and White Earth tribal police , who seized all of Thompson’s cannabis as well as $2,748 in cash.

The venerable magazine is thriving and its long-time editor David Remnick tells us why a dedication to literate, conversation-provoking and veracious reportage has never been more vital

Last month the New Yorker celebrated its 100th anniversary. It’s an impressive achievement because the magazine is the bumblebee of publishing: it flies in the face of prevailing wisdom. Just as the bee’s wingspan was once thought to be too small to keep it airborne, so does our smartphone-blitzed attention span appear too short for what the magazine offers.

Everything about the 10,000-word pieces, learned criticism and meticulous accuracy on which the weekly has built its reputation seems anachronistically at odds with the age of TikTok and X, influencers and instant opinion.

Sadler’s Wells; Linbury theatre, Royal Opera House, London
Lyon Opera Ballet perform alongside digital forms to the music of Gavin Bryars in a Merce Cunningham double bill. Plus, a new twist on Giselle

The American choreographer Merce Cunningham loved birds. He painted pictures of them every morning. In Tacita Dean’s evocative film of him at work, made in 2008, the year before his death, birds fly in and out of the frame outside the windows of the Craneway Pavilion in California where he’s rehearsing, their jerky pecks, stalks and poses reflecting the dancers’ movements within.

It’s impossible to watch Beach Birds , created in 1991, without thinking of that film. In this revealing revival, the dancers of Lyon Opera Ballet balance against a pink dawn, slightly swaying as their arms open and curve in clean, slow strokes. The light, randomly programmed, shifts through bright changes to dusk-like orange as the work progresses and the dancers move, never quite in unison, each in their own world, creating sculptural shapes. John Cage’s score eddies around them, full of the rush of a rainstick, of sea sounds.