A southern Italian summer stew of tomatoes and peppers like a ratatouille – serve with pasta, fried eggs or cheese

As I’ve mentioned before, our cooker is a 1972 GasFire Cucina 800. It’s the four-burner version of the five-burner model pictured in Sophia Loren’s book, In the Kitchen with Love, published in 1972, which just happens to be the year I was born, meaning that Sophia and I, our cookers, cooking and books are inextricably linked. However, her larger model had a different arrangement of burners, as well as a protective lip for a thermostat, while mine has a full hinged lid, which protects the wall; being white, it is also a canvas for splatters, meaning Sophia and I are not linked in wiping.

Tomato is the worst, and the best, especially when the sauce is simmering nicely: mostly steady, but every now and then erupting into a burp of a bubble that splatters like a crime scene waiting for pattern analysis. Today, there were also peppers and potatoes in what can only be described as a staggered recipe that demands the lid is on and off, causing fluctuating temperatures that invite splatters. It is worth it, though, for this almost velvety, summer braise, and also because I suggest making a double quantity, half to go with pasta, and the rest with fried eggs or slices of feta.

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© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

The opening of France’s first cheese museum in Paris complements the city’s high concentration of top fromageries

• Homage to fromage: cheese museum opens in Paris

France is not the only player when it comes to fromage. Outstanding cheeses are being produced in Great Britain, Switzerland and even the US. And the most recent winner of the World Cheese Awards – Nidelven Blå – comes from Norway.

Still, no other cheese-producing nation can match France in terms of the sheer number of exceptional cheeses. The French tradition of cheesemaking began more than 2,000 years ago and, since then, they have figured out a thing or two: which animal breeds thrive best in certain areas, how to harness moulds and bacteria to produce safe cheeses with deliciously complex flavours, and how to pair them with wine.

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© Photograph: Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images/Bloomberg Creative Photos

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© Photograph: Bloomberg Creative/Getty Images/Bloomberg Creative Photos

Centre dedicated to ancestral dairy expertise will provide demonstrations, tastings and explain how to ‘read’ milk

• More than mere camembert: why France leads the world in cheesemaking

Say “cheese” and Pierre Brisson is a happy man. The founder of France’s first cheese museum is passionate about the subject – and not just eating it but passing on the traditional skills of cheesemaking to future generations.

“It’s not an easy job but a marvellous one and there is a real risk that it could disappear,” he said. “I wanted to do something so people understand at what point there is an ancestral savoir faire in making cheese.

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© Photograph: Musée du Fromage

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© Photograph: Musée du Fromage

A clever, meat-free pasta sauce using soffritto, red wine, plus maybe a smidge of Marmite, to create a deceptively dense flavour

While today’s recipe is from Tuscany, it is also thanks to a girl who went to my school. She lived outside town, in a big house with both a swimming pool and chickens. I never actually saw the house, or jumped in the pool, but I did hear about the chickens that lived in a cage at the bottom of the garden and laid more eggs than the family could eat. There was also the story about how, one day, this girl stopped her uncle from killing one of the chickens, which meant that for Sunday lunch they had roast potatoes, fried eggs and gravy made from Marmite. I remember being thrilled by this story, the idea that she had put herself between an uncle (with a gun, knife, rope, his bare hands? I had no idea) and the hen, therefore saving its life; and that, while the family ate Marmite gravy, the chicken ran free.

Scappato means run away, escaped, scarpered. It’s a nice thought that this recipe for penne con pollo scappato, or pasta with chicken that has fled the coop, was the result of a feisty young girl and a fortunate hen somewhere in Tuscany. It is probably more likely, though, that it was the result of no chickens at all. Along with Sicilian pasta con le sarde al mare (pasta with sardines still at sea) and Neapolitan spaghetti alle vongole fujute (spaghetti with clams that have fled), penne con pollo scappato is part of a family of recipes brought about my resourceful necessity. I have a book about Tuscan food that calls such recipes cucina del’ inganno, which translates as “cooking of deception”, but I think the meaning is slightly different in Tuscan – cunning, and also protective, something you do in order to make something as good as you can with whatever you have to hand. This one is certainly a clever recipe, the well-cooked soffritto of carrot, celery, onion and wine, mixed with rosemary, tomato concentrate from a tube and a long cooking time result in a flavour so deep that it is every bit as good as meat.

Discover Rachel’s recipes and many more from your favourite cooks in the new Guardian Feast app, with smart features to make everyday cooking easier and more fun

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© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

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© Photograph: Rachel Roddy/The Guardian

CBS Chicago: Abby Lampe, winner of the 2022 Cooper's Hill cheese-rolling women's race, returned this year to regain her crown/cheese [Instagram]. Though absent in 2023 (won by Canadian competitor Delaney Irving, despite finishing unconscious and only learning of her victory in the medical enclosure), Abby won this year by the strategy of "...to go into the race and hurl myself down the hill and continue rolling." NYT: The race involves no sign-up form or waivers. GloucesterLive: The highest injury toll ever recorded was in 1997 when 33 contestants had to be treated. (there have actually been no fatalities or decapitations in recent times) Some footage and interviews, and pictures. Previously: 2018, 2013, 2010, 2009, 2003.

But the scope of the outbreak among cattle remains uncertain, and little human testing has been done.

© Hans Pennink/Associated Press