Send parents are not ‘gaming the system’ Letters

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I usually enjoy John Crace’s frank views and commentary, but was stopped in my tracks when he said the bill for special educational needs and disabilities (Send) provision was rising “thanks both to better diagnosis and to some parents gaming the system” (Labour picks on kids as Farage reaches for his human punchbag, 7 July).Sadly, when the government is challenged as to why it is not providing thousands of children with an adequate education, it often resorts to victim-blaming, implying that parents are exaggerating their children’s difficulties, and I’m astonished that John has regurgitated such nonsense.As the mother of an autistic child who needs a high level of care in his school environment, I have to fight tooth and nail every single year to prove that he still has high needs and still requires specialist provision.This is true of many thousands of parents with children in the system.Does John really believe that there are parents in enough numbers who are successfully exaggerating their children’s special educational needs and disabilities to have caused a notable increase in the bill for Send provision? Please.

I ask him to do some research and instead ask why the government keeps letting these vulnerable children down before pointing the finger at parents who are simply fighting for their children to access education, the same as any other child deserves in the country,Suzanna NolanEast Molesey, Surrey Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section,
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Georgina Hayden’s recipe for red curry chicken and courgette burgers

I present to you my new favourite summer burger, which has been on our menu at home ever since its arrival in my kitchen. It’s one of those recipes where the ease is almost embarrassing. How can something so delicious be so straightforward? The burgers themselves are a simple food processor job; if you don’t have one, use chicken mince and make sure you really mix in the curry paste and courgette by hand. The accompaniments are also key: the lime-pickled shallots, the abundance of herbs and the creaminess of the mayo all work so well together. Turn up to a barbecue with a tray of these and I guarantee you’ll be dishing out the recipe in no time

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Five beef patties, four cheese slices, bacon, lettuce, tomato … Burger King’s sumo of a burger enters the ring

Japan can legitimately claim to be home to some of the best food on the planet. But it usually has little appetite for supersizing it.That changed on Friday with Burger King’s gargantuan but curiously named Baby Body Burger, tipping the scales at nearly 680g (1.5lb). As part of a collaboration with the Japan Sumo Association, whose July wrestling tournament has just started, the burger checks in at 1,876 calories

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Rukmini Iyer’s quick and easy recipe for cashew rice bowls with stir-fried tofu, broccoli and kimchi | Quick and easy

These were an absolute hit with my children, albeit minus the cashews, and as any parent with toddlers who refuse to let their food touch other food will know, that’s a breakthrough. It’s well worth making the whole quantity here, because any leftovers are perfect for fried rice the next day – just make sure you cool the rice after making it, then refrigerate immediately and reheat until piping hot the next day.Kimchi brings a lovely contrast, so if you have or can get some, do add it.Prep 15 min Cook 20 min Serves 4200g white or basmati rice4 garlic cloves, peeled, 3 finely grated, 1 left whole 75g cashew nuts2 tbsp sesame oil 7-8cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated2 spring onions, trimmed and finely sliced1 small head broccoli, roughly chopped into 1cm pieces280g firm tofu, roughly chopped into 1cm cubes1 tsp flaky sea salt½ tsp turmeric Juice of 1 limeTo serveKimchiSliced red chilli (optional)First, cook the rice, and this is my magic microwave method: you’ll need a large Pyrex bowl and a plate that will neatly cover the top and act as a lid. Put the rice, 400ml just-boiled water and the whole garlic clove in the bowl, cover with the plate and cook on medium (that is, if your microwave’s maximum power setting is 1,000W, you want to cook it at 800W) for 11 minutes

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Grilled sardines and tomato and anchovy pie – Irina Janakievska’s Balkan recipes for summer

Along the Adriatic coast, sardines are usually grilled over an open fire (na gradele) and served with lemon, excellent local olive oil and blitva, a side dish of young swiss chard, potato and garlic. Fresh sardines are key (they should smell of the sea) and do cook them whole (the heads add wonderful flavour and the small bones soften during cooking). On the Croatian island of Vis, two beloved pogačas (bread)– viška and komiška – tell a tale of friendly rivalry. Both are savoury bread pies (pogača being the word for bread and similar in both composition and etymology to Italian focaccia) filled with onions and salted fish (typically anchovies or sardines), a nod to the island’s ancient fishing and seafaring heritage. The key difference? Tomatoes

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How to make perfect bún chả – recipe | Felicity Cloake's How to make the perfect …

When I visited Hanoi a decade ago, I was living in Hackney, east London, an area with a large Vietnamese community, so I felt, if not quite an expert, at least a little familiar with the cuisine. But it turned out no number of nights out on Kingsland Road could prepare me for the assault on the senses that was my first meal in the city, crouched on a plastic stool by the roadside and enjoying what Uyen Luu describes as “the irresistible sweet, treacly smell of barbecued patties and caramelised pork”, all mingled with traffic fumes.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more

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Lapin, Bristol: ‘We’re not in Cafe Rouge now’ – restaurant review | Grace Dent on restaurants

Peculiar, meta, slightly earnest, definitely deliciousThe French, at least at one stage in culinary history, would not have balked at eating the entire cast of Watership Down in a robust dijon sauce. The British, on the other hand, have always been rather less keen, so it was surprising to hear reports that Lapin, a new French restaurant in Bristol, had been struggling to keep fluffy bunnies on its classic, single-sheet menu due to supply reasons, apparently because its game dealer couldn’t shoot them quickly enough to meet Lapin’s demand. Instead, its diners had had to settle for confit duck leg, coarse sausage and deep-fried pig’s head.Lapin patently aims to offer actual French cooking, albeit stopping short of the likes of pungent andouillette, complete with its tubey innards escaping on to the plate. That said, I’d bet that chef Jack Briggs-Horan and restaurateur Dan O’Regan tinkered with the idea before accepting that serving something quite so smelly in a small, repurposed shipping container was probably one Gallic step too far