Lasagne

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This is my recipe for Lasagne.

First, proceed as per my Spaghetti Bolognese recipe but make the sauce slightly thicker and only simmer for 10 minutes.

Then:

Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

  • 2oz butter
  • 2oz flour
  • 8oz grated Mozarella cheese
  • 1 pint of milk
  • nutmeg
  • salt
  • black pepper

Method

  • Melt the butter in a pan, being careful not to burn
  • add the flour, stiring constantly
  • cook for 30 seconds or so
  • Gradually add the milk, stirring all the time.
  • Continue heating and stiring until the sauce has fully thickened. Be careful of the heat, it can catch on the bottom of the pan and burn easily!
  • Take off the heat
  • Add the Mozzarella and stir in until melted – this produces a thick, rubbery sauce.
  • Stir in nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste

Making the lasagne

Ingredients

  • Pre-prepared meat sauce
  • Pre-prepared cheese sauce
  • 8oz grated mozarella cheese
  • nutmeg
  • Lasagne sheets – fresh is best

Method

  • Spread a small amount of the cheese sauce on the bottom of a large oven-proof dish.
  • cover the cheese sauce completely with lasagne sheets.
  • Spread a layer of meat on the lasagne sheets.
  • Repeat at least another two times, finishing with a cheese sauce layer.
  • Put the grated mozarella on top.
  • Lightly sprinkle nutmeg over the top.
  • Bake at 190 Deg C for 30-40 minutes, until the top is slightly browning and bubbling.
  • rest for a few minutes out of the oven.
  • Serve.

Spaghetti Bolognese, UK style.

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This is my recipe for Spaghetti Bolognese.

Ingredients

  • 1 lb or Minced (Ground) Beef
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 1 jar of passatta
  • 2 garlic cloves – finely chopped
  • 1 or 2 carrots – grated
  • some mushrooms
  • one pepper – any colour
  • Italian herbs – 1-2 tsp
  • salt
  • black pepper
  • 1 large onion
  • Worcestershire sauce – splash

Method

  • Fry the mince and onions together until the mince is browned and the onions are soft.
  • Add the mushrooms, garlic and peppers and fry for a few minutes more, until peppers and mushrooms begin to soften.
  • Add the tinned tomatoes, pasatta, Italian herbs and Worcestershire sauce.
  • Add salt and black pepper to taste.
  • simmer uncovered until the sauce is close to the desired thickness, then cover and continue to simmer for a total of 30 minutes or so.
  • Turn off and allow to rest for five minutes or so.
  • Serve on pasta of your choice.

Basic white bread

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This recipe is taken from the Fabulous Baker Brothers TV series. It makes a great white loaf.

Makes 1 large loaf

Prep 45 mins + 2 hours resting
Cook 30 mins + cooling

Ingredients

  • 560g strong white flour
  • 10g sea salt
  • 20ml rapeseed oil
  • 5g dried yeast (or 10g of fresh yeast if you can get it)
  • 300ml warm water

Method

  1. Weigh the flour and salt into a big bowl. Add the oil. Measure the water into a jug. With a fork, stir the yeast into the warm water. Empty the jug into the bowl and stir all the ingredients together.
  2. Knead the dough for 20 minutes (or 10 minutes in an electric mixer). Once you have a smooth and elastic dough nestle it back into the bowl and cover in cling film with no air gaps. Leave it in a warm place to grow to twice its size or for 1 hour, whichever is first.
  3. By hand, shape your dough so it fits evenly into a well-oiled large loaf tin, seal-side down. Dust the top of your loaf with a bit of flour and then cover the tin and leave it in a warm place to double in size or for 1 hour (whichever is first).
  4. Preheat the oven to 240°C/gas mark 9. Slash the top of your loaf and place on a baking sheet in the preheated oven. Throw a cupful of water onto the baking sheet for the perfect crust.
  5. Check it after 10 minutes and turn the oven down a notch (210°C/gas mark 6½). Take it out after 30 minutes when it’s baked and beautifully golden all over. It should sound hollow when tapped underneath.
  6. Turn the loaf out and cool it for at least 10 minutes on a wire rack. Serve with chips to make the perfect chip butty.

Tom’s top tips: Use sea salt, it is saltier and better for you. Don’t skimp on the kneading or be tempted to add more flour to it. Bake on a baking stone for less brick like results. To get the best out of your loaf keep it in linen or a paper bag in a bread bin, or once cooled, slice and freeze in a freezer bag

Qsmtp – all new, improved qmail.

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I recently embarked on a mission to make Qmail work with IPv6. I succeeded, in part, with the qmail-jms1 patched version of qmail. Overall, however, I was not completely happy with the jms1 approach. The author of this patch had added some slightly unusual functionality and most importantly this patch did does not appear to be compatible with the qmail-spp patch, which I used to perform valid user checks before accepting mail.

Recently. however, I discovered Qsmtp (http://opensource.sf-tec.de/Qsmtp/).

Qsmtp provides a drop in replacement for qmail-smtp and qmail-remote which provides advanced anti-spam features like SPF, DNS RBL, MAIL FROM validation, vpopmail user validation and more.

It also provides full IPv6 support.

For a Gentoo system, it’s as simple as adding the author’s overlay in layman and emerging netmail-Qsmtp.

This seems to work flawlessly. I’m impressed.

IPv6 switchover – are corporates taking it seriously?

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In the IT world, most people have heard of IPv6 by now. Many Internet-centric companies already have IPv6 connectivity and an IPv6 web presence. Many ISPs are set to start the roll-out of IPv6 to end-users this year. Outside of these companies, however, people seem to have little understanding about IPv6.

In my work as an IT Architect, I see many proposed solutions. Worryingly, it seems many companies are still designing IPv4 only networks to be deployed in 2012 and 2013 with no consideration of how they will provide IPv6 capability, both internally and for internet-facing services. Failing to provide IPv6 capability at the outset could result in a whole host if problems.

Deploying an IPv4-only network now could result in the requirement to re-design in less time than was originally planned for, introducing more cost and work. For companies whose web presence is core to their business, as IPv6-based connections to home users become the norm, loss of revenue could result. Most companies consider email an essential service nowadays. As more organisations switch to IPv6 there may be issues with mail routing. IPv4 addresses will become more expensive and less available in the near future, in fact this process has already started. Growing an IPv4 deployment may become increasingly expensive and difficult because of this.

This issue does not just affect Internet-facing services either. Although it is possible to run a mixed environment, this tends to work better if client PCs run native IPv6 stacks rather than doing translation at the network layer. This means reconfiguring many machines to support dual-stack working or switching to an IPv6 only network internally. All of the main operating systems can handle this fine, it’s embedded devices like network printers and IP ‘phones which may struggle without a firmware update. Many vendors of these type of devices seem to be seeing the IPv6 switchover as a method to force clients to upgrade to newer versions of these devices and hence are not offering firmware updates to provide IPv6 support.

In summary then, companies would do well to consider their roadmap to IPv6 capability sooner rather than later. Indeed, those companies which take this on board now could use this as a strategic edge over their competitors.

Qmail update.

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In my quest to IPv6-ify all my equipment, I’ve finally found a viable patch to enable IPv6 in Qmail. I’m going to apply this tonight. Once this is done, my DNS, SMTP, HTTP and IMAP services will all be IPv6 capable.