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Welcome to
Secret Breakfast

An exclusive newsletter, the best place to start your day with bad Danish movies and good oyster caramel

Hi there!

How're you doing? Me, I feel like somebody cracked my spine in two and this is exactly how I am supposed to feel.

A few years ago, I had to fly to an important meeting in California. A few hours before take-off, I had two ribs broken. I flew anyway but drank a little more than usual.

I like to think my aching back is not a symptom, but a clue, a sign that something extraordinary can happen, far from home. I'll keep you updated, and maybe have one glass of Chablis.

Piero

PS: yes, I'm going somewhere; yes, food will be involved.

Picture: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GETTY IMAGES; cover art from Paris, s’il vous plaît by Eleonora Marangoni.

THE BEST QUOTE

→ Carsten Höller, ‘I don’t want flowers on my food, ever. It disturbs me’. The artist’s new project is a restaurant in Stockholm, with strict, brutalist rules. An interesting point of view on food.

THE MISSING INGREDIENT
"TOSCANA" IS AN AWFUL, PREDICTABLE MOVIE WITH A QUITE INTERESTING SANDWICH IN IT

One of the consequences of the Danish Cooking Reinassance is we're flooded with danish movies about tormented chefs.

Take Toscana, a film with the most predictable plot: an angry and unhappy starred chef, an inheritance in Tuscany. He wants to sell, he falls in love with a lovely lady and with all those weird Italians always drinking wine and giving away cheese for free.

A wise guy wrote: Toscana drops an astringent protagonist into a pleasant setting and ends up with the same old predictable stuff.

I really do not regret that René Redzepi or Rasmus Kofoed never had a father who left them some land in Italy!

What's to save about that movie? The panino sequence, in which he assembles the sandwich you see in the picture.

Extravirgin olive oil on bread
Garlic rubbed over the bread
Toast the bread
Make some pesto: basil, oil, Parmigiano and pine nuts
Pesto on one side of the bread
Salami
Thinly sliced eggplant, roasted, then lemon juiced
Parmigiano, again
Some green salad and other greens

Wanna try?

Screenshot: TOSCANA on Netflix

The only good coming out of a diaspora
★★★

It's a book about Arab heritage. And it's one of the rarest books that you could eat every single recipe and never miss anything else. Reem Assil is great in her own word about "the sense that food might provide a vehicle to connect me with my life’s purpose". Just add flatbread.

Arabiyya by Reem Assil
→ Shortplot: 🥒 🇵🇸 🦙 🍆

RANDOM ACTS OF HUNGER
This is the space where I share some food (un)related stuff of my week

🇦🇱10 Traditional Dishes to Look For in Tirana 🇳🇱Rotterdam's Kapsalon and the 10 Worst Rated Dutch Food and Beverages ⚔️Gladiators weren't vegetarians, they were just hungry 🍳A day in the life of a British greasy spoon café 🧜🏼‍♀️No one wants to work in restaurants anymore 🍬Oyster caramel! 🍕Scaccia Ragusana is the old new new pizza babka (★recipe) 🐶Why dog and cat food is so expensive 📉One happy thought: banks collapsed in 2008 – and our food system is about to do the same 🌯An edible tape to hold that messy burrito together 🥄It's overnight oatmeal season (★recipe) 🇹🇳🇧🇬Two things could surprise you: Turkish gozleme (★recipe) and Bulgarian ljutenica sauce (★recipe)

FOOD FOR LATER

Of meat and men

Jenny Dorsey / Prism

I started this one because I wanted to know more about the "performative masculinity of cooking beef". Then it made me reflect on beef’s chemical makeup, that "works incredibly well paired with everything from floral notes (hyssop, angelica) and herbaceous options (eucalyptus, lovage), to tree fruits (pear, guava)".

When my husband left me, I headed for the kitchen – here’s how comfort food can save the soul

Bee Wilson / The Guardian

"Comfort food should really be called trauma food. It’s what you cook and eat to remind you you’re alive when you are not entirely sure this is true". Nothing to add here.

What Dinner Will Look Like in the Next 100 Years, According to Scientists (and Sci-Fi Authors)

Alex Beggs / Bon Appétit

Food in 2032, 2042, and 2122. We better enjoy coffee and avocados now. Too bad I will never live enough to eat the 3D-printed tortilla chips made from hydroponic black bean paste.

SEASON 2 - ISSUE 83
Secret Breakfast is a newsletter
by Piero Macchioni

Welcome to Secret Breakfast

Welcome to
Secret Breakfast