Then Add Controlled Doses of Chaos ☄️

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Welcome to Secret Breakfast / An exclusive newsletter, the best place to start your day with Southern Indian cuisine, some powdered beer, and a controlled dose of chaos

Ed Sheeran, the blue monster of sadness, and… some fish and chips, maybe?

Hi there!

Let’s talk about sadness. In Ed Sheeran’s latest video, sadness is a blue monster (puppy?), following him and getting bigger frame after frame.

Have you ever given sadness a shape?

Wilted lettuce, soggy-bottomed pies, overcooked risotto, and non-leavened bread to me are 1,000 sadder than a giant furry creature or - I don’t know - having mayo for breakfast mistaking it for expired yogurt.

What’s the saddest thing you’ve ever cooked or eaten?

Piero

Ed Sheeran - Eyes Closed

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THE BEST QUOTE

✦ Edward Slingerland, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. But my favorite passage is this:

“Banquets and religious rituals centered on kimchee and yogurt would provide all of the proposed benefits of alcohol with none of the costs. Spirits should be perfectly happy with some nice, nutritious pickles instead of a poisonous, bitter beverage. Yet no culture on the planet offers pickles to the ancestors, and the world has yet to see the rise of a teetotaling, kimchee-based super civilization. This strongly suggests that there is something special about alcohol, and more to the function of intoxication, than we have realized.”

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THE MISSING INGREDIENT

SOUTHERN INDIAN CUISINE IS A VIDEOGAME NOW

Who wants to play a narrative cooking game where you play as an Indian mom who immigrates to Canada with her family in the 1980s?

Venba is a Nintendo Switch videogame focused on Southern Indian cuisine (Tahil cuisine), which requires a lot of proper timing to get right.

Even if I presented this like boring advertising, I’m not paid to write this: I was just curious about the game and the Tamil style. The first obstacle you encounter in the play is some steamed white lentils and rice cakes called Idli (★recipe, I don’t know if you’ll ever make it, video) and you need something like a mini-mill to start making it. Then it has to ferment. Then you cook in massive quantities.

I can’t even imagine the further levels of this Venba!

Picture: Venba

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THE BOOK

No Menu is an Island

★★★

Katie Parla’s unstoppable. She’s conquering Italy piece by piece, as a foodie Giuseppe Garibaldi driving a Fiat Panda: first, she got the South (Food of the Italian South), and now she secured Sicily, Sardinia, and a few notable small islands. The 85 recipes in this book are part of the Italian tradition and are shared with respect and passion.

Italian Islands by Katie Parla
→ Shortplot: 🐟 🍋 🐇 🇮🇹

❍ OnlyPans
This is where Secret Breakfast picks juicy content from food creators

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RANDOM ACTS OF HUNGER

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

👨‍🍳The perennial: 10 reasons to date a chef 🎒What to bring on your next 2,600-mile walk 🔫I Think I’m in love with Tapas magazine's social media manager: this f*ck / marry / kill game is so much fun 💣This Is What Putin and Xi Had for Dinner in Moscow (poorly translated) 🥞Qatayef Asafiri, stuffed Semolina Pancakes (★recipe) 🍋And All that I Can See is just another Lemon Cheesecake Cookie (★recipe) 🇭🇹As Italian Citizen I don’t think I’ll ever cook Haitian Soup Joumou (★recipe) ☕️Ask the Stars Your Next Starbuck Order 🍺May The Lord Forgive the German Monks That Created World's First Powdered Beer 👀Steal a Couple Ideas from Stanley Tucci’s Pantry 🥦The Best Broccoli Salad Can Hang in the Fridge for Days (★recipe) 🔪Hey, Agatha Christie novels are being rewritten to not offend modern audiences. I would start by eliminating the murders.

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FOOD FOR LATER

Panettone, Tiramisu, Parmesan, Pizza, Carbonara, “cucina povera”. This is the interview Italian politicians have been talking about for days.

➤ Last week's most clicked link was the one about the restaurants hopping on the subscription bandwagon. And that's all for today.