Welcome to Secret Breakfast / An exclusive newsletter, the best place to start your day with 40 kilos of meat, a slow-cooking romance, and food that isn’t really food

Hi there!

Are you busy? I’m as close to burnout as I’ve ever been. How do I know? For starters, I totally missed there was a food show with Zooey Deschanel. It’s called “What Am I Eating?”.

However, she doesn’t cook. If she did, well, that would have been an Alison Roman knockoff (and we should have called it out loud!).

Enjoy the week, enjoy the issue.

Piero

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THE BEST QUOTE

✦  Dani Lasa, director of research and development for Mugaritz, in Stage: The Culinary Internship.

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THE MISSING INGREDIENT

SLOW COOKING ROMANCE

French-Vietnamese director Hùng Tran Anh has just been awarded the Best Director award at the Cannes film festival.

The movie’s name is The Pot-au-Feu (La Passion de Dodin Bouffant) and it is said to have the best and longest opening cooking scene ever filmed: a 40-minute sequence depicting the meticulous preparation of a meal.

Plot! 🎺

Three-star chef Pierre Gagnaire served as a consultant on the film. But it was his former partner Michel Nave who had to manipulate 40 kilos of meat just for the pot-au-feu scene (★recipe, easy version) filmed with only one camera.

Get your pop-corns, I’m gonna watch this.

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THE BOOK

Green Light!

★★★

This one is not for anybody. Here are the good fellows at Basque Culinary Center, going wild and cataloging about 180 wild plants and herbs from the Iberian Peninsula. The book, which happens to be written in Spanish, has just won the Gourmand Award for the Best Food & Nature Book (in fact, hundreds of books seem to have won something there). It is an extremely well-crafted book with thoughtful insights for curious cooks and foragers.

Silvestre by Basque Culinary Center
→ Shortplot: 🌳 🍄 🌿 🐝

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RANDOM ACTS OF HUNGER

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

😎How The Dutch Won Burnout Doing Nothing 🍸The Edible Martini Is Here 🌶️9 Best Lucas Sin Recipes From Sticky Rice to Stir-Fried Greens (★recipes) 👔Succession’s Cousing Greg Gregged a Bar 🧀Make a Better American Cheese 🥗The 15 Best Salad Recipes That Will Blow You Away (★recipes) 👠A Cultural History of Barbie 🥪The Rise of the Luxury Picnic Industry 🍚How Global Rice Farming Is Being Transformed by Climate Change 🍴Why You Can't Stop Watching People Eat People on TV 🗽Nicholas Braun's New York City Restaurants 📷Rankin On Rankin: The Photographer Talks Portraiture, Career Longevity and Becoming a Celebrity Himself 🛸The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023, so far 📨5 tips versus junk mail 🇭🇺 18 of the Best Restaurants in Budapest and 9 bakeries 🇪🇸The Romans governed the whole of Spain for more than six centuries. Their first colony was called Italica, about 10 km from Sevilla. By the way, don’t order a Paella in Sevilla, Order This.

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FOOD FOR LATER

I Spent a Day Watching Your Steak Die 
Jordan Michelman / Bon Appétit (partial paywall)

Meat consumption can feel both wrong and right. This super-long longread brings you there, where most of us omnivores decided not to be.

Beware The Food That isn’t Food
Helen Lewis / The Atlantic (partial paywall)

Chris Van Tulleken is the podcaster who wrote Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind the Food That Isn't Food. Here are his strong opinions about soft bread and candy that never decays.

➤ Last week's most clicked link was the one about Mark Bittman’s dispatch from Rome, Italy. And that's all for today.