Welcome to Secret Breakfast / An exclusive newsletter, the best place to start your day by being late one day, browning butter, queuing for croissants and dining with a Soviet dictator

Hi there!

It’s Wednesday, I’m late, I know.

Let’s roll.

Piero

Photo Kindel Media 

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THE BEST QUOTE

✦ Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

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THE MISSING INGREDIENT

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR WHEN WE WAIT IN LINE FOR AN INSTAGRAMMABLE-CROISSANT

I’ve mixed feelings about queuing for food.

I respect queuing - orderly queuing - because it’s a sign of politeness and structure. Think about Japan: that’s what I mean.

I also hate queuing, because I may be a little misanthropic, and I do not like people too close to me for too much time. Think about Disneyland: that’s what I mean.

Nevertheless, food and queues are often together. You can have queues for food in the Weimar Republic (the year 1918), and people standing 2 hours in line just to have a bite of Cedric Grolet’s brioches in Paris.

In my life, I politely waited more than an hour for an omakase sushi in Tokyo at 5 AM, but I’m used to doing the same now for Danish pastries in Milan if I happen to want them on a Saturday morning.

It sounds bad, but most of the places I had to queue for tried to keep their spirit. I mean: they could McDonaldize the workflow and the prime materials, and they do not. They grind your beans just before kicking up your Espresso, they run out of the pastry of the day, and they keep smiling even if on the road people are like “They should do this and that and everything will be quicker”.

I do not have a theory for food queuing. But after all the time you’ve spent on the street, just notice if what’s inside the shop was really worth it.

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THE BOOK

I’ll Bee Your Secret

★★★☆☆

Speeding cooking up. Slowing it down. Strategies for cooking alone or ideas for when you want to luxuriate in kitchen therapy. Cooking legend Bee Wilson (too much?) shares her tricks, as an older sister would do. It’s not rocket science, but a warm compilation of hearty - and sometimes messy - preparations (such as Grated Tomato and Butter Pasta Sauce with Basil). I link to the author’s page because I really can’t figure out the different cover artworks for the British and the American editions.

The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen by Bee Wilson
→ 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

🦃Make a Plan for your Thanksgiving 📺Then trash it because you’ve watched the Alison Roman Special 🍪Biscuit p’tit beurre (★recipe) 🥭One of the messiest Mexican Snacks: Mango en Vinagre 🍫How to Hijack a Quarter of a Million Dollars in Rare Japanese Kit Kats ☕️It’s everywhere in my feed: The Most Crunchy Cappuccino Bun 🪼The increasingly stable business of jelly 🍷Global wine production falls to 62-year low in 2023 🐄Why can’t we just quit cows? 🥜Root Vegetable Mafé (★recipe) 🟫Brown Butter Is Having Its Moment: Brown butter, buttermilk pancakes with a maple praline syrup (★recipe) and Brown-butter-ricotta-rigatoni (★recipe) 🇫🇷The 2000 Feuilles de Pierre Hermé, en 13 étapes 🍞This is a rerun, but you need it: Sourdough Shokupan (Japanese Milk Bread) 🍐How to Make candied pears that look like stained glass, with edible flowers 🔪How To Cut The Most Common Vegetables 🇮🇳Since I’m late, I’m late for Recipes to Celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, too 🐉I’ve read How Rebecca Yarros Packed Dragons, Magic and Steamy S*x Into a Blockbuster Fantasy and I fell for It 

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FOOD FOR LATER

Dinner With A Dictator: What Joseph Stalin Ate 
Witold Szabłowski / Lithub

He couldn’t stand cooking. He dreamt about a bathtub full of pickled gherkins. Here is the Soviet Strong Man.

No recipe for success: what happens to TV cooking stars after the show? 
Victoria Namkung / The Guardian (sponsored content, as in The Guardian was paid for the article, not SB)

When the pastry chef turned educator Derek Corsino walked on to the set of the Food Network’s hit series Spring Baking Championship, he didn’t expect much.

➤ Last week's most clicked link was about The Best Food Books to Read This Fall. And that's all for today.

💩 Ah, last week I missed there was the wrong cover on the book section. I’m sorry, I’m really braised these days. The book was The Upstairs Delicatessen and it’s really good.