Orange Caramels and Red Codes 🚀
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to enjoy your last meal, living like a monk, dining like a king, and drinking Butter Tea
Hi there!
One day, if I'm lucky, I'll have grandchildren who might ask me: "Grandpa, what were you doing during the Third Information Crisis?" Or: "What worried you in the days leading up to the Great War of the Second World Disorder?".
I don't know if I'll have the courage to tell them that I was writing a food newsletter at late night hours.
Anyway, welcome to another week where we don't need to wish each other "may you live in interesting times".
Piero
✹Freida Mcfadden, Dear Debbie.
Bactery powered
Welcome to the only newsletter where you can find a book about bacteria in the cookbook section. Then, Colomina and Wigley's manifesto argues that microbes are the true architects of our buildings — and that eliminating them has made both our spaces and our bodies sick. The parallel with food is "obvious": the same war on bacteria that sterilized modern architecture is what industrial food production did to bread, cheese, and fermentation. The best kitchens, like the best buildings, have always been alive. Nevertheless, keep your kitchen tools clean, wash your vegetables and pasteurize those eggs!
We The Bacteria. Notes Toward Biotic Architecture by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigleye
→ Shortplot: 🦠 🍄🟫 🧫 🤤
The Ayatollah's Last Breakfast
While the Middle East was burning, and the rest of us were trying to make sense of this huge new war, one imperceptible detail lodged itself in my ear: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was having a breakfast meeting with aides during the very strikes that killed them.
We all fantasize about last suppers. Imagining something wonderful to eat if we could choose our final great meal. But what happens when your hour arrives without warning — mid-bite, mid-sentence, mid-meeting?
Ok, the supreme leader of Iran was basically a theologian who turned faith into a control mechanism, and signed death warrants on the way to the bank. He was responsible of mass executions, torture, systematic censorship, state-engineered poverty — while his financial network was estimated at $200 billion. A man who called gender equality "one of the biggest intellectual mistakes of the Western world".
He was neither a gentleman nor a foodie.
"We had a hard life. Sometimes for supper we had nothing but bread with some raisins," he is quoted as saying.
His favourite meal, reportedly, was nun-o-paneer-o-sabzi (★recipe, fancier version) — bread, cheese, and fresh herbs — the same frugal table as Ruhollah Khomeini. In Persian culture, this modest spread signals humility and detachment from the material world. To me, though, with its simple variety, it suggests something else entirely: the essential richness of sitting together.
Good call, Mr. K.
Then again, who can really know the truth? Can the supreme leader of Iran — for 37 years — ever say what he truly loves? Perhaps his most resonant words are about the opposite of eating: "Your fasting is a divine blessing. Fasting is a celestial banquet."
A man who ate bread and raisins. A man who called hunger a feast. And in the end, no choice at all about the last meal. Perhaps — given his record — the only thing that made him truly human.
🥣Chocolate-Oatmeal Carmelitas (★recipe) + 28 Fiber-Packed Oats Recipes, From Granola to Gluten-Free Bread (★recipes) 🫑Sami Tamimi's Stuffed Peppers (★recipe) 🥢The history of the frustrating Korea’s metal chopsticks 📺A Tibetan short movie about Butter Tea (★recipe) 🥣A Creamy Salad Dressing That Will Change Your Life 🫕This is the time of the year I try to understand Mapo Tofu (★recipe) 🍜Then I land to Dan Dan Noodles (★recipe) ☀️I Tried Replacing Nightlife With Daylife 🕶️As Meta smart glasses capture scenes in restaurants for social media, service workers and customers are becoming captive participants 🍇Is the vinegar sommelier in the house? 🍪The £45 Vanilla Flower Cookie and his expensive siblings 🎞️Rental Family is the film I enjoyed the most this year (trailer)
He lives like a monk. He dines like a king
Sara Deseran / San Francisco Standard
Nowadays the city of San Francisco - no shops, poor fentanyl zombies colonizing the streets - is quite shocking for us, Europeans. Anyway, this Michael Grepo is a 67-year-old retired federal worker, has eaten at some of the city’s best restaurants more than 50 times. And he’s still going.
A foodie tour of Iran: it's poetry on a plate
Yasmin Khan / The Guardian
This one is 9 years old. When food was (is) a wonderful vehicle for discovering Iran, with its fabulous regional produce featuring in stews, rice dishes, kebabs and desserts. By the author of The Saffron Tales: Recipes from the Persian Kitchen.
