Space for New Recipes 🌔

Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start spreading Italian hazelnut delicacies, while baking a sinful pie, dreaming about Malaysian food

Hi there!

As you know, NASA's Artemis II crew made history by traveling farther from Earth than any humans ever have.

To get that far, the crew had to undergo almost three years of training. As for the Nutella jar floating around them, on the other hand, nobody's talking.

Since crumbs are considered a safety hazard in space, no sandwiches are allowed — but NASA packed about 58 tortillas for the four astronauts.

I still can't figure out how they baked that space-safe cobbler on NASA's menu — but then again, I'm not exactly a rocket scientist.

Piero

PS: Here's an astronaut eating the Secret Breakfast logo (and honey) in space

✹Abby Jimenez, The Night We Met. This one is #1 Hardcover Fiction in the US this week.

At Mariam's table

Do you remember Palestine? Not the politics, not the headlines — the Palestine of home kitchens, overnight-soaked chickpeas, trays of kibbeh shaped shoulder to shoulder with sisters. That's where Mariam Daud comes from: daughter of Palestinian immigrants, raised in a family of 12, in a Cleveland restaurant where kids folded napkins between courses.
Today Mariam is one of the most beloved food voices on Instagram, followed as @mxriyum for recipes that feel both comforting and quietly inventive. Her debut cookbook is I Sleep in My Kitchen — 100 recipes spanning breakfast, small plates, soups, mains, and her signature bakes. At the heart of it: Palestinian American cooking. Msakhan (★recipe), the national dish, with soft flatbread, caramelized onions and tender stewed chicken. Tahini Browned Butter Banana Bread. Mediterranean Pasta Salad with sumac vinaigrette. And then Bang Bang Shrimp Tacos, pull-apart Cinnamon Rolls, Fluffy Browned Butter Rolls, and this Oozi , that is Spiced Rice with Beef, Peas and Carrots (★recipe). Her mother never kept a recipe to herself. Neither does she.

I sleep in my kitchen by Mariam Daud
→ Shortplot: 🫓 🫒 🤌 🕌

The Free Movie About Food You Haven't Seen Yet

Ten minutes. Free. Worth it.

Sandiwara — "theatrical performance" in Malay — was directed by Sean Baker (Anora) and commissioned by fashion brand Self-Portrait. Forget the fashion angle. This is a film about hunger: for food, for recognition, for home.

Michelle Yeoh plays five women across the streets and food courts of Penang, Malaysia. A food influencer. A restaurant critic. A waitress. A cook. A singer. One city, one evening, one night market where all five stories converge.

Baker shot it on an iPhone in two days, the same way he followed characters through Florida motels. The method doesn't change. Only the latitude does.

The detail that stays with you: the cook never leaves her kitchen. She doesn't know the critic is coming. She just cooks. Labor without an audience. Dignity without recognition.

Baker spent ten days in Penang before shooting. This is not a film that uses food as metaphor. The noodles are real. The hawker stalls are real. The hierarchy between critic and cook is real.

It premiered at Berlin, then Los Angeles. Then, quietly, online — for free.

🥞 Why All Pancakes Are Suddenly So Thick 🍜 BTS Cook Dinner Together Jin, Jimin, and V make janchi-guksu (★recipe) 🚲 The Yakult Ladies In Japan, probiotic delivery workers have become an informal antidote to the elderly loneliness crisis 🏜️ Fish plov, The Dish That Keeps the Spirit of the Aral Sea Alive 🦇 Quirks of Viennese Cuisine What's actually served when you order "fried mice" 💑 Aperitif Dînatoire, Not a dinner, not a cocktail party. American chefs embrace the French ritual 📵 Phone-Free Restaurants are a thing now 🐐 Padma Lakshmi Thinks You Should Eat More Goat 📖 How to Drink Soju 🍇 Kōso au raisin — fermented grape and sugar syrup, ready in 5–7 days (★recipe) 🍊 Orange Chaat — the viral Indian street snack that's sweet, tangy, spiced, and takes about five minutes (★recipe)

Are You in a Restaurant Gap Relationship?

Luke Fortney / The New York Times (gift link)

The "restaurant gap" serves as a critical diagnostic tool, revealing profound disparities in lifestyle, financial values, and risk tolerance that often determine a relationship's longevity. Empirical observations from relationship experts confirm that dining incompatibility is not merely a matter of taste. Ultimately, how a couple negotiates the culinary divides dictates whether their partnership evolves through mutual adaptation or fractures under the weight of irreconcilable differences.

My Week of Eating Literal AI Slop

Mia Mercado / The Cut (partially paywalled)

A journalist spent a week cooking recipes from TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook that showed clear signs of AI generation — fake audio, impossible physics, contradictory steps. Most results were inedible or unrecognizable: rubbery egg sheets sold as breadsticks, burnt zucchini goop, flavorless cheesecake mush. The only success was a chickpea wrap — later traced to a stolen recipe from Minimalist Baker. Her conclusion: AI hasn't replaced us in the kitchen yet, but it's flooding our feeds with low-quality content that wastes time, ingredients, and appetite.