Food Guys

Greg and Jon take on palm oil, whose associations with environmental destruction and human-rights abuses are increasing as rapidly as its ubiquity in manufactured foods. Even as a substitute for trans-fats, when consumed in large amounts, palm oil isn't particularly healthy, given that it's saturated. The Food Guys' advice? "Read those labels and when you can, avoid processed foods."

Jon: "Greg, I know you publish a lot of recipes, but falafel? Where’d you come up with falafel?"

Food Guy Greg Patent describes how to roast a 3-5 pound butterflied whole chicken, basted with herb-garlic-butter paste:

Food Guy Jon Jackson has always resented the annual litter of bland little yellow plums on his lawn, a gift from a tree at the top of his driveway. But one Food Guy's trash, it seems, is every Parisian's treasure: these are Mirabelle plums, the coveted stuff of subtle, tangy autumn plum jam.

Cook pork or waterfowl at very low temperature for a long time in fat, and you've got confit, or preserved meat. It's an old specialty of southwest France, where goose, duck or pork confit is often served as part of cassoulet. Food Guys Jon and Greg explain why a cooked goose enveloped in a bed of its own fat is not alarming, but delicious.

Food Guy Jon Jackson recalls the words of cauldron-stirring neighbor Mrs. Minervini, as she prepared for the weekly invasion of an army of neighborhood children: "When you're cooking that marinara sauce, you've got to turn it off at some point and let it sit for awhile. Then you can go on and finish it off before the people come. You want to serve it hot, but it's no good cooking it right straight through."

Food Guy Greg Patent writes: "I’ve been pizza crazy lately, and I want to share with you a terrific, authentic recipe for Neapolitan Pizza dough, created by Johnny (Gianni) Di Francesco. I happened across a YouTube video of him, and he has so much to say and demonstrate, you just must have a look. But before we do, I want to tell you about this terrific pizza dough."

“It’s just that we still have so much of it," said Dorothy Patent about the leafy bunches of spinach filling the fridge a week after Greg's most recent farmers market foray. So Greg got busy with spinach, ham, mustard, macaroni - and one skillet. The results are below.

Food Guys Jon and Greg take Karen Oberlin's recording of the Renee Rosnes & David Hadju song "I Like Pie" as their jumping-off point to discuss huckleberry pie and under what limited circumstances Greg allows ice cream to be served anywhere near his. To make huckleberry pie, he thickens 1.75 pounds of fresh or frozen huckleberries with crystal tapioca inside this pie crust.

If you're keeping tabs on the history of human food - and keeping score on modern American diet books - there's a tuber-sized hole in the founding principle of the Paleo diet, with its avoidance of dairy, legumes, pulses, grains and starches. Apparently, ominivorous Old Stone Age people ate starchy cereals and roots whenever possible, drying tubers and acorns and grinding them into flour. "A lot of Paleo diets talk about health, but by this they mean weight loss. And I can’t think of a single human ancestor who wanted to lose weight," says Amanda Henry of Leiden University in the Netherlands.