Pasta is a staple of Italian food, but noodles are also an important part of Asian cuisine. Pasta is versatile, comes in hundreds of shapes and sizes, and on this week’s Please Explain we’ll find out how it’s made and ways to cook with it. Joining us: Ron Palladino, pasta expert and Fresh Pasta counter general manager at Eataly, and Jack Bishop, editorial director of America’s Test Kitchen and author of several cookbooks, including The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, Pasta e Verdura, and the editor of Pasta Revolution.  

Food stylist Roscoe Betsill shares the tricks of his trade and explains what food stylists do to make foods look fresh and delicious in photographs.

Danny Meyer, of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Maialino, Blue Smoke, The Modern, and more, talks about the food that the chefs make for one another—the staff “family meal.” It is simple, often improvised, but special enough to please the chefs’ discerning palates. In Family Table: Favorite Staff Meals from Our Restaurant to Your Home, the restaurants’ culinary director, Michael Romano, coauthor of the award-winning Union Square Cafe Cookbook, collects and refines his favorite in-house dishes for the home cook, while served Karen Stabiner shares stories about how this imaginative array of dishes came to be.

A vanilla-flavored Italian custard made with buttermilk for a slightly tangy flavor, and a sweet, tart rhubarb and strawberry compote. The compote can also be served with yogurt or ice cream.

Try this delicious fried chicken at home. What distinguishes it is the crunch from two ingredients—Japanese panko bread crumbs and graham cracker crumbs.

Thinly sliced Korean barbecue piled into lettuce wraps and served with fresh and pickled vegetables. Make it at home!

Robin Shulman, author of Eat the City, talks about the fishers, foragers, butchers, farmers, poultry minders, sugar refiners, beekeepers, winemakers, and brewers—past and present—who’ve made New York City into such a great place for food.

Lou DiPalo, third-generation expert olive oil importer and the co-owner of Di Palo Fine Foods in New York City, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a writer and food historian who’s the author of The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, tell us all about olive oil--from its history to to how it's made to its many varieties.

Mark Bittman talks about what to cook for the perfect dinner party. He’ll also talk about altering his diet to lose weight and be healthier. He shares his plan in his new book, VB6: Eat Vegan Before 6:00 to Lost Weight and Restore Your Health…for Good, and provides all the necessary tools for making the switch to a “flexitarian” diet.

Try Mark Bittman's recipe for breakfast grains. You can you rice, quinoa, and the old standard—oats.

Mark Bittman's take on eggplant Parmesan that's delicious without the cheese.

Mark Bittman adds chickpeas to classic ratatouille to create a hearty main dish (vegan) meal.

Philip Galanes talks about dinner party etiquette—how do deal with diet restrictions, unexpected guests, hostess gifts, and steering conversation. He's the New York Times Social Q’s columnist and author of Social Q's: How to Survive the Quirks, Quandaries and Quagmires of Today.

Share your dinner party etiquette questions!

Food writers Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg talk about how to choose the perfect wines and other drinks for a dinner party—or any party. They’re the authors of What to Drink with What You Eat, The Food Lover’s Guide to Wine, and The Flavor Bible.

For Please Explain, Curious Cook Harold McGee talks about the science of cooking—from how heat changes meat to the differences between baking powder and baking soda. He’s the author of a number of books, including Keys to Good Cooking, and On Food and Cooking.

Eugenia Bone, author of Mycophilia: Revelations of the Weird World of Mushrooms, talks about the world of mushrooms and other fungi. She’ll cover how to forage for mushrooms, how to identify the good and the poisonous, how fungi grow, and how to eat them.

Margaret Roach offers her best tips for gardening, discouraging animal and insect pests, pickling and preserving, and more. In The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening and Life, she looks at what she's learned through gardening.

Saru Jayaraman, cofounder and codirector of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, discusses the low wages, poor working conditions, discriminatory labor practices that many restaurant workers across the country endure. Her book Behind the Kitchen Door looks at the working conditions at restaurants and at the people who work there, many of them immigrants and minorities, who live on some of the lowest wages in the country.

Ted Conover talks about going undercover as a U.S.D.A. inspector at Cargill Meat Solutions in Schuyler, Nebraska. He learned the the meat inspection trade, sees what goes on inside slaughterhouses and, much to his surprise, runs into a representative from Eli Lilly who’s looking for the effects of antibiotics on the meat. He’s written about it in May’s Harper’s magazine, "The Way of All Flesh: Undercover in an Industrial Slaughterhouse."