I met Josh Greenfield a few years ago on a Washington Square Park bench. He was playing some songs on an acoustic guitar with one of his bandmates when my friend and I struck up a conversation with them. They were so great we had to know if they were in a band and of course they were (they’re called Canon Logic, look them up you won’t be sorry!).
But when not playing music with his band, Josh is a part of a food/cooking partnership with his brother Mike. They’re called Brothers Green and they are AWESOME. I recently caught up with Josh to talk about what they do, how he got into it, and some of his thoughts about food and cooking!
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| Josh and Mike, Courtesy Brothers Green Facebook |
HN: What is your affiliation?
JG: Brothers Green. My Brother and I have our own cooking show and we throw private parties for people upon special request only.
HN: How did you and your brother wind up working together? What’s the backstory to that?
After spending a few years in NYC with my band, Canon Logic, and doing everything that I could to avoid "real" work, I started cooking all of my meals to save money. I have always had a strong love for food since I was a kid and so it seemed like the natural thing to do. I would invite friends over, we were all broke, artists, musicians, creative people, we would hang out, paint, play music, juggle, go on adventures, and cook.
I started exploring wild ideas and using my friends as test subjects for new recipes like Pesto Ice Cream. Everyone started to really enjoy the food and slowly people were asking me to cook for their weekly meals and for their private parties. Word spread, things took off, and at that time I needed help managing that and the band. My brother had just graduated from college, he too had a strong passion for cooking so I asked him to come help me out. We started getting booked for more and more events, only doing specialized, personal events based around a specific situation. Someone would tell us what they needed, their price, what sort of food, how many people, etc, and we would spend our days crafting a meal specifically to their needs. Unlike catering, unlike restaurants, people really enjoyed the personal touch.
During that time a friend who just graduated NYU with a film degree, Adam Saewitz, moved in and started filming us for fun. Slowly we started editing the footage together and putting out episodes on our own time. We were approached by a new channel that was being funded by Youtube to have the first official cooking network on Youtube. They loved what we were doing and gave us a show. That was almost two years ago and we have been filming ever since with a new show in the works for a major network that I can't reveal yet.
HN: What is your favorite restaurant of all time?
JG: My favorite restaurant of all time, sounds silly, but it has to be my house. My girlfriend loves to cook and we cook together often. We barely ever eat out and often when we do I wish we had cooked in. That being said I am always up to try something new and there are always fun new restaurants opening up in the city.
Buddakan used to by my favorite restaurant as a kid, it was always a treat going there, their food was so out of the ordinary (at the time) and it was all family style and delicious. Serving calamari salad, delicious seared duck, and all sorts of asian fusion stuff I had never seen before.
Buddakan used to by my favorite restaurant as a kid, it was always a treat going there, their food was so out of the ordinary (at the time) and it was all family style and delicious. Serving calamari salad, delicious seared duck, and all sorts of asian fusion stuff I had never seen before.
HN: What is your best kitchen gadget and why?
JG: Favorite kitchen gadget, so many gadgets. Recently though I've been using my pressure cooker a lot to make great stocks, my new immersion blender to blend the crap out of stuff and make foams, and my sous vide machine to cook cheap pieces of meat and make them as tender as the best fillet you've ever had.
HN: What is your favorite easy-to-make / go-to recipe?
JG: Quick and easy recipes vary but I find the best way to eat quick is to pre prep some simple stuff. Cut up veggies, marinade meats, make a few simple sauces and marinades. Then whenever you are hungry you take out some ziplock bags filled with the different foods, heat up a non-stick pan, toss in some of the meat, cook that down, add the veggies, throw in some noodles/rice, hit it with sauce at the end, and boom a quick great balanced meal.
When I first moved to NYC I created these mini flatbread pizzas. Flatbread pizzas are great, you don't need an oven, you can add any toppings, and make them in minutes.
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| Foraging in Prospect Park, Courtesy Brothers Green Instagram |
(Check out a link to a flatbread pizza recipe and some other easy recipes at the bottom of the post!)
HN: What do you do when you are not in the kitchen? Unique hobbies?
JG: Unique hobbies, well that changes a lot. At this point music is not a hobby, it is a way of life, but I like to go foraging for wild edibles and mushrooms in the parks. I have been doing a lot of kung fu training recently and I love to read and write new books. Also juggling is great.
HN: Who has influenced your cooking the most?
JG: Recently I have been all about Heston Blumenthal, owner of Fat Duck in England. He’s one of the best chefs in the world. What makes him special is his love for food in an fun exploratory way. He isn't just about perfection, he is about making his guests feel like kids, creating a space in food that makes them let their guard down and challenge everything that they know about food. It’s rare to find well known chefs that do this and he is the best. He even created an entire menu based on Alice In Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with edible wallpaper and a chocolate fountain.
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| Courtesy Brothers Green Facebook |
HN: Are there any culinary trends you love and ones that you cannot get used to?
JG: Recently I have been messing around with the idea of dining in the dark. I don't think it has reached its full potential because chefs tend to focus on the meal being in the dark and serving food that you are unsure of. But we are working on a new special dinner event that screw with all of your senses. Eating things that look like one thing and taste like another. Eating food in relation to music. Eating food without being able to see anything and more.
I have been hard on molecular gastronomy, some of it is just too intense for me but I love the ideas behind it. Taking food and showing it in a new way to really excite people. For me, food isn't all about flavor, it is easy to make something taste good. But to serve a dish that truly changes the way someone approaches not just food but their life, that is exciting to me. To make them think about what they are doing, to challenge them, make them take a risk, that is what really gets me going.
Huge thank you to Josh for taking the time to talk with us here at Hungry Nomads! Make sure to watch for their videos on Youtube. You never know what he and Mike are going to come out with next, and it will 100% make you hungry!
You can check out the flatbread pizza recipe he mentioned above, along with a couple other easy recipes to try here (all recipes in the description!): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv5-1ZjkmmE
By Laura Zimmerman
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