Today's show is being brought to you by Bob's Redmill, believers in good food for all. Learn more at Bob's Redmill.com slash podcast. We asked our hosts what Heritage Radio Network means to them. Listen in to hear what they had to say. Hi, everybody.
This is Carrie Diamond, host of Radio Cherry Bomb, and I'm here to tell you why I love Heritage Radio. It's all Dave Tatasure. 100%. It's what keeps me coming back every Thursday. I pretend it's pizza.
I pretend it's the bomb squad, but it's Dave. Do your part to keep Heritage Radio Network alive by supporting our summer drive at heritage radio network.org slash donate. Hello and welcome to Cooking You's. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you alive on the Heritage Radio Network every Tuesday from roughly 12 to roughly 1245 on uh Roberto Pizzeria in Bushwig. Brooklyn.
Joined as usual with Nastasia of the Hammer Lopez. How are you doing, Stas? We got plenty of special guests. We have again with me because this is uh, you know, the fifth or sixth month of uh take your uh take your child to work life. Yeah, I should be I should be be able I should be having my independence back by December.
Yeah, so yeah, Booker Booker is here. One half of the team, Booker and Dax. Where's my mic? Uh we're sharing a mic. We're sharing a mic.
You can share it with Nastasia. Nastasia hates being near the mic. Yeah, she never uses it. Can I put my headphones back on? The yelling done.
The yelling is done, Booker. Uh by the way, while Booker's putting his headphones on, we got Dave in the booth. How are you doing, Dave? I'm good. How are you doing?
I don't know. How was your how was your week? Uh it's pretty uneventful. Any any cooking issues and/or eating issues? Uh no, no.
Uh there's an there's a new pizza here at Roberto's, so that's a good eating issue. Oh, yeah, what is it? It's called the Ursula Parade. It's got clams on it. It's delicious.
Oh, like like uh like from Little Mermaid. Uh yeah, like the mermaid parade, but it's a big thing. I used to watch that all the time. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's funny when yeah, Ursula's two little poopsies.
Yeah, that those the moray eels, uh, her nickname for them were poopsies, yes. Uh does it have octopus on it on account of the fact that she was a freaking octopus and not a clam? Well, you'd have to talk to management about that. I don't know. You'll turn back into a mermaid, and you belong to me.
Yeah. All right. You know, considering that Booker hasn't seen that show in like seven years, it's pretty good memory. You know when I feel that like, don't you remember? Anyway, well, we got more.
We're getting stuck. No, I saw it on my 10th birthday once. That was five years ago. All right, fine. All right.
Well, hold on. We got more people to introduce Booker. I also saw it when I was 12. Okay. In it in its entirety?
Uh, yes. On VHS, DVD or Netflix? On the plane once. On the plane. So who the heck knows what format that was?
You watched it on a plane? Yeah. That was what you chose to watch on a plane? It was it was one of the choices. All right.
Well, good. You know, but uh, so is she one of the Disney princesses that you actually like? Um, well, I kind of grew out of it. Yeah, I didn't I don't I threaten you constantly with like uh buying uh uh frozen cereal and I hate frozen. And I believe I mentioned on air once that uh the kids were stealing my toothbrushes.
Uh when I was an Elsa toothbrush, so that when we're about to take a toothbrush, I'm like, heck no, I'm not taking that babyish toothbrush. Yes, they did they take your toothbrushes. It was a great strategy. Well, because kids just don't care. They're like, oh, this is a toothbrush.
I'm being forced to brush my teeth. So I will take this toothbrush, which is horrible, horrifying. Uh we have uh Nick Wong, formerly of uh Som Bar and French cloner. How are you doing? Hello.
What's that clapping noise? That's uh fake applause, Booker. That's called Candle. Yeah. Oh, well, we actually have a good studio audience uh here.
And we have uh in the booth uh Tim, right? Yep. So okay, so Tim is supporter of uh the Heritage Radio Network. Why don't you tell us your your story here? What what you do, where you're from.
And is that your family? Why don't they come in? Bring a chair in. Oh, they'll be they'll be around in a bit. Yeah, that's my family.
Uh my wife and my son Jack. Nice. Um yeah, I'm from California. Um been out there hanging out. Uh went to University of Michigan and I'm working at Apple now.
Oh, yeah, what do you do at University of Michigan? Uh just Ooh, you work for Apple? Can you get me a free iPhone 8? I've never heard of that before. It's coming out.
It's coming out this fall. Uh not according to people who actually work there. If if you were to mention anything about a future product, like a lightning bolt would come out of this Steve Jobs ghost would come back and drill a hole in his head instantly, he'd fall over like a SWAT team. Probably true. Yeah, and and listen, we we really don't want to get started with Apple discussions, like for instance, like things that like, you know, for as much as I love all the Apple products, how much a few things could make my life so much better that they refuse to do because they prefer to run the way, make me work the way they want me to work instead of allowing me to work the way that I would like to work.
Are you familiar with this argument from outsiders? Absolutely. But hey, great product. Look, look at look at the number of Apple products we have sitting around here right now. So you know, you won, we lost.
Uh that's my mom. We're all jealous of my mom. She has an iPhone seven plus red. Oh, yeah, super, super jealous. Uh so what do you do for the uh for Apple?
What do you do for for Big Apple there? Uh software engineering. Oh, so like you're like uh you're you're uh some sort of like a monster. You're some sort of a not in the bad way, like good monster. Yeah, no, I mean uh been there ten years, and so we uh do all the operating systems for the different platforms and everything.
Yeah, all right. Well, uh at lunchtime, uh we'll we'll just go at it. Yeah. List your grapes. Uh super.
Um, so what do we got? We got uh Nastasia, we got a caller on the air here or no? All right, so let me read the question first, and then uh then we'll bring in our experts on it, because we've got some experts on it, and we'll we'll see what's going on. None of you guys have had any sort of cooking and or eating issues in the past week, huh? I feel that this is unusual.
Maybe you've just been boring. Eventually, Nastasia can talk about the comedy show that we went to last night. And Peter Kim, our favorite, our favorite uh whipping post. He uh whipped. He got whipped.
So Nastasia, who by the way, as any of you who know her in person know, is incredibly mean to people. Like incredibly dis if she doesn't know you, Nick, back me up on this. No, that's right. Uh yeah, yeah, right. But dismissive anyway.
She's dismissive. Hey. What do I say? Don't interrupt. Ah.
Also good. Oh my god, Booker is so awesome. So the uh so anyway, so the point being that uh Nastasia is very dismissive of people, right? And so what happened is Peter. So this is to show that Nastasia is actually nicer than Peter Kim is in these situations.
So the MC for this event, I mean, admittedly, Nastasia. Not not funny. Not funny. Uh, but Peter Kim decides, he didn't earn my laugh, so I'm not gonna laugh. And doesn't even crack a smile.
So the guy starts picking on him, and it just got where's for everyone and Stasi and I were like, dude, just crack a smile, and everyone's life's gonna be better. Like he'll be funnier. What, Booker? What I was gonna say is, because of, yeah, because of my dad talking about how mean Nastasia is, he said his ringtone to whatever Nastasia calls him. It's him saying, You're mean to me.
Yeah, that is true. When Nastasia calls me, it says, You are mean to me. You are mean to me. Can you try to copy it like the real voice, like as if you were re-recording it? But that is him.
That is me. I mean, I can have Nastasia saying it. Is that what you want? You want Nastasia saying? I know here.
What would your ringtone be, Booker? Um, yeah, you know Willy Wonko's you get nothing. Yeah, no, but what would your ringtone for me? In other words, like when you call my phone, what what should what should my phone say? I think I know what it should say.
You know what I think it should say? What? Shut up, Dad! Well, I That's what I think it should say. Can you say that for people so they can understand?
Shut up, Dad! See, that's that's what I'm saying. Dad, Dad, I only do it when you like do things intentionally to annoy me. Like what? Like when he talks about poop or something.
Because of that, I use crude language. I use crude bathroom language. Well, listen, listen, Booker, very serious now. This is a family show. There's no cursing on this show.
Okay. Alright? Even if like a meteor comes out of the sky and stubs your toe, I don't want to hear a curse out of you. Well right. Alright, now let's get to this question so that we actually answer some questions on today's show.
By the way, Tim, we're gonna if you have any specific questions, what's your cook? What do you like to cook, by the way? Um, I do all sorts of stuff. I mean like name one of those stuffs. I don't know, putting me on the spot.
Well, what do you hate to cook? What do you hate? Ah I always say I hate mushrooms, but then I cook them and I like them. So is it because they're poisonous? I generally stay away from those.
At my grandma's house in Mystic, Connecticut, there are tons of mushrooms growing. But they're not the kind you can eat. Alright, listen. We're gonna let Tim think about what he wants to talk about cooking wise. And we're gonna get to uh Jeff uh Jeff's question on patenting, all right?
Okay. So I'm not gonna, Jeff, I'm not gonna read the specifics of what you want to patent because that would be stupid. So I'm not gonna read that stuff aloud on the air. Um but uh I will say uh in general, your question is um like how do you patent something, how do you go about patenting something? Uh Jeff did a preliminary search.
I'll I'll go say to this it has to do with plumbing, all right. Uh and it has to do with the fact that he had a specific problem. Have any of you guys ever like hired a plumber? Nick, you've hired a plumber. Yeah, for random.
Right. Plumbers are fantastic, right? Because they make water appear and disappear where you want it to appear and disappear. And this is a great thing. But the problem with any sort of professional person is in general, what they want to do is do the job and get out.
Right? Which means that they don't want to do anything outside of what they normally do. Because I'll tell you this, and it's for a good reason. Plumbing has this nasty tendency that if you do it wrong, it fails like in maybe maybe a couple days, maybe a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months, maybe a year, maybe two years. So plumbers really, really, really like to use systems that are very well proven because they know that if it breaks, you're gonna blame them because you are.
Yeah, you break it, you you pay for it. Well, they they they install it wrong, it breaks, they have to come back and fix it, basically at no extra charge. So uh so they like to do things a specific way. Now, certain of these things are are horrific. If any of you care about your children or the world, stop every plumber from installing those crappy angle valve the angle stops that have the twist knobs.
They should not be you guys know what I'm talking about? I don't feel like you've discussed this before. I have, but it's so important. No, no, no. So any any f any fixture, any water fixture uh that you have, any water fixture you have in your house has a what's called a stop, so that you can turn it off to either remove it or fix it.
And the old school of this has a stem valve on it that has to be turned multiple times, and uh and you can feel it, it's springy, it's got that nasty oval-shaped head on it, right? And uh these valves are notorious for not working, they're worthless. You can't shut them off. So if you have an old one, you'll notice that as you screw it all the way down, your faucet's still dripping, right? Because those valves, as like uh water goes through them, and whatever happens to be in your water, uh calcium carbonate, uh some other form of garbage, accretes onto the valve, and then it can't close anymore 100%.
Uh and so God invented a ball valve, a quarter turn ball valve, to fix this problem, and they never break, and they always you just reach under, and literally, it's called a quarter turn. You know why it's called a quarter turn, Nick? Do you turn it a quarter of the way? Yes. Turn it off.
Ah, yes. Yeah, you only turn it one quarter of the way. You know what else is fantastic about a quarter turn valve? The quarter turn valve handles are in a line shape. And the reason quarter turn valves are in a line shape is they provide an instant visual indication, even in relatively dark areas, whether this sucker is on or off, right?
Because, and by the way, so all of you know, anytime you see a valve with a handle on it, for the rest of your lives, any time you see any valve with a handle on it, if the handle is pointing in the direction of the pipe, that valve is on. Any time that handle is pointe perpendicular to the pipe, that valve is off. And if anyone in the world ever makes a valve that is not that worldwide standard of on and off, they need to be pilloried, right? So uh point being that even something simple as moving to quarter turn valves, which are only like fifty cents more, plumbers don't want to do it. They just because whatever, we've always installed these crappy things that are worthless, and so they do it.
Now, if you're trying to get someone to go way outside of what they do, they just don't want to do it. So Jeff has a plumbing solution, he feels to something that is a problem that we all have that we don't know that we have yet, that uh can possibly be patented. So that's where that's where we are. It is a it is there's no new creation of parts in this scenario, but there is a an agglomeration of parts in a new configuration that provides a functionality that he feels is not necessarily addressed. Now, we got Brian on the horn.
Yeah, Brian, you on the horn? I am here. All right. So, in general, so uh one thing that I think, and I want you to talk. Here's what I want you to talk about whether or not you should do a patent search, right?
Because that that's an interesting fact that people might not know that sometimes it's it's not a good idea to do a patent search. Um kind of like what in general, what can be patented, what can't be by the way, Brian's a patent attorney and uh and a food lover out there on the West Coast, just you know, just so you know. Uh and uh and so like what can be patented, what can't be patented, like what the nuances, and I'd like you to also talk because this is super interesting. You actually have dealings with the actual person who may or may not be a numbskull in DC who's reviewing the patents, the actual patent reviewer. So why don't you talk about like how you could get lucky, how you could not get lucky?
Just why don't you walk us through it a little bit? Sure, sure, yeah. So um I'll start with like what can be patented. Um generally anything that is new, uh, new processes, uh, new devices, um, new manufacturing products, uh, all that's pretty much wide open. There's a couple of caveats, uh kind of exceptions, uh, products of nature, things that are naturally occurring or kind of too abstract, uh, can't be subject to patents.
But you know, if this guy uh if Jeff has a new kind of combination of parts that has a new functionality, that's definitely kind of in the realm of things that can be patented. Um obviously there's some requirements for for patenting. You have to be new and and basically non-obvious, uh, and that has a specific legal meaning, uh, but that kind of gets into to your searching there, right? Has anyone done this before? Um, is this something that is is non-obvious?
Um the the question of whether you do your own patent search is kind of interesting because as you as you mentioned, you go to the patent office, patent application is not something that is you know just put in and you get a check or an X. It's actually a uh kind of a process with the patent office. I guess what you really have to understand about patents is you're interested in this massive bureaucracy with all these rules. Uh and there's this examiner when you in when you put in your application that uh that picks up your application, and it's his job to go out and search and find whether anybody's done this before and give you his opinion. And inevitably it is his opinion's gonna be you can't patent this, it's already been done.
I mean, that is like 95% of all the applications uh that are going to be filed. Right, but they're often wrong though. They're often like dead wrong. They'll often just pick a patent that has nothing to do with what you're actually doing and saying that that it's already there, right? I mean, that was my experience.
Well, you're in a right. But often you're getting people you know, in some art units where you're dealing with like complex chemistry or or biology, you've got PhDs on the other line who really know what they're doing. But in other art units, these are guys with just undergrad degrees or maybe even no relevant background, um, and they're gonna pick it up, and the whole impetus for them is every time they send out an action rejecting your patent, they get a little quota credit from the patent office and they basically get paid. Um so they're often doing the minimal amount of work that they can to issue a rejection. Explain what an art unit is for people.
Explain what like art, what art means in this sense. Oh, sorry, yeah. Um so art is basically just what we call prior art, which is some publication or something that's existed beforehand. So, you know, in in the case of a plumbing thing, it it might be one of those ball valves, right? Say this existed, this other one existed, someone would put it together in this way, um, and therefore it it's obvious.
So they issue they they give you a document that says we think you can't have a a patent because it's obvious, and here's the the references that show that. And so that's where an attorney steps in, or you can do it, you can do it yourself, you can do pro se negotiate with the patent office and basically explain to them why this is new and interesting and and why you should get a patent. Right now, here's another here's another tricky thing, right? Let's say you're a c like so I have an actual business, right? So for me, it's like you'd recommend by the way, Brian is not just a patent attorney, he is our patent attorney at uh at at Booker and Dax.
So just so you know, and uh, you know, at the end, give a plu you know, plug for the firm if if you want to, because uh and we'll talk more about choosing a patent attorney in a little while. But the um uh the interesting thing is if you own a business and here I'm I'm gonna tell you what you explained to me, and you say whether I'm right or I'm wrong, or you know, a add uh nuance to it. But it's it's the assumption is if you're in a particular business, let's say making kitchen equipment, that you are versed in the art because you're a practitioner, right? So you're out there, you use kitchen equipment on a daily basis, you troll the internet, you see what people are doing, you know what your competitors have done, you know what's out there, and therefore if you come up with something that you believe is novel, right, and your intention is to make it no matter what, don't do a search. Because if you do a search and it turns out that someone has patented it somewhere, right, and you have knowledge of that patent, then you are far more liable for infringing on it than if you just uh did it, applied for a patent, did it, and then um found out later that someone came and was like, hey, you infringed on my patent like that, right?
Yeah, yeah, there's so there's there's two issues there. Um, you know, one is the doing doing a search, you get a better view of what's out there. But you're right, if you're in the area, if you're already an expert, maybe you already know what's out there. Um but I do have clients that that want to do searches, get a better feel of whether they're eventually going to be successful in convincing the patent office that what they have is new and interesting. Um patenting is is gonna be is an expensive process, right?
You're you're looking at tens of thousands of dollars over a number of years. Um, and it'd be horrible if three years down the road you discover that that something spot on is there. Um and it does happen. So you can spend a little money up front and do a search uh and and find those references. I definitely recommend you use an attorney or a specialized search firm to do that because that addresses the second point, which is that that liability issue.
Um but searching can be valuable. Uh the bottom line though is it costs money and you're not required to do it, right? The whole reason you pay the patent office money is that they can send this guy off to do a search and give you his opinion. So you're not required to. Um the second issue is the liability issue that really only comes up if you're practicing, right?
So if you're not making products, if you're not actually gonna manufacture something, you're you're probably not going to be at much risk of of what we call infringing someone else's patent. Um but yeah, if you know about a patent out there, there's a statute in the law that says that whatever damages they can get if they sue you can be tripled if they can show that you were willingly infringing. And one of the aspects of that is is knowing that you knew about the patent. So yeah, search, if you find something and you say, oh my gosh, this guy patented exactly what I want to make, and then you make it anyway, you can be in hot water. So that's why if you're gonna do a search, use an attorney, get some some legal advice.
That's not something you want to do on the but if you aren't gonna make it in and there is something that you're building on, it is still patentable though, right? Yeah, so that's an interesting uh it's an interesting kind of wrinkle. There can be, you know, a lot of people think that patents are kind of this uh monolith that lets you have all rights to this idea. Um it's really not the case. You can have patents that build off each other.
So, you know, take the plumbing idea. If you're using three parts in combination to give some new functionality, that might be patentable, but each of those parts may also be patented, right? So you're left with this situation where no one can make this three-piece combination because you have a patent on it, but then you can't make the three-piece combination without actually getting rights from the people that have the patents on the three pieces. Um there can be these kind of blocking patents. Just because you have a patent doesn't mean you have all rights to go out there and manufacture it.
On a similar note, if you have internal documentation that has not been disclosed, and disclose is another technical term, by the way, of people, um, can you nullify someone's patent if you show that it's prior? Uh no, not generally. So the the law is usually uh gonna require some public disclosure. So if you have some document that you shared online five years ago, maybe that's enough. But if it's private, it's usually not gonna nullify.
Um that changed a few years ago. There was a change in the law back in uh 2012, 2013 that that changed some of that. But going forward, um private documents like that are almost never gonna be able to get rid of a patent. What if it's actually in the item you're making but's hidden from view? So like a software thing that nobody knows and you've used it as proprietary thing, but it's actually on the market already.
That nullifies a patent, doesn't it? Um so it that is an instance where it nullifies your own patent. You can't secretly use something. And this is, by the way, I'm gonna just caveat, this is a little bit of uh uh gray area. But generally speaking, if you're using something and getting uh sales from it, you even if it's secret, even if it's not public, you can't go out and patent it.
But it's not clear that somebody else could, because the whole thing about patents is public. So if you secretly use something for 20 years, like say um, you know, this is this is kind of uh a tangent, but say someone came up with the recipe for Coke and then publicly released it. And let's say that was patentable. It's possible they could get a patent on it, even though Coke has existed for for 50 years because it was secret. And then they could force Coke to pay them for it.
And it's possible, right? If that was patentable. I don't know that the the formula for Coke would ever be really patentable. Right. So we're yeah, it's possible they could get Coke to pay on to buy the patent out from it.
You wanna talk about recipes? Cause like in general, like we're always told recipes are not patentable. In what case is a formula actually patentable? Yeah, so that's a super interesting thing. I don't think it's the the case that recipes are not patentable.
I think it's just the case that there's so many recipes out there, and usually someone's done something similar. So, you know, you take some of the the modernist techniques that have come up in recent years, the use of like agar or fluid gels or hydrocolloids, most of those stemmed from industrial processes. And if you go look back, there are a lot of patents on the industrial processes. You look at um medicinal uses of of various uh various foods or herbs, those are subject to patents. You look at freeze drying or any of these like mass production things for for food that goes onto your your grocery cell, those are subject to patents.
Um if you have a truly novel recipe, it's potentially patentable. The problem is that that most of the time you're going for taste, right? You talk about this a lot on the show that you're you're optimizing for taste and experience. Um, and that's not something that patent law puts a lot of emphasis on, right? Whereas shelf life, longevity, spoilage, those are kind of things that are a little more persuasive to a patent examiner.
Right. New emulsifying systems, new new texture systems, even can be put on like low-fat systems are often patented. Uh a lot of low-fat and fat replacement systems have been patented. I know because the way that a lot of chefs like figured out how to do things in the early 2000s was reading patent literature on a constant basis. Literally, Wiley Dufresne would sit around on the computer and read patent applications for like an hour a day to find out new crap he could steal for fine dining.
Absolutely. Yeah, and I think it's also just a question of economics, right? If you're if you're just producing recipes for WD50, you're not gonna want to spend thousands of dollars patenting this because you don't really care if some guy in Australia is billing stealing your recipes. It's more of just a cultural thing. P.S.
people, that actually happened. All right. So I'm gonna I'm gonna say this because uh you know you probably can't say this, but when you're choosing a patent attorney, if you want to if you decide to patent something, and by the way, I have three applications out. I think two of them have been granted uh so far. We got one in the mix and hopefully another one coming up.
Brian, I'll talk to you about it later. Um but the uh the one of the things is is that you really really's team are going to produce the patent for you. What that means is is they're gonna sit and they're gonna talk to you about what your invention is. They're gonna render their opinions on it, and then they are gonna physically write the document out. You are not most if you hire an attorney, which I recommend you do.
Um highly recommend. Highly. Uh they are going to make the drawings, they are going to try to figure out what the claims are, um, and and all of that stuff. And it's much, much harder if the person that you're dealing with doesn't know anything about your field or doesn't care about your field. Uh, because it's very hard to get people to understand what the invention is, what the heart of the invention is, and you, even as the inventor might not understand the heart of the invention from a patent perspective.
And so I I encourage you to don't necessarily just take the first lawyer you talk to, make sure that they have a feeling for your field, right? Uh, that they have a feeling for what they think they're gonna be able to get by a patent examiner, because here's this thing you know, as Brian said, the first time, two times, three times, your patent the patent examiner is gonna come back and saying you can't get a patent, and you need a lawyer who understands your product well enough to fight for it to get the claims you want admitted, right? Because you're gonna give up on you're gonna have a whole bunch of claims saying, you know, my invention does XYZ, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The patent office, you know, uh examiner is gonna say nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. And in general, it's a bit of a bargaining practice where you're gonna get rid of some claims or put some stipulations on some of your claims in order to get that patent granted.
But the more the your lawyer understands what you're doing and can be an advocate for you, not in the legal sense, but just in that sense of being an advocate for you, like the better chance are that you're gonna have a better patent or that you'll get the patent at all. Would you say that's a fair comment, Brian? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, I think that patenting is like I say, you're entering a government bureaucracy and your only advocate is your attorney. And I think to me, one of the key aspects of a good attorney is the ability to take these complex technical inventions and distill it down to something simple and explain it in a plain English way.
Because a lot of these guys, these examiners, they work on all different technical fields. They have no idea, a lot of them don't even read the application that you file. They just read the claim. And so they don't understand. Um you've got to have someone who can go on there and within five or ten minutes not only explain the invention, but get the examiner on your side that this is a cool invention, that it's worth protecting, that it has some really good benefit.
So, you know, I think when you're looking for a patent attorney, you should be able to explain the invention to him, and he should be able to explain it back to you in a clear manner, maybe even better than you put it yourself. Because you know, you're the inventor, you're not dealing with trying to tell this story, but that's what an attorney does. That's what an application should be. Um, because that's the the bottom line is if you ever uh try to enforce a patent, you're gonna go in front of a jury. You know, twelve people with no technical background, and you're gonna need something to show them and explain to them why your invention is worth protecting.
And that's that's what a good attorney can do for you. In fact, in fact, you guys recommended a couple claims to us that we hadn't even thought of. I mean, anyway, you want to give a plug for your firm or no? Do you want people calling you? So I'm with I'm with Kenobi Martins Olson and Baer.
We're uh we're primarily on the West Coast, but we've we've moved national. We actually just opened an office in New York. So I'm gonna hopefully uh come visit you guys soon. Um hopefully we'll have a new. So I'm been here since 2010, really happy with it.
Uh great firm. All right. Nice. Thanks, Brian. Thanks for calling in.
And and uh Dave, should we take a commercial break? Yeah, let's do that. Let's take a commercial break, come back with cooking issues. Bob's Red Mill has been milling whole grains since 1978. When you mill whole grains, you get all three parts the bran, the germ, and the endosperm.
The bran, or the rough edge, makes up about 14% of the whole grain. It's the outer skin of the edible kernel. It contains large amounts of B vitamins, some protein, trace minerals, phytochemicals, but most importantly, dietary fiber. The germ is only about 2.5% of the kernel. It's actually the sprouting section of the seed, what's gonna grow into a plant.
It's usually separated during milling process because it contains most of the fat and therefore has a shorter shelf life. The endosperm is the main energy storage unit of the seed. That's where the growing plant gets its energy before it can start photosynthesizing and making its own. It makes up a huge portion of the grain, about 83%. And it's the main source that's used for white flour.
When you make white flour, you get rid of the germ and the brand and just have the white endosperm left. It contains almost all the carbohydrates. It also contains protein and iron and some of the other B vitamins as well. It's kind of what you classically think of when you're thinking of flour. So all that's there when you're milling with whole grains, but when you mill with whole grains, you also get the bran, which is the kind of rough edge and gives the that's what gives that that kind of color to it.
Also gives you extra fiber that uh helps you to be regular, and you also get the germ, which adds the fat and the flavor, which we all like from whole grains. Learn more at Bob's Redmill.com slash podcast. And we're back. Uh okay, so uh that was uh actually we haven't really talked about patenting much on on the air. You know what I mean?
So I think it's good. Hopefully, you know, it's thorough, people, you know. I it I think it's been worthwhile for us to have it done, don't you think, Stas? Yeah, definitely. And by the way, when you patent something, even if you work at a company, the patent goes in your name, and then uh but it's owned by the company you work for.
Yes, you sign away your rights to it. Yeah, so it's like, you know, it feels good though. It feels good. So uh Nick, Nick had a question. Yeah, the first name of your law firm, Kenobi.
Yeah, I think Brian hung up, but yeah, first name Kenobi, they're like the they're like patent Jedi's. That's what that's their their stick. When you trust, it's basically Brian's like, hey, listen. Literally, he called, he's like, hey, I listened to your show and some of your complaints about patenting. He's like, let's, you know, let's talk.
I'm a patent lawyer, and then when he was like, I work and in Kenobi, I'm like, okay. Done. Done. Sold, done. Uh, I don't actually know if it's spelled that way.
Is it? Ah, you know what? They changed their name when they when they made it to Ellis Island, they changed their name away from the Jedi name because the guy couldn't write it down right. Is there a patent on Kenobi? There should be.
Well, you know about the Obi Wan Kenobi jokes, right? No. You don't know about Obi-Wan Kenobi? Oh my god. Well, off air, because we've done that on air before, right?
Kenobi jokes? Yeah, you've yeah. It's racist. It's not racist. Why would it be racist?
I'm trying to remember which jokes. It's like uh, you know, um it's like like Temple of Doom racist. That's like super racist. No, it's like a Kenobi Kenobi jokes are like when you just like use his name and you mess around with it like uh, you know, what what Jedi is always in the desert? What?
Gobi Wan Kenobi. Or like, you know, uh what you know what um what Jedi uh likes to cut hair? Flobi Wan Kenobi. Or like and just keep going on and you you can you can come up with like hundreds and hundreds of of like Obi-Wan jokes. You know what I mean?
But why would you? Like uh when it, you know, what Jedi believes that knowing is half the battle? No. G.I. Jo Bi Wan Kenobi.
For those of you that watch uh the G.I. Joe cartoons. Yeah, what he's doing. All I'm saying, I'm not saying that I'm recommending this, but I'm saying when you're sitting around, like working, like at some point in your life, you'll just start rattling off Obi-Wan jokes, and then the person next to you, like five minutes later, it's not that anyone's laughing. It's not a la it's you don't laugh, but the person next to you five minutes later will say something like, you know, something they'll say another Obi-Wan channel.
Do it. Do one, Nick. No. Eventually, in like five minutes, he will do one. That's what's gonna happen, my guess.
I mean, he's gonna you know what? Nick is one of those guys, he's not gonna do as soon as we wrap, yeah, he's gonna have a job, he's gonna have an Obi-Wan joke. At lunch today, we're gonna be eating that new uh pizza with whatever it is. What was it against us? Ursula.
Ursula, yeah, Ursula. And then he's gonna bust out an Obi-Wan joke about like some sort of clan-based Obi-Wan joke or some sort of like octopus-based or pizza-based Obi-Wan joke. A Moby joke. Ooh, Moby? I've never done Moby.
But like, yeah, like uh like a what you know, vegetarian musician Jedi would be a Moby, would be Moby Wan Kenobi. So you could do any, you could do any sort of like um you know, like uh, you know, what Jedi has constipation, no Gobi-Wan Kenobi. Like you can go you could do anything. It's like it's it's just I mean, I think you guys get the the basic pattern of the Obi-Wan joke. Anyway.
It's not a joke, it's just a thing anyway. So uh I mentioned this a little bit uh last week. Tim Rupar wrote in, and I'm gonna say it again just because might as well go through it. Uh question, why Celsius? I understand metric measurements and weight and volume, but it seems like Fahrenheit is more precise than Celsius.
And last week, I believe I just said cause. Tim, you got any uh thoughts on this? Nope. How do you cook? Do you cook in Celsius or you cook in Fahrenheit?
Uh depends on what it is. Me too. So what do you cook in Celsius? I I'll be judging you by the way. Um I mean, typically meats I do in um Fahrenheit.
Really? Um so steak is in Fahrenheit? Yeah, just because I'm not dealing with people that are that know about that stuff a lot, so it's easier to translate on, you know, to medium rare and rare for what they know, right? Right. Okay, okay.
So what do you cook in Celsius? Um you cook in Fahrenheit. Yeah. Uh listen, I really think it just has to do with um I think it just has to do with whatever you whatever you grew up with. It it's it's actually more.
Right. So even though a Celsius degree is in fact nine fifths larger than a Fahrenheit degree, it's no more or less precise because uh I can just easily quote decimals in in Celsius. And in fact, I mean um it's rare to go decimal in Celsius, but it's rare to require anything that goes decimal in Celsius. The only thing is like if the 63 degree egg is the only thing really that I've ever had to use kind of decimals. And then frankly, some stakes, like uh you can a decimal higher or lower can make a difference at service time because of just where it's gonna get on finish, but in general, the decimal is not that important as Celsius degree is pretty much good enough.
What do you think, Nick? Yeah, I feel the same way. Use Fahrenheit for most conventional stuff, because that's what all all of our ovens are calibrated at, like 400 Fahrenheit or whatever. Um a lot of circular stuff mainly uh you find resources in Celsius, though. Right.
And so I mean just go with that one. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that A, circulators are science pieces, and the circulators speak Fahrenheit if you want them to, by the way. So that this is like kind of a little bit of a but they are a scientific instrument, and so most people who use them professionally use them in Celsius. Most uh like low temperature work really came to this country through Europe, uh through Spain primarily, even though Bruno Gusseau is kind of like the you know granddaddy of uh low temperature cooking, uh, or as he calls it, juscat. Just catin.
Because he's not like language is that French. He's like, he's like, it's not that it's low temperature, it's the correct temperature. Just gather. Anyway, but like uh he's like he's like that. He uh his voice doesn't sound like that, but that is what he's like.
Um Booker, you should know you speak French now. I mean, I I never heard that word. No. Uh Booker has shoved the microphone into his eye socket. Uh anyway, so like the point being that uh you you know, so because most of that stuff came in via um because most of that stuff came in via uh Europe, it's Celsius.
And uh at the time, you know, uh cooking schools, I was teaching at the French Culinary Institute, so all of my work was in Celsius because I was dealing with Frenchies, and those guys ain't uh cooking in uh in Fahrenheit anyway. Um also placing my first order from modernist pantry, uh and one of Booker, when you clear your throat there, go away from the microphone. Gotta gotta teach Booker some microphone etiquette. You know what I mean? Sorry.
Yeah, all right. Uh no, yeah, it's fine. You know, it's fine. You know what the last time you were on, people enjoyed having you on. Oh, and they might enjoy me this time.
That's true. And we'll find out. Uh and but you know what the truth is, is no one would say if they didn't, because it would be incredibly rude. That's one of the reasons why I thought it would be really good to have the bar named after you and your brother, because as soon as people are like, well, you name it Booker and Dex be like, those are my children's names, and then they shut up. See what I'm saying?
Like my whole selfish. Yeah, my whole life is based around getting people to just like to kind of cut off criticism, right? If you design your work around cutting off criticism, like you end up like having less criticism to deal with, right? Non-constructive criticism. You want constructive criticism, but like that's why like a little bit of self-deprecation can cut off criticism.
It's like you know what I mean? And it just it's a it's a tactic I use to try to prevent people from uh bothering me about things that I don't want to be bothered about. Do you know what I'm saying? Why are you such a terrible person? Because I'm a low quality individual.
There you go. There you go. Done. Cut off discussion. Done.
Yeah. Uh okay. I'm placing my first order from Mono's pantry and wanted some advice. I'm getting pectinx. My older son Henry likes the jarred mandarin oranges, and I can't justify spending four dollars on a jar if there is a better option.
What? What was the question? Who's older son Henry? Uh uh uh this person, Tim, who wrote in a question. That's what we dir that's what we're doing here.
People are writing and calling in questions and we are answering them. That is how this works. Um I can't justify spending four dollars on a jar. Who spends four dollars on a jar of mandarin oranges? Buy the like poorly named geisha brand is the cheapest brand in my supermarket.
Poorly named. I love a mandarin orange, though. Yeah. I love a mandarin orange. You like a man in an orange, Nick?
Oh yeah. Tim? Chinese chicken salad? Oh, uh, uh Chinese chicken salad. All right.
All right, see he's like Nick Wong is here and he's looking at me because he wants to say something he can, he wants me to say something that he can pounce on me for one way or to other, right? He wants me to say he wants to go with something so that he can bust out, he wants he wants to bust out a uh an offensive Chinese accent and then blame me for it. He made me buy the mandarin orange soda all the time, remember? Oh, he okay. Nastasia Lopez has just lied.
So Nastasia Lopez would go to a supermarket and buy the horrible, horribly flavored mandarin seltzer water. The stuff is garbage, right? Uh I mean, I think so. Uh fake tasting. To me, you might love it.
Do you love it? Anyway. So Nastasia is like, buys it for him, and then Nick goes. Say it, Nick. Mandarin.
And then hands him, and like every time, like every week for years. She would come buy you this stuff and be like, Mandarin, you're people. And then that, right? Am I wrong about this? Yeah.
And then she was pretty accurate. And she would make you ask. I mean, I still drink it because it's delicious, but. You like that stuff? Yeah.
Okay, let me ask you this. First sip, good. Yeah. Last sip? I'm thirsty.
That's right. I'm just thirsty. Regular seltzer is good the whole way. My main gripe with flavored seltzers, and John DeBerry, who, you know, loves flavored seltzers, I feel he is a paid by the LaCroix Corporation. They never taste good down to the last drop.
They don't they don't like pass the Maxwell House test. I feel like that depends on the size of your bottle. It's a big bottle. Yeah, Nastasia gets you the two liters because we're always using them for events. Tim, what are your thoughts on the flavored seltzers?
I mean, one, yeah, once they get warm, it kind of. Yeah. Right. And and you just want regular seltzer anyway. Just lots of bubbles.
I do. I feel like I feel like we would get along. All right. So anyway, so first of all, we feel everyone here feels you're spending too much money on your mandarin oranges. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that.
Uh uh, also considering purchasing sodium citrate, presumably for cheese, right? For cheese melting, I'm presuming. Uh and ever crisp breader, which I haven't actually used. Have you used that one, Nick? Not that specific brand.
Yeah, I mean, you know what the God's truth is is that like I don't have a problem making like breading crispy. I also don't have a problem getting breading the stick. Like everybody has these problems. I do not have these problems. Like, bread, I can make breading as hard or as soft as or as as crisp as I want it to be.
I will I'm glad to add additives to it. But most of the time, like breading additives are there because they expect some form of abuse during the frying and storing and re frying procedure. And it's the abuse that the additive is guarding against, right? Excessive oil take because of improper frying technique, add this. Uh excessive oil uptake because of multiple frying on something that shouldn't be multiple, because remember, the oil is sucked into the coating as the sucker cools down.
So if you do uh a double fry on something that's like a Korean fried chicken, not a problem because it doesn't have a thick absorptive layer on the outside. You do a double fry on a French fry, not only not a problem, necessary, right? Do a double fry on a thick breaded chicken, like like a Popeye style fried chicken, and you can get into some issues with oil uptake. You know what I mean? Or like double triple fry like on a cake donut base.
Uh yeast donut base can actually withstand a refry because it's got that kind of like uh you know less porous surface on on it, but but like um so my point being that a lot of times recipes just don't need it. What do you think, Nick? I think you're aiming for something very specific, but I mean I've never really needed to go like that next level on like you know, industrial scale volume or something like that, where you gotta deal with all these variables, just tell the clicks to do it right. I mean, some things that are like not good, like most tempura or things that don't stick, like I don't know, green beans, pickles, like yeah, sure, batter bind, like all anything you can do to make those things that are inherently problematic work. Things like foods that have the improper moisture ratio to them so that the stuff's inherently terrible, yeah.
Some form of like self-gelling or protective batter coating, great, but I don't know, whatever. But by the way, I'm not telling you not to buy that, I'm just mentioning. Uh, just wondering if you had any other thoughts on things I should get as I'm just starting out. I don't have access to the full modernist cuisine series, but I do have modernist cuisine at home. And then what do you like?
Look, my feeling is always this. If there's two reasons to get into this, one, you want to pull off a particular recipe because you think it's cool and you want to try it just for giggles, right? In which case, just buy whatever you need for that recipe. Second, is you actually want to learn how to cook a particular way, in which case choose an ingredient and then work that ingredient to death. Preferably choose an ingredient that has a lot of application and then branch out from that one.
I always start with agar. I always tell everyone if you're gonna get into this, start with agar. You can buy it almost anywhere, uh, and you can um do a lot with agar, right? You could do fluid gels with agar, you can do clarifications with agar, you can do uh you can make gels with agar, you can modify the gel texture of agar to get um to get softer textures if you want. You can do a lot with Agar.
Uh Agar withstands a good amount of heat. Then if you like what Agar does, then move into Gen An. Gelan has a bunch of other applications and very good flavor release. If you're interested uh in, you know, foams, get like whatever your favorite foamer is and work with that for a while before you branch into multiple foamers. I think it's I'm a big fan of really getting to know an ingredient rather than getting a boat ton of ingredients and just start throwing them into recipes as you go, just because you know it's when you're messing with more than one thing at a time, it's really hard to understand what it's doing unless you have a lot of experience with it.
What do you guys think? What about meat glue? Oh, meat glue, yeah. That's a good one. Meat glue is awesome.
Uh I feel that pe I don't hear as much about transglutaminase as I did maybe like four or five years ago. But I think it's in incredibly awesome because one, it's really good for uh fun special effects at home, and two, it's really good for certain kinds of restaurant service for uh portion control and for I mean I think like a most of the time in a restaurant you're not gonna do the special effects stuff, right, Nick? No. Most of the time not. Um but like uh, you know, like I like it like uh, you know, uh taking the piece of cartilage out of the steak and gluing it back together.
I think that's a good application. I don't know that like restaurants are gonna do it a lot, but uh I mean I think it can be helpful for certain cuts, certain ideas, and you know, it's certainly a lot of fun, you know. Here we got time for one more. Um let me rip through this, let me rip through uh Tim's last question here. Professionally I work in a small college and I'm broaching the topic of getting our kitchen and immersion circulator.
We have a lot of trouble with our cooks destroying the chicken breasts at the school. This is professionally, right? Uh destroying the chicken breasts uh at this we put out daily, uh sometimes coming out of the oven at 195 degrees Fahrenheit. That's warm. That's warm.
Yeah. That's warm. Is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? That yeah, Fahrenheit, but still that Celsius, that would be crazy. But the internal of the chicken breast coming out at 195, I think you you you've you've done it.
It's safe. It's it's safe. It's it's it's safe. But you know why it's safe? Because you can't eat it anymore.
The safest food is food that you can't eat. You know what I mean? Because uh anyway. So I thought this might provide a nice solution. Are there any other general applications I can use to sell them on this?
We're feeding 700 to 900 students, so it's gotta be something that can scale way up. Now you ain't feeding 700 people out of a circulator. No way. No way. The biggest thing you can reasonably do in a circulator, it I mean what you really want for that number of students.
I know your budget is zero. You want a combi oven. Like, especially because for for that kind of work that you're doing, like uh if you're not doing special effect work, like the f the way combi ovens work is they oscillate in temperature, and so the outside of your meat's never gonna be as accurate, but the core temperature of your meat is gonna be very fairly accurate for something like a chicken breast for students where you don't mind a couple degrees over, like combi oven, combi oven. Nick, combi oven combi oven slightly cheaper than a combi oven, but a lot larger than a circulator in terms of its volume, CVAP oven, right? Get a CVAP combi steamer, you're looking at a couple thousand dollars, but you can keep everything warm very safely.
It's designed to keep stuff warm in a very safe manner, and they can cook relatively large quantities, they just don't cook as quickly as a combi oven because it can't push the temperature as fast in. It's not as powerful, so it's gonna take a lot longer for your product to come up to temp in a in a in a uh CVAP, but it uses a lot less electricity, so it's a lot uh it's a I mean, how much does your combi oven suck down or did did your combi oven suck down? It's like a small house, like your combi oven alone takes up more power than an entire house. Yeah, yeah. I mean, they're crazy.
Um, so I I would I I would do something like that. I just don't think you'd you'd need to get probably five or six circulators going all the time to serve that many people, and you'd still be like swimming in water and and and and all that kind of stuff. Um anyway, so there's that I don't have any more time for to deal with Scott's smoke question. Like like a couple minutes. Oh man, which one should we do?
She won you want to talk about smoke or you want to talk about outdoor cooking, Nick? Smokey Wanko. Which is shorter. What? Smokey Wankenovi.
Smokey Wankinovi. The uh yeah, what what Jedi works in this? Yeah, I get yeah, the ham curing. Uh by the way, before I get to this, had last week uh Cesare Casella's new uh ham. Delicious, delicious.
So in a world where a smokehouse burns down, because remember, S. Wallace Edwards burned down a couple of years ago or a year ago, uh, and he used to buy all of Patrick Martin at Heritage uh, you know, you know, uh fearless leader, Patrick Martin Heritage Foods, by his Berkshire pork, which was really heavily marbled. And when it burnt down, it was so bad. Literally, wild dogs were running up to the smoldering ruins of Sam's uh Sam Edwards smokehouse and eating these hams. There's like pictures of wild dogs eating these hams, these partially cured and hung hams.
It's just a tragedy, it's a nightmare. Uh but Patrick needed to sell all these uh hams, these like fresh hams, so Cesare Casella bought them all and has cured them, and it's now making very delicious. It's prosciutto style, so it's not American style, but very heavily marbled, good stuff. So maybe we'll have uh you want to have Cesare on the show sometime, Nastasia? And before I finished out, I want everyone to know this.
This, what you're listening to right now, is our 299th episode. So, what does that make our next episode? Booker? You're the math man. What does that make our next episode?
What did you say again? Booker, I feel you could take over Nastasia's job for not listening. But the uh this is our 299th episode. So what's our next episode? 300.
So next next week is the 300th episode. What's our choices, Dave? Uh well, remember, a family show. So uh, you know, this could it could either end very well or very poorly. But if you have any suggestions for what we should do for next week, I mean, I guess it sounds like because I talked about that, I'll be talking about outdoor cooking.
And by the way, uh about the outdoor cooking. We have um I have a question on opera cake, right? Which I guess we should get to next week. Hopefully, uh the competition is not before next week, because this person's doing uh maybe I'll do that real quick because they might have a com Do we have a time for it? No.
Oh, listen. Listen, listen. Okay, okay. I will tell I will talk about it next week, or maybe I'll tweet something out. Uh, hopefully your competition is not for next week, because I have some good suggestions for you, including tips from Iron Chefs.
What? Why didn't you start with this question? Because I'm stupid. Anyway, cooking issues. Yes, you are.
Thanks for listening to Heritage Radio Network. Food radio supported by you. For our freshest content and to hear about exclusive events, subscribe to our newsletter. Enter your email at the bottom of our website, heritageradionetwork.org. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at heritage underscore Radio.
Heritage Radio Network is a non-profit organization driving conversations to make the world a better, fairer, more delicious place. And we couldn't do it without support from listeners like you. Want to be a part of the food world's most innovative community? Rate the shows you like, tell your friends, and please join our community by becoming a member. Just click on the beating heart at the top right of our homepage.
Thanks for listening.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.