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Cooking with Watson: Indian turmeric paella
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. So, here's a question: Is it still a paella if it doesn't involve olive oil or saffron, and doesn't generally represent the flavors of Spain? At what point does it become a pilaf or, since this particular recipe is brimming with spices from the Indian subcontinent, a biryani? Really the only discernible quality that this Indian turmeric paella has that screams "paella" is the presence of socarrat -- the toasty, browned rice that sits at the bottom of the pan. Oh, and the presentation. And so, here we go again, Watson and his human interpreters from the Institute for Culinary education take a seemingly familiar dish and, with a little computer-generated nudge, create something wholly unfamiliar.
Cooking with Watson: Turkish Bruschetta with carrot pearls
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. Once a week, as part of an ongoing series, we'll be preparing one recipe from the book until we've made all of them. Wish us luck. Let's get a couple of things straight: Watson, the IBM supercomputer famous for spanking Ken Jennings on Jeopardy, did not really write these recipes in the purest sense of the word. Rather, IBM trained it by feeding it a giant database of recipes, studies on what flavors and smells people find pleasant and information on the chemical compounds found inside ingredients. Using this, Watson is able to suggest dishes with surprising flavor combinations. From there the computer passes the baton to a human being, in this case James Briscione and Michael Laiskonis from the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE), who use the ingredient lists and style suggestions as inspiration for new dishes.
