cookbook
Latest
Watson's melt-in-your-mouth Moroccan almond curry
'Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson' is a collaboration between IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. 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.While it's no great surprise to see Watson conjuring up unusual flavor blends, I was surprised to find such subdued in this Moroccan almond curry. On paper the recipe looked to be leaning toward bland, but its clever combination of all the elements worked. Traditional Moroccan lamb curries have intense flavors highlighted by garlic, onion, sometimes ginger, cinnamon and then sweetened with honey and dried apricot to balance lamb's strong taste. Here, though, Watson prescribes small amounts of cardamom, cumin, turmeric. All told, the recipe is comprised of four separate parts, which you'll later pile together. These include: the curry-braised lamb, a pea puree, green salad and plain old basmati rice. This is a great choice if you want to show off for guests, and yet it's easy too: Because the meal is broken up in stages, much can be done the day before. It's also mild enough that even the pickiest eater will find some joy in the dish. I fed it to a couple kids under ten and they both ate it up.
Now you can try Watson's freaky-deaky recipes for yourself
If you think that a supercomputer can do a better job of inventing new meals than, say, Gordon Ramsey, then today's your lucky day. IBM is opening up its Chef Watson web app to the world, enabling open-minded foodies to make outlandish food combinations for dinner parties with people you're not fussed about pleasing. It's been almost a year since IBM teamed up with Bon Appetit magazine to begin working on the app, and has spent the last eleven months testing it out with a wide variety of willing cooks. In addition to being able to brag about being smart enough to make an Old Fashioned with Chicken Broth, the system is also helping people overcome their dietary problems.
Watson's South American spin on a Canadian classic
'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 far we've just been working from the front of Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, towards the back. But we're going to start jumping around a bit now. Partially for convenience sake (it's just easier to make all three poutine recipes in a row), but mostly because I want to avoid using my oven as much as possible. It's hot and humid in New York and I live in a small one bedroom apartment. Basically just looking at my oven makes the temperature rise about 20 degrees in here. So we're jumping a few recipes ahead to take on the Peruvian Potato Poutine, a South American twist on a Canadian classic. This is one of the recipes that Watson inspired the chefs from the Institute for Culinary Education to whip up at SXSW in 2014 at their cognitive computing food truck. So, you can sort of think of this as a Chef Watson 1.0 dish.
Cooking with Watson: Caymanian Plantain Dessert
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 for the second week in a row, Watson and his culinary interpreters are appealing to my sweet tooth. Except, where last week's pastries had a savory backbone to keep things interesting, the Caymanian plantain dessert is a full-on tooth-rotting sugar bomb. And a damn delicious one at that. Here's the thing about IBM's cognitive computing project: You never know quite what you're going to get. On the surface the list of flavors here seems like an obvious combination, but as chef Michael Laiskonis points out in the accompanying notes, it's in how they all come together. See Watson isn't just about jamming together seemingly incongruous ingredients. The idea is to push human creativity, in whatever area that may be. It just so happens that in this case IBM is trying to broaden your kitchen vocabulary.
Cooking with Watson: Swiss-Thai asparagus quiche
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. Another week, another quiche. I can't say I went into this one with high hopes after last week's funky salmon number. But, at least there is no fish here. Instead you've got a dash of Southeast Asian flavors, some asparagus and a buttery, flaky crust. This is pretty much a variation on the formula that produced Watson's biggest success, the turmeric paella -- combine the flavors of one region, with the presentation of another, and voilà! The Swiss-Thai asparagus quiche puts the flavors of Thailand (and a hint of Greece) in an open-top custard pastry often associated with French cuisine. And once again, IBM's cognitive computing efforts succeed in pushing its human chef interpreters to make something unique.
Cooking with Watson: Scandinavian salmon quiche
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. Sometimes, the ingredient lists for these Watson recipes read like a Chopped contestant's worst nightmare. Inside the basket you will find: tart shells, gruyere, sour cream and salmon filets. Almost any time you mix cheese and fish, you know you're in trouble. (Update: I acknowledge that both tuna melts, and bagels with cream cheese and lox are rare exceptions to this rule.) But, if anyone is capable of taming the culinary cruelty of Watson it would be the brilliant minds at the Institute of Culinary Education, like Florian Pinel and Michael Laiskonis. So, even though the idea of a Scandinavian salmon quiche is a little off-putting, I put my faith in the human interpreters to steer me and my captive taste testers in the right direction.
I trusted my gut to IBM's Watson and it gave me a fowl old-fashioned
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. Before taking the helm at Vogue, where she laid the groundwork for the Devil to wear Prada, Diana Vreeland wrote a series of columns for Harper's Bazaar called "Why Don't You?" In a sort of goop for the 20th century, she would goad the super rich into ridiculous feats of capitalism. "Why don't you rinse your blond child's hair in dead champagne to keep it gold, as they do in France?" she'd ask. Or, "Have your bed made in China -- the most beautiful bed imaginable, the head board and spread of yellow satin embroidered in butterflies, alighting and flying, in every size and in exquisite colors?" Watson seemed to be channeling Ms. Vreeland in Cognitive Cooking, a collaboration between IBM's supercomputer and a group of humans at the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). "Why don't you make an old-fashioned with a splash of chicken broth and a slice of grilled chicken for garnish?" it inquired. And in the spirit of excess we did just that.
Cooking with Watson: Italian grilled lobster
'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. I've got to say I am pretty against the idea of wrapping lobster in bacon. While, yes, bacon does tend to make everything better, I'm also a bit of a purist. I don't like butter or onions in my hamburgers, or mignonette on my oysters. These are foods meant to be enjoyed as they are. And I feel the same about lobster. It is meant to be steamed and devoured as is (or with some drawn butter and lemon if you really must). But, I have a job, and right now that job is to cook whatever Watson tell me to. So it's time to defile one of the most delicious (and expensive) sea creatures with bacon and a lot of citrus.
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: Austrian asparagus and pigs' feet croquettes
'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. "Austrian grilled asparagus." That should be simple. Let's see... Pigs' feet? Sous vide? Croquettes? Mustard "foam"? Damn it Watson! Well, if the carrot pearls from last week weren't sufficiently weird for you, fear not. This week's recipe is the sort of thing that would send most casual cooks running for the hills. And to make matters worse, the title lulls you into a false sense of security. The first two steps in this recipe, that's theoretically for grilled asparagus, are to brine two pigs' feet overnight, then to cook them in a 162-degree water bath (sous vide) for 24 hours. Yes, 24 hours. Between the eight-plus-hour brine and the 24-hour cook, this is already the most time-intensive dish I've ever made.
IBM's Watson cognitive computer has whipped up a cookbook
IBM's Watson learning computer system isn't just content with making the occasional meal -- it has a whole slew of recipes lined up. The tech company is launching Cognitive Cooking with Chef Watson, a cookbook based on Watson's knack for combining food in a way that produces unique (and typically tasty) flavors. There's only about 65 foodstuffs in the mix, but they're considered "greatest hits" that should work well in real life. Just be prepared to do more grocery shopping than usual when the book arrives on April 14th, since IBM's machine tends to choose ingredients that you probably don't have in the pantry.
In vitro cookbook helps you decide if you're into lab-grown meat
There's no denying that as the world's population continues to grow, we'll need to examine the ways we keep the masses fed. Meat for 9 billion people doesn't seem within the realm of possibility, so Next Nature is looking into sustainable ways to get that protein fix -- including lab-grown proteins. To help you decide whether or not you'd be down to eat in vitro foods on the regular, the outfit has created a cookbook full of possibilities. The In Vitro Meat Cookbook serves up 45 lab-grown recipes that range from the Dodo Nuggets pictured above to Magic Meatballs and See-Through Sashimi. Of course, these aren't real concoctions just yet, but rather food for thought about our culinary future. While the options may look (and sound) kind of gross on the surface, the book itself is quite beautiful and well-designed. For the curious, a copy can be pre-ordered for €24.00 ($30 converted) right here.
Evernote Food 2.0 delivers the goodies for foodies
The busy elves at Evernote have a new gift just in time for holiday noshing. It's a major upgrade to Evernote Food, which the company is describing as "Your entire food world in a single app." Evernote Food 2.0 should be hitting the App Store right about now, and it's been impressively bulked up in terms of capability. Previously, the app just had a "My Meals" feature to save details about your favorite caloric intake sessions, but now there's a lot more to love: An "Explore Recipes" tab provides access to a huge variety of searchable recipes. The "My Cookbook" tab organizes your saved recipes in one place. A "Restaurants" tab lets you not only search for nearby restaurants, but save a list of places you want to try. The "My Meals" tab lets you share the details (date, location, people, photos and notes) of your food experiences. %Gallery-173790% As you can see from the gallery images, there's also a new feature that everyone will love -- iPad compatibility. Evernote Food 2.0 is free, so get it loaded before those holiday mega-meals. A video with all of the highlights is embedded below.
Bad Piggies gets a ... cookbook
As if our recent exploration of the Angry Birds universe didn't convey the franchise's might, here's another sign. A Bad Piggies cookbook is available. Actually, the hardcover, real-life version of Angry Birds: Bad Piggies' Egg Recipes was out for the holiday season last year, long before the Bad Piggies game was ever announced. But now that the game itself is out, Rovio has decided to take the book digital, and so you can now buy the cookbook on the iPad as an interactive app. For a limited time, the book is debuting at a price of just 99 cents, so grab it quick if you like. Rovio has reached out its Angry Birds claws into yet another merchandising realm -- where to next?
Win a copy of the iPhone Developer's Cookbook
The very first book I bought for programming the iPhone was none other than Erica Sadun's iPhone Developer's Cookbook. It wasn't the first book of Erica's I had purchased -- years ago I bought her Desktop Video book -- but it was an excellent introduction into the secret world of iPhone development. If you recall, Apple's cloak of silence (aka the NDA all developers had to agree to) prohibited developers from even talking about how to write programs for the iPhone! Erica, as is her style, was rarin' to go with a book detailing common practices all developers would find useful, especially n00bs like myself. I should note that InformIT, the publishers, also have sample chapters for a bunch of Mac and iPhone developer books available here. So I'm very happy to say we are giving away five copies of the second edition of The iPhone Developer's Cookbook. To enter, you must be over 18, in the US or Canada, and leave a comment on this post. The rest of the rules are below. Good luck and get coding! Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment on this post. The comment must be left before Friday, January 8, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Time. You may enter only once. One winner will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: one copy of iPhone Developer's Cookbook, 2nd edition (Value: US$40.49) Click Here for complete Official Rules.
Ratio cookbook becomes an iPhone app
I recently read this terrific article in the New Yorker about cookbooks, and I think one of the reasons I liked it so much is that it hits pretty close to home -- I do like reading and browsing cookbooks, and I don't cook nearly as much as I want to. And I can totally identify with the tension between searching the pages of recipes looking for a secret, weighed against actually getting the experience necessary to be a great chef. From the article: "The recipe is to spend your life cooking." But that hasn't stopped cookbook writers from trying to import as much knowledge as they can. The Ratio cookbook is one that caught my eye recently; rather than giving out recipes and directions, the book sticks with math and recipes as a way of breaking down foods and the way they're made. Instead of step one, step two, step three, it's one part sugar, two parts fat, three parts flour, mixed up and baked. It's an interesting way at examining cooking, and now it's come to the iPhone -- the cookbook (or at least the ratios and recipes from it) is being released as an iPhone app. You can browse the "32 critical ratios" for doughs, meats, and sauces, a unit converter, and other recipes including ways to share and tweak your own. You'll probably need to know a little about cooking already (and as that article says, just knowing the recipes doesn't actually give you the meals), but it should be a helpful reference. All the page says is soon (no price yet, either), but if you keep an eye on Michael Ruhlman's website, they'll probably post when the app is out in the store.
Qooq recipe and cooking tablet launched for French speakers only
Cooking tablets and recipe readers have been pretty limited (and not very good) in the past -- but this one looks extremely promising. Called the Qooq, the 10.2-incher boasts -- in addition to a bunch of recipes, of course -- complete meal prep videos, instructions and advice on choosing ingredients, shopping lists, meal planners -- all which can be updated monthly via a subscription service. Specwise, we're looking at a glass touchscreen, Ethernet and USB ports, an SD slot, WiFi, and a built-in stand. The custom UI looks pretty attractive, but there are some drawbacks. The Qooq does not have a browser (though it's got built-in weather, digital photo viewing, and internet radio apps), and it's only available for French language speakers for now. If you do speak the language of love, you can get one of these puppies for €349 (about $513), with the subscription service running an additional €12.95a month (about $19). [Via Red Ferret]
Belling's Media Chef digital cookbook
You know, back in our day, we would've imagined a digital cookbook being some virtual, possibly animated version of... you know, a book with recipes in it. These days kids and their fancy rock and roll cooking shows have taken over, and Belling's new Media Chef digital cookbook -- which looks like a glorified digital photo frame -- actually houses 48 cooking instructional videos from chef Brian Turner for playback on its 8-inch screen. Brian can be harnessed with an included compact remote control, and the unit can also act as a general media player, calendar and photo frame. It retails for £170ish (about $271 US) but we're not sure when.
DIY Cookbooks with MacGourmet and TasteBook
Advenio's MacGourmet is a perennial favorite for Mac owners who want to track recipes. TasteBook is the place to grab recipes from various online sites (think FoodNetwork. Epicurious, AllRecipes.com) and create your own cookbooks. Now MacGourmet and TasteBook have partnered to make creating your custom printed cookbook as easy as, well, making a photo book in iPhoto!You'll need to create a TasteBook account, export your personal recipes from MacGourmet and then upload them to Tastebook.com. You can add recipes from those other online recipe sites, divide the book into chapters, then have the cookbook professionally printed. Changing the order of recipes in TasteBook is done via drag and drop, and you can upload your own photos to give your cookbook a personal touch.The cost of the cookbooks is anywhere from $19.95 for 25 recipes to $34.95 for 100 recipes, with quantity discounts available. You can also get a 20% discount on orders of $34.95 or more between now and September 30th by using the code RECIPESW during checkout at TasteBook. It may be September, but it might be a good idea to start thinking about Christmas gifts ... like a custom cookbook!
E308: Cooking Guide headed to the U.S.
Bad cooks, don't worry -- now you can bake your cake and eat it, too.Nintendo is bringing its delightful-looking recipe game, Cooking Guide (known as Cooking Navi in Japan) to North America this November. Now you don't have to worry about paying a small fortune to import the nongame from Europe!Cooking Guide mostly caters to those of us that are helpless in the kitchen, like this blogger. We're ready for Nintendo to help our cooking skills this November, and before you know it, we're sure we'll be competing on Top Chef. Gallery: Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?
