Cooking with ChefWatson

Last week I was invited to be a beta tester of Chef Watson. Here are some articles about Chef Watson: http://www.bonappetit.com/tag/chef-watson.

The idea is, you put in ingredients of your choice and type of dish (e.g. Italian, Mexican), the cognitive computing application (Chef Watson) will search through recipes database and create a recipe recommendation for you based on its analysis of food chemistry, which could be different from the conventional cooking methods or ingredients.

So I searched: chicken, potato, broccoli, and it gave me about 5 choices. I found one which I have all/most of the ingredients, and cooked it for dinner. I didn't have saffron, but I decided to skip it.

Here is the recipe for New Year's Day Broccoli Potato Chicken Tagine.

I had no idea what a tagine is, nor did I know if the dish would be edible when I started cooking. See, that's what I call have faith and being adventurous.

I followed the recipe. First, I put the chicken, chopped onion, water in my earthen pot. I started to feel uneasy when I put in 1 1/4 tbs ground cardamon, 3 tsp ground black pepper, 4 tsp ground ginger and 1/2 oz of ground cinnamon. That's a lot of spice, I thought. I had no idea how this kind of mixture would taste, and I could totally destroy our dinner.

While the chicken was being cooked with the spice and onion, I chopped potatoes and broccoli. Then I was worried again, as there were a lot of potatoes and broccoli, and my pot wasn't big enough for everything. So I had to transfer the food into a big soup pot. Note, the direction did say: "heavy large pot." 

When in doubt, search the internet, right? I looked up tagine online to found this link to another recipe to chicken tagine, and it was a little reassuring. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/chicken-tagine-recipe.html

I just let the food cook and followed the recipe the rest of the way. Two hours later, I had my finished product.

When Jack came home, he wasn't pleased to know that I cooked a dish based on Watson's recommendation. For an AI guy as he is, he thinks ChefWatson was bogus. I made brown rice to go with it. The combination could become an unpleasant dinner, and dinner is very important for this household. 

"Oh, I'm sure it'll be fine. The food taste pretty good, actually." I said, while promised to keep ChefWatson's creativity off the Thanksgiving dinner menu.

My dish came out better than I expected. I was happy to have made this totally foreign dish and enjoyed the wholesome spice. In addition, most of the ingredients are cancer fighting: cardamom, chicken, broccoli, ginger, pepper.

If I were to cook it again, I would make the following modifications:

- chop potato in large pieces.

- since boneless chicken is used, I can shorten the cooking time.

- broccoli can be put in later so it's not overcooked. 

- broccoli can be replaced by Brussels sprouts, or even add daikon. I like daikon.

- use ground cardamon instead of whole cardamon to avoid the cardamon seeds.

All in all it was a pleasant experience.

All I can remember about American Hustle

American Hustle had been playing repeatedly on TV for a couple of months, but we never had the motivation to watch it, because it was an Oscar nominated movie, which meant it had the potential to be super dramatic. And we don't need drama.

When I finally got to watch it last week in a stormy morning, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It was a crime movie minus the depressing drama, and replaced it with interesting characteristics plus humorous dialogues. There is also a good selection 70's classical songs, which made it super classy.

Like all other criminal movies and dramas, we tried to make sure we watch them during the day instead of in the evening, so it wouldn't impact our sleep. To some, it is not an issue.

I happily recommended the movie to Jack, and we watched it on Saturday morning. As expected Jack also enjoyed the movie.

One of the few things I could remember was the dialogue between Rosalyn, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Irving, played by Christian Bale:

Rosalyn: You loved me, remember? You loved me.
Irving: I loved you because I thought you were mysterious, but then I found out you were just depressed.

The casting of Jennifer Lawrence was excellent, because she was the youngest, most beautiful, and her superb outshone all of her co-stars.

Wolverine v X-Men

Last week we watched X-Men, Days of Future's Past, on Wednesday evening, then watched The Wolverine on Friday evening. They both came from the X-Men blu-ray pack.

By the time we watched The Wolverine, I have totally forgotten the story line of the X-Men movie. All I remember was, I enjoyed X-Men.

I couldn't say the same thing about The Wolverine. I really don't like the fact that just because he could heal himself quickly, so people keep trying to kill him or blast him into pieces. What kind of life is that? Unfortunately, for Logan, it was an immortal life, which made it even more sad.

What kind of sick person would try to get the power from the person who saved him from nuclear bomb explosion, and said: "I know you lived a long and painful life, and I can give you a chance to die a normal person's death, to end all of this. And in return, I will take your powers from you." What is this sick and twisted logic?

All I can say is, The Wolverine is not a movie for me. It's too violent and bloody.

Yesterday, Jack and I were both trying to piece together which story happened before the other, and we decided The Wolverine happened before X-Men, Days of Future's Past, although we weren't exactly sure. I kept saying, but Logan lost his adamantium claws in The Wolverine, though. Did he have his adamantium claws in the X-Men movie? We couldn't be sure. Then Jack had a discovery, well, in X-Men, Logan went back to 1975, and then he changed the future since then so maybe that's why he had his claws.

Finally we both laughed. Some silly screenplay making things so confusing, and we spent our nice weekend figuring things out. Maybe someone just made a series of mistakes in the scripts to make a quick buck.

Shortly after, we dropped the topic.

Laughed twice

Y: Actually, even though the newer Big Bang episodes are not as funny as the first few seasons, they are still pretty funny compare to other sitcoms.

J: Yes, I laughed twice in last week's episode.

What's for dinner?

Last night we wanted to go out for dinner, but couldn't decide where to go, so we kept asking each other: "What's for dinner?"

At Smart & Final when we talked about it, Jack said, "well, I don't want to have Cantonese food or Italian food. The choices can be Indian food or Sichuan."

I said "OK. Or Sushi."

Then we kept thinking while going for other errands.

At Petsmart, I said, "well, I don't really want to have Indian food nor Sichuan."

"Oh, now you are making it difficult." Jack said. I smiled.

When we were done with all the errands, we were both hungry. I told Jack we should go for dinner before I start eating snacks, and I suggested that we could go to Korean tofu house. Jack agreed. It was a good compromise to the expensive Sushi, and the cool weather was suitable for hot soup.

When we got to the restaurant it was only around 5 PM, though it was already dark and chilly. We saw a lot of people waiting at the door, so we were a little worried. Luckily the people who were waiting had big parties, and there were still empty tables in the restaurant. I put our name done for 2, and we waited. The staff were doing their best to prepare the tables for dinner rush. We didn't need to wait for long to be seated.

I really enjoyed my tofu soup with pork dumplings, as well as all the small dishes that accompanied the meal: kim chi, various marinated vegetables and seaweed. I also watched the waitresses dashing around from table to table. The patrons were mostly Asian families.

While enjoying dinner, I was marveling how lucky we were living in an area where there were so many choices of ethnic foods for our picky taste buds. "Is it not like this everywhere else?" Jack asked. Actually no. I recalled, the very first time I had Korean food, I was in Austin, so as Indian food to think of it. I guess Austin was an interesting diverse town. But elsewhere is not so much. For instance, one of my coworkers said there was no decent Indian food in Portland where he lived.

When we left the restaurant, it was a full house, and there were people waiting.

Caffe Mezza Luna

After a lazy start this morning, I managed to convince Jack to go to Caffe Mezza Luna for brunch.

There was some sun in the morning, and it was especially comfortable. The cafe is located in the Harbor village, around the harbor, of course.  We stopped by the bakery stand at the farmer's market at the parking lot just to wet our appetite.

When we got to the cafe, there was a long line, and I was a little worried that Jack would become impatient and wanted to go. But there wasn't any time sensitive activities we had in plan, so we stayed.

Jack told me what he wanted, then went to take a seat and I waited in line to make order. The pastries at the display looked so yummy. It was good that it was a bit of a wait before I got to order, so that I had enough time to make up my mind about what I want.

At the cashier, I ordered the two egg over easy with bacon, quiche, tiramisu and a pumkin spice latte. I got a number and my tiramisu, then went to our table. It was a nice day, and a lot of people chose to sit at the patio, so there were plenty of tables for everyone. I enjoyed looking out the window, at the people waiting outside of the other restaurant, Flavor California Comfort Food, and Jack enjoyed watching the Niners game on TV.

We waited a little, and our food came. I really enjoyed my quiche, as it was SO fluffy and light. The salad was OK. Jack was OK about his breakfast. He said the eggs were just the way he liked it, bacon was delicious and the toast was good. The latte was delicious and it was not too sweet. We ate the tiramisu last, and it was a little too sweet for me, but I think it would be better with some coffee.

I'm glad we went there for brunch in this nice morning. I can still feel quite relaxed. I would call this cafe a local charm.

Digital evolution

Aaa, Sunday morning, people used to read newspaper over breakfast, or like Jack and I, bouncing interesting ideas off of each other over coffee. And now what do we do? Each of us having an iPad and separately dwelling deep into the cyber space. I really miss the good old days.

Jack spent an hour looking for a heavy duty tool to move big logs from one place to another for a land preservation project. It makes me think. With the rate the eCommerce grows, what's going to happen to the retail stores. Sadly, some of them will go out of business. And what's going to happen to the vacant spaces? Perhaps more new restaurants, or yoga studios.

European wax

We drove by a shopping area with different kinds of shops.
J: What is European wax?
Y: It's a way to remove body hair.
J: Oh, I thought it was a kind of car wax.
Y: Haha, I don't think so.

Run for fun or run to win

Amy and Jake are very different dogs, even though they live together all Jake's life. From these two, I learned that every dog is different.

While Amy eats everything,  all the food in her bowl and what he splashes around, Jake is selective, and  he spits things out if he doesn't like them, such as pretzels or banana. He eats slower, and stops when he is full. He leaves the food in the bowl for later. 

Even though Amy is nine and a half years old, and 4 years older than Jake, Amy still out runs Jake, and when Amy runs after the ball, whether it is in the water or on land, Jake would give up running after it, and roll around in the mud instead. Half of the time, we hold Amy back, and let Jake have a head start on fetching, then let Amy go after Jake is 100 feet away. When he runs or swims, he is more relaxed and well paced, while Amy is more rush and aim to reach the ball first.

We concluded that Jake runs for fun, and Amy runs to win.

I figured, if you are born to be one type, you cannot live any other way.

Happy or sad

Once a while I listen to CDs while driving. I have Train, Lady Gaga, Music and Lyrics sound track, and a few Chinese CDs.

I have a CD that is a concert of this Taiwan singer, and he sings the sweetest love songs. With a beautiful clear voice, he was crowned prince of love songs in Taiwan. I really liked to play his songs, because they made me haopy... well, until I couldn't stop singing these songs in my head.

I have two other CDs from two female singers, one from Hong Kong, and the other from Singapore, and they both sang sad, sad breakup songs. The depressing songs weren't great, and I only played their songs for sentimental reasons.

Comedies or love songs can bring people happiness, and sad breakup songs can really put people in a sad frame of mind.

The good thing is, we have choices of what to listen to and what to watch based on our taste and the moment. Just remember, when it doesn't work for you anymore, you can always turn it off or change the station.

Follow the leader

Has it ever happened to you when you drove in a strange neighborhood, slightly lost, and wished the car in front of you were going to the same place, so you could just followed him? Being a poor navigator, I hate to get lost, so GPS is my best friend, because it helps me get un-lost.

My mom used to tease me that GPS is my blind man's stick. I once drove my mom around Kauai with the help of GPS, and impressively found our way back to the hotel every night.

One Election Day a few years ago, Jack and I left home early and drove separately to the polling place because we were going to drive to work afterwards. As per usual, I followed Jack's car and turned right into the street past the gas station, then turned left, following the grey SUV.  Still following the grey SUV, I turned right into the auto shop, and that's when I realized the car I had been following was someone else. I had no idea when I lost Jack. Exiting the auto shop parking lot, I was on my own.

Fortunately, I could remember to turn right on the next street to find the community center where the polling place was. Jack laughed when he found out what happened to me.

Following the wrong person could have been much worse than what happened to me that day.