Chef Watson and Cognitive Cooking with Chef Kedar Bobde, Hotel Hyatt Regency

IBM invited Haute Kutir on media briefing of Cognitive Cooking during IBM Analytics Conference at Hotel Hyatt Regency, Mumbai.

From Molecular cooking to Cognitive cooking, I am getting curious about the sudden trending change in the world of gastronomy and food. Few days back when I was at MasterClass with an Ice cream major, I discovered some nouveau in chocolate baking, and soon after that "Cognitive Cooking" took my inquisitiveness to another level and I could not help but steal some moments from my schedule to check it out. What I saw, is what I liked. Totally. Here's more to the crumble...

Chef Watson and About Cognitive Cooking

Cooking is not just an art but a lovely science. You can no more attach the word "cooking" as a domestic activity. No, my dear Watson, no more. Cognitive cooking is about assimilating the power of computing, cognitive sciences and kitchen IQ all together in a place, rather into the hands of the home chefs to inspire and change the way they think about creativity in the kitchen. 

To make it simpler, the Watson that is bringing innovation and creativity to financial services clients, retail cos, and healthcare organizations, is now taken a leap ahead to inspire chefs and cooks to discover never before seen recipe. To make this happen, Watson is using its understanding of the chemistry of different ingredients and how they interact together.  It is nothing, but an app that intelligently [using database intelligence] generates million of ideas out of the, in their own words "quintillions" of possibilities, and then predicts which one offers the most novelty and the best food pairing. 

So like me, if you are an intrigued viewer and regular watcher of MasterChef, it is time to move to another dimension and give substance to our curiosities with a little help from Chef Watson learn to combine different ingredients towards making new dishes.

Who is Chef Watson and How does it work

Chef Watson is actually an app, that has been trained over a database of about 9000 recipes, helping learn about dishes and ingredients combinations. This knowledge is combined with Watson's understandings of what tastes people prefer, and how the chemistry between different ingredients go along to make a dish. 

You may say, the same is available through a search engine. However, in contrast to a search engine that simply sifts through existing data to serve up a list of already published recipes; Chef Watson reasons about the big data behind recipes and flavor compounds as well as human perception, to design highly creative recipe ideas. The app gives users the tools and inspiration to cook great food, not just telling them exactly what to cook.

Using this app, you can create "novel" recipes by selecting ingredients, dish type, dish style. It will also assist in inclusion and exclusion of an ingredient to suit your requirement and palate. I am yet to try this app as I believe it is in Beta stages. Once I get a hang of it, we can feature it here. 

For benefit of your curiosity, here's a detailed process that you may refer to-

My Experience at Grand Hyatt for Cognitive Cooking

Chef Kedar Bobde churned out two recipes, demonstrating the concept of Cognitive cooking. The dishes were-

1) Salmon Roll - NonVeg

2) Jackfruit Salad- Veg

Now Jack Fruit is an interesting vegetable cum fruit for vegetarians esp the ones in Madhya Prades, UP, and Bihar. The Fruit is considered as nonveg for veg, a concept that I always mildly debated and a dish that I barely endorsed or like. Off course, we are known to have two popular recipes of cooking a dish out of it. And none of it support the idea of serving it as hours de oeuvres or starters to formal guests. Now if you throw a search option in regular engines for a recipe [this is what I am assuming, knowing that I may be wrong], you will come up usual variants. {needless to say,  Well, that is where cognitive cooking comes into the picture.

Well talking about pictures, seeing is believing. Here's what we tried at the cognitive cooking masterclass-

I totally loved the flavor there and would soon post the recipe on this blog. Do stay tuned. Here's few more glimpses from the coverage and dishes covered-

Overall, I liked the initiative and could not wait to try it soon. The idea that you have the option to throw  away ingredient's name, specifying the kind of dish you want [Salad, Soup, Curry, Dry etc] and select the dish style [Indian, Thai, Continental] and get options ranging from beginners to an expert to maneuver your gourmand spread.

I would love to get hold of it some time and shall share with you. Till then, happy living and keep Reading.

Haute Kutir

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