Kung Pao Chicken with Black Vinegar and bacon cauliflower fried rice

I love vinegar, I can't explain why, but I do. Maybe it's the fifth flavor umami that can't really be explained but isn't sweet, sour, bitter or salty.  Vinegar adds an element to food that I think makes it delicious. Several years ago I saw black vinegar called for in a beef and broccoli stir-fry recipe, which I had never heard of at the time and was curious, so I set out to find some. Six grocery stores later I couldn't find any and settled with the balsamic vinegar substitute suggested in the notes. The recipe turned out fantastic, but left me curious as to how it would be with black vinegar. While grocery shopping a while ago at a local grocery store, I saw some! There are three of the same grocery store in town and I didn't previously check them all. I have since learned that they are all the same store, but separate entities and have different inventory.

According to The Bald Gourmet "Chinese black vinegar is an aged vinegar which is typically made from rice, but can also be made from wheat, millet, sorghum, or a combination of any of the four. It has a deep black color, similar to that of balsamic vinegar." The vinegar I picked up smells similar to molasses, is somewhat sweet, and quite black. Naturally I was excited to try this vinegar and settled on two recipes I wanted to try, the beef and broccoli mentioned above, and a Kung Pao chicken recipe I'd been eying for a while. Unable to decide, I asked my wife, and we decided to make Kung Pao chicken. I have enjoyed Kung Pao chicken on many occasions but never tried to make it. I forgot to pick up the dried red chilies, which is ok as my wife doesn't have a high spice threshold though we are working on it.

Still working on food photography

I decided to do a cauliflower fried rice with the chicken partially because I love it and can't get enough, and partially because I didn't take inventory of my rice supply until I was in the process of cooking and discovered I didn't have enough. I used this recipe for the Kung Pao chicken http://rasamalaysia.com/kung-pao-chicken/2/ I don't have the dark soy sauce and a google search informed me that I was probably using dark soy sauce it just wasn't labeled as such, so I used the same soy sauce instead of two separate ones. I also added a few dashes of chili oil since I didn't have the chilies.

The cauliflower fried rice came from skinnytaste I completely spaced eggs, but it still turned out amazing. In fact, the whole meal was amazing, there were no leftovers! I'll have to make it again.

Jamaican Rum Ribs by Chef Watson

I was going to make Chef Watson's garlic cake today, but I don't have a kitchen aid and the thought of standing and holding a mixer for 20 minutes is really unappealing to me. So instead I tried another Chef Watson recipe, Jamaican Dark Rum Ribs. The only criteria I put in for ingredients was pork ribs, the rest was a surprise. The recipes Watson generates have not been reviewed by a human and I was expecting it to be somewhat confusing and hard to follow. It wasn't. The recipe was actually straight forward and written better than many I have seen written by humans. I don't usually take pictures of my food, it'll take some work to get them pinterest quality. The ribs were not as dry as they look. 

The marinade included several ingredients that I have never combined or even thought about combining. Rum, ketchup, apricot preserves, ginger, lime, brown sugar, sesame oil, cumin, allspice, and vanilla. It's the combination sesame oil with vanilla that's new to me. I was skeptic, but it turned out delicious! "Tangy" was the word my wife used. Our consensus was that it should be made again but probably not put on a weekly rotation. 

One of my complaints about Watson is that where the recipes are generated on demand instead of held in a file in a server somewhere it is difficult to get the same recipe if you don't save it. I did not save the recipe, I was working from the browser on my phone. When I was done I closed the tab, now I can't find the recipe again. When I looked through the history, every IBM entry took me to the ingredient selection page. I tried the same search criteria and couldn't find it. On me desktop I can include up to four ingredients, and being more specific I still couldn't find it. I did however find a recipe with the same name and ingredient's close enough that substitutions would work and get similar results.

IBM Chef Watson

I like strange things. When I saw a recipe involving a jar of salsa, peanut butter, zucchini and sweet potatoes, I had to try it, and it was amazing! The recipe is for an African peanut soup. The Anthropologist in me wants to know what part of Africa, but the author of the recipe doesn't want me to. But nonetheless, it is tasty although probably not very authentic. When I learned about IBM's Chef Watson, I was very curious. The people at IBM and Bon Appetit decided to feed thousands of recipes in to Watson and see what it could learn. Watson is an artificial intelligence (AI), so rather than searching everything, it learns and recalls information fed into it. From all these recipes Watson has learned what flavor profiles go together. From IBM's Chef Watson website (https://www.ibmchefwatson.com/community) you can search for one or up to four ingredients and Watson will create a recipe based on those ingredients. You can adjust the results provided from normal to bizarre. I encourage you to check it out, play around, and get inspired. On my next day off, I'm going to try a garlic cake recipe from Watson. I have no idea what to expect.