In My Kitchen, August 2023, Artificial Intelligence.

In the age of AI, we can expect all sorts of robotic blog posts begin to appear on our screen, if they haven’t already done so. What is real and what isn’t? Ask Shakespeare. He pondered this question throughout the entire tragedy of Macbeth. “Fair is foul and foul is fair“, the opening lines of the play, set the central dilemma posed in every following Act. It is now the most important question of the era, when it comes to news, culture, learning, language, human relations, emotions and the intellect. I remember the outrage when we first began to doctor photos with moody filters, or the press began to manipulate images to suit their agenda. We now accept this as quotidian. Today, News Corp uses AI to produce 3000 Australian local news stories a week.

I opened Bard, Google’s AI assistant, and added a few prompts, such as In My kitchen, home grown, written in the first person, and diary. Here’s the result:

” I’m making soup tonight, and I’m using some of the winter squash that I grew in my kitchen garden. The squash is so flavorful, and it’s the perfect comfort food for a cold winter day. As I’m stirring the soup, I think about how much I love spending time in my kitchen. It’s my favorite place in the house, and I always feel happy and relaxed when I’m here. I love cooking, and I love experimenting with new recipes.”

Nauseating stuff! ‘Bard’ seems to be a misnomer here for a simplistic offering. When I opened the app, I thought it rather ironic that I was required to tick the box, I am not a robot. And, Note to AI, I will not give up the u in colour, or in flavourful, though I prefer the word flavoursome.

With that in mind, I’ll admit that my kitchen photos have been carefully edited. The messy benches and table clutter have been removed. I haven’t included any photos of delicious meals, such as dal, or risotto as these dishes tend to look like a dog’s dinner when photographed. These photos of fruits and food are real, after the mess edit: the colours are enhanced only by the winter light from my north facing window. Or are they? Did I pull the blinds down a fraction to create more chiaroscuro? Hover too unnaturally close to the subject?

The AI assistant on Jetpack provided this assessment of my blog up to this point.

“The content delves into the dilemma posed by AI in the age of robotic blog posts, drawing a parallel with Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It highlights the acceptance of manipulated images and questions the authenticity of AI-generated content. The user also shares a personal experience of editing kitchen photos and includes colorful images of fruits and food.

In terms of feedback, the post effectively raises the issue of AI-generated content and its impact on authenticity. It engages the reader by providing a personal perspective on the topic. The addition of images enhances the visual appeal and reinforces the content.

To improve the post further, here are a few actions:

1. Provide more analysis: While the post presents the issue of AI-generated content, it would benefit from a deeper exploration of the implications and potential consequences. Consider discussing the challenges faced by readers in determining what is real and what isn’t.

2. Diversify examples: Expand the examples beyond manipulated images and kitchen photos to include other areas where AI-generated content raises questions about authenticity, such as news articles, social media posts, or even academic papers.

3. Consider a stronger conclusion: Wrap up the post by summarizing the key points discussed and leave the reader with a thought-provoking question or call to action related to the topic of AI-generated content.

Overall, the post effectively introduces the topic of AI-generated content and its impact on authenticity. By incorporating these suggested actions, the content can be enhanced to provide a more comprehensive analysis and offer a stronger conclusion.”

I am impressed with that feedback, a bonus to all academic and teaching staff or a threat to their future? Marking papers has just become a waste of precious time. Learn online, cheat online, cut and paste, don’t read books, plagiarise if you like, and be assessed by a robot. Nothing is but what is not.

With regard to my images this month, there is always bread, it’s a part of my life, with three bakes most weeks. I enjoy the process during the day, though any bread making after 7 pm really annoys me. My mother and my grandmother never made bread. I very much doubt that my ancestors before them did either. My mother’s bread was delivered daily, as was the milk. Although I use a traditional levain, home baking is a rather modern thing, relying on a good oven and a few nice tools, along with a reliable source of organic flour. I feel very privileged that I can do this. I recently purchased a handsome cast iron Brunswick Bakers, a heavy beast weighing 6.5 kilos. It bakes bread beautifully though requires some strength to lift it in and out of the oven.

By contrast, my daughter came home with this brand-new Falconware Dutch Oven, a find in an opportunity shop for a meagre sum. Well spotted Rachael. At 950 grams, it’s so much easier to use.

The orange season has been impressive this year, providing enough to churn out two batches of marmalade. The trees are in flower again so this year we’ll have two seasons. This may be due to the lack of frost to date. The limes are more prolific, and I never know what to do with them, other than freeze a few for summer use.

The chooks are back on the lay. On lazy nights, there’s always the option of an omelette and a glass of wine, reminding me of the great food writing of Elizabeth David, in the collected essays from her book, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, originally published in various newspapers and magazines between 1955 to 1984. Good writing, and still inspiring.

I always have turnips in my garden, such an old-fashioned, earthy tasting vegetable, and one I’m learning to use more creatively. One plan is to slice them finely into rounds and quickly pickle them to toss through a salad. Or to finely slice them and layer them with potatoes to cook in a gratin with butter and cream.

This final photo, a composed warm salad made with freshly caught calamari, and our winter salad leaves, was taken during a recent short holiday to Lake Tyers on the east coast of Victoria. It was one of the tastier dishes I made this month.

Thanks, Sherry, for hosting this monthly series. In My Kitchen has always been a comfortable place to record my kitchen exploits over the last 10 years, but as with the changing times, these days I’m more prone to merge my views on life as reflected in photos of food.

In My Kitchen, April 2022

There’s always more to do in a garden, the commitment is ongoing, but the work keeps me sane in these dark times. Once I cross the threshold, which is a rather unromantic industrial looking tall gate, I find peace, timelessness and a belief in something greater than my own existence, a space beyond the worries of the world. I suppose you could call it hope, as vegetable gardening is about the future, a belief that through careful nurturing, the earth will be productive and plants will provide more food, that the bees and insects will continue to play their role, that seed will become flower, and flower fruit, then seed once more.

When I walk through the orto, I enter a trance like state, while still unconsciously doing what needs to be done. A little weeding here and there, gently transplanting self – sown lettuces to better spots, coaxing a pumpkin vine to take a different route, or watching the white butterfly moths as they rise from the brassica beds in the morning sun, and all this under a vast sky, wrapped in total silence and the aura of our planet, until a kookaburra laughs from the gum trees beyond, kookoook kaakaa, breaking the spell. It’s meditation and an antidote to these times, but it’s also fragile, so fragile. I close the gate behind me and return to the kitchen, the other centre of life for me. Nature and nurture.

Autumn is the busiest time of the year in the garden and consequently so it is in my kitchen. The tomatoes are still producing, but slowing down now. Their life cycle began in late July, when I germinated the seed in our north facing windows. It has been a long journey and now the seed is being selected from the best plants to preserve for seeding later this year. Every year I plant around 15 San Marzano tomatoes. Their fruit, an egg shaped thick skinned tomato, is kept strictly for saucing. To date we’ve made passata from around 21 kilos of fruit. This year one plant surprised me. We had a few spare plants leftover and so I shoved one in the citrus grove, adding a spade full of compost and some sugar cane mulch. It has grown into a sprawling ground bush of around two metres square. To date, I’ve picked 96 tomatoes from it, and there are still heaps more green tomatoes ripening. It will survive for another month.

The peppers and capsicums are all turning red, finally, which means it’s preserving time in the kitchen. Traditional Italian recipes use the old techniques of sott’olio and sott’aceto, under oil and under vinegar, or sun drying and salt curing. I’ve been inspired by the recipes found in Preserving the Italian Way, by Pietro Demaio. I first read about this specialist cookbook in the April edition of Gourmet Traveller and during an insanely annoying 3 am insomniac moment, I purchased a copy. It arrived promptly and I’ve used two recipes to date. The book includes chapters on preserving vegetables in oil and vinegar, then moves on to chapters on funghi, olives, herbs, syrups, bread, fish, cheese, cured meats, wine and liqueurs. Other than the meat chapter, I will get great use out of this book. It’s a gem. Today I bottled a jar of long red chillies under vinegar, and made the delicious sounding Involtini di Peperoni, little rolled capsicum strips stuffed with anchovy, capers and chilli preserved under oil. Both these preserves are now hidden in a dark spot for a month or so to cure. I often wonder why I do this when big jars of preserves such as peppers, cucumbers, capsicums and so on are cheap to buy from shops such as Bas Foods, Terra Madre, Harvest and Psarakos, to name a few of my favourite places. The cost of white wine vinegar has increased dramatically over the last two years, (ordinary white vinegar isn’t recommended for preserving) and using good olive oil, as recommended by Pietro, does not come cheaply. I guess the proof will be in the eating. The produce is organic and the process is hand crafted rather than industrial.

pickled long red chillis

Involtini di peperoni. Capsicum strips stuffed with caper, chilli and anchovy.

This year’s fruits were disappointing. Only the apples were prolific as well as the figs, which are finally ripening. Most of the other fruits lost their flowers during an extremely destructive storm last Spring, affecting power supplies and bringing down trees across the State. One of my favourite apple concoctions comes from a cookbook by Lorenza de’Medici.₁ I’ve written about this lovely dessert before, but it’s worth re- visiting the recipe, as I do every Autumn. If you grow the fruit, your only expense is the butter for the pastry and a slug of Marsala, for the lovely fruit mixture, if not also for you. If you can’t be fussed (that almost sounds like a slip of the tongue) making the pastry, the fruit mixture makes an excellent crumble.

Charlotte di frutta.

For the Short pastry.

• 350 g plain flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 125 g sugar
• 225 g butter
• pinch of  salt

For the filling

• 1 orange
• 300 g blood plums
• 1 kg apples
• 225 g sugar
• grated peel of 1 lemon
• 2 Tbsp Marsala
• 3 cloves

Method

1. Prepare the short crust pastry. Place the dry ingredients in the food processor, add the butter, process, then the egg yolks, until mixed and formed into a ball. ( you can do this by hand if you prefer). Roll or press into a flat slab, wrap in cling wrap and let rest in the fridge for an hour or so.
2. Meanwhile, make the filling. Grate the orange peel and reserve. Peel the orange, removing any pith, and divide into segments. Peel the plums and apples and cut into pieces. Cook the fruit together with the sugar, lemon and orange peel, Marsala, cloves and vanilla pod for 20 minutes, uncovered, over low heat.
3. Butter and flour a 25 cm springform pan. Roll out two-thirds of the pastry to line the base and sides of the pan. Fill with the cooled cooked fruit and cover with the remaining pastry, rolled out thinly. Cook in a preheated oven at 180 degrees c /350 f for 45 minutes. Let cool before removing from the pan. Dust with icing sugar,and serve at room temperature with cream Serves 8-10.

Charlotta di Frutta

Not far from my garden, the sprawling chook house is another spot where I can lose myself totally. I do like our eggs so much. Some of our lovely lunches consist of a herb omelette and a garden salad. As most of my larger chooks are now in semi- retirement, living out their remaining years in relative chook luxury, with an orchard to run in, spare greens from our garden, and a tree to perch in, some decisions need to be made about the blokes. There are too many roosters so two must go. Discussing the methods of dispatch is akin to the opening scenes of Macbeth, ‘If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly’. Gone are the days when some locals would happily take young roosters to eat, or the Cambodians would bid a dollar or two for a fancy rooster, especially the black skinned silkies, at the Mernda poultry auction. That old market site is now a new sprawling suburb. Last week we visited a nearby hatchery in the Yarra Valley and bought 6 female day old chickens- don’t ask what happens to the newly hatched roosters. And don’t ask what the free range egg farmers do with their laying hens after 18 months when they become less productive. It’s a mean old world.

I’m definitely keeping this fella, he’s quiet and a bit fancy.

Six day old chickens, which were popped under a clucky hen on dark. She eagerly tucked them under her white warm fluffy body.

Lunch sorted

Happy easter Holidays dear Readers. And thanks to Sherry who hosts this monthly In My Kitchen series. My kitchen and garden come as a total package so you can excuse the divergence from the main theme.

Just out of the oven this morning, sourdough HC Buns. We ate four, with butter. This is the easiest and by far the tastiest recipe I’ve made in a while. It’s a keeper. Contact me if you would like the recipe.