The cooking guide
Stand aside Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Nigella Lawson. The days when you made your fortunes teaching us how to cook using a dodgy Cockney accent, the “F” word and coquetry may be over.
Nintendo has launched an interactive cook book with more than 250 recipes in its DS range.
Entitled Cooking Guide: Can’t decide what to eat?, this electronic “cooking companion” is obviously aimed at the indecisive chef.
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It may lack the homely charms of a sauce-stained cook book that has given years of faithful service in nourishing ourselves, friends and families.
However, its technical wizardry and almost obsessive level of detail are impressive. The artlessness of even the most inexperienced cook is catered for, step by step.
First, choose your recipe.
You can browse dishes by country, using a map to select which cuisine you wish to source a dish from.
Or you can search for meals that feature a particular ingredient, whether it be a family favourite or something in the fridge that needs using up.
Recipes are also categorised by calorie content and degree of difficulty.
Once you have selected a recipe, the guide tells you what utensils you will need to prepare it. For the cutlery-challenged and crockery-ignorant among us, tapping on the name of a utensil brings up a photograph and a brief explanation of what it does.
Next, it’s time to check what ingredients are required.
The guide provides a checklist that can be marked off with the Nintendo DS stylus. If you are missing any items, you can create a shopping list and take your DS to the supermarket with you. And there is a handy A-Z feature to help you find appropriate substitute ingredients.
Now it’s time to get down to the cooking – with the help of the Nintendo chef.
“As your hands will be busy preparing and cooking the ingredients, you can speak into the Nintendo DS microphone to progress through each stage of the recipe,” says the Nintendo public relations material.
“The Nintendo DS chef will take you through each step with photos on screen and easy-to-follow spoken instructions.”
But, like the TV offer with a free set of steak knives, there’s still more. Cooking Guide explains specific techniques via tutorial videos, showing you how to julienne carrots or de-vein prawns.
Finally, dinner is served.
Just don’t tell Nintendo the best meal you’ve ever had did not come from an electronic guide. It was that traditional bowl of fresh pasta, ripe tomatoes and meatballs lovingly prepared in a family-run Italian restaurant on a city side street.
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