Acid for Blood

CG: Spaghetti Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino

A friend of mine from graduate school is visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday. For our evening meals, I've decided to use Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? to help me. Tonight's meal was Spaghetti Aglio, Olio e Peperoncino, which is described as "a simple spaghetti dish made with garlic, red chillies, and olive oil." We combined this with a salad and it made for a light, but filling meal.

The verdict: "Mm, good!"

Earlier this week, Nintendo thoughtfully sent me an email informing me that the North American version of Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? would be released on 24 November. Nintendo changed the title to Personal Trainer: Cooking. I had a look around the official site, and from the videos and screen shots, the game seems pretty much the same, apart from regional differences, such as an American interactive chef replacing the British one from Cooking Guide.

If you're a North American reader who's been following my culinary attempts, and are curious about this game, but didn't want to import it like I did, you should definitely check out Personal Trainer: Cooking. At this very moment, Personal Trainer: Cooking is on sale at Amazon.com. The regular price is $19.99 and it's marked down to only $9.95 $4.95.

On a sidenote, has anyone seen Nintendo's Amazon.com-powered hub for buying Nintendo DS games online? It's part of their "I Play For Me" website, targeted to non-gamers and women, judging from the photos on the web page.

CG: Kartoffelgratin

In a previous entry, I said that I wouldn't post more Cooking Guide experiments, but you know what? I'm going back on that statement. This DS game is incredibly useful and practical, and it deserves more attention. I enjoy using the DS game more than I would a paper cook book because it's interactive. I also get cool achievement stamps every time I cook a dish. I have created a Food and Drink category, so you know this is serious business!

Last night I made Kartoffelgratin, a German dish from Cooking Guide. The game describes it as "a potato gratin with cheese and a creamy sauce".

Keep in mind that I have the European version of Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?. The North American version is being released in late November with a new title, Personal Trainer: Cooking. Having an imported version of this title does mean that I have to deal with differences, such as measurements in the game being in metric rather than Imperial. Having lived in Britain for six years and being a fan of science, I'm not averse to the metric system. Most of my cooking tools, except for the stove and oven, do actually display metric measures. I'm only having to consult the internet to convert cooking temperatures (I'm not good enough to do it in my head!), so that's not too bad.

These regional differences extend to a few ingredients. One of the things that I discovered in making Kartoffelgratin is that the recipe calls for double cream, and double cream does not exist in the United States natively. I hear the Americans asking, "What is double cream?" Ochef says:

Double cream is the name in Britain for a very rich cream -- containing 48% butterfat. Whipping cream in this country, by contrast, contains between 30% and 40% butterfat. Single cream in Britain is comparable to American half and half (and may also be called pouring cream), with between 10% and 12% fat.

The same website advises that I can make a higher fat cream on my own, but I decided not to go through that much effort, and instead used heavy cream. I think the dish turned out well, despite it being less rich than called for in the recipe:

The first time I made this dish, I made it "by the book" (apart from using heavy cream) so that I had a baseline standard for comparison. I am fine-tuning this recipe to better suit oliemoon's tastes, because she really likes this dish. Last night's effort is actually the second time I made Kartoffelgratin. In my second effort, I increased the cheese content, increased the cream-to-milk ratio in favour of cream, and reduced the amount of pepper. It tasted good, and it was filling, but I think there are a few more tweaks I can make before it will be ready for oliemoon consumption.

Cooking Guide: Follow-Up

I have decided to try to cook one dish from Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? every week. I won't be blogging my culinary adventures each time, but I would like to go into a little more detail about some features of this game.

I took some time to dig into the Cooking A-Z section, which shows the player how to perform basic cooking tasks and provides basic cooking information and helpful tips. What I especially like about this section are the video tutorials. You can even pause the videos during playback in case you missed any details. Another thing I absolutely love about this section, and the game in general really, is the prolific use of full colour-photographs. Another category in this section of the game is the list of substitute ingredients in the event that your purchase options are limited.

At the recipe selection menu, you can choose to search for a dish By Requirements: Notes (Made dish, Not Made Yet, Favourite, personal Notes Added), Difficulty (Easy, Normal, Challenging), Main Ingredient, Cooking Method, Calories, and Cooking Time.

At the main screen for the recipe, you have the option to input notes if you wish. You can do this by using the stylus to actually write your own notes, letter-by-letter. You can also save the dish to your Favourites so that you can easily access it from the main menu.

One of the incredibly obvious features that completely escaped my notice in my first play through the game, is that you can set the number of servings you require from the dish's View Ingredients menu. This would have been really helpful the last time I used this game, as I made much too much food then. Whoops.

A really cool detail I noticed in the View Steps menu is that the game plays sound effects at each step. So for example, if the step requires you to chop basil, it plays the real sound of chopping, or if a step requires that you fry your ingredients, you hear sounds of frying.

After you have completed all the steps during the preparation of your meal, you get a completion stamp which is placed on the calendar. The game tracks how many times you have cooked each dish and the date on which you cooked it. The game stores up to three dishes per day.

Continuing on with the French theme from my review of the game, last week I cooked another French dish -- Tomates Farcies. The game describes it as "Tomatoes stuffed with a tasty mince filling and baked in the oven." Tomates Farcies was relatively easy to prepare. Most of the ingredients were easily obtainable, though I did have to go to a slightly more upmarket grocery store to get Gruyère. It was quite delicious. The fresh basil and Gruyère gave the dish a nice flavour. Here are the results:

I'm definitely pleased with this game purchase.

Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?

I don't typically cover food and drink on this blog. Foodie blogging is the domain of my good friend, Helen. I dislike cooking. It's not that I'm bad at it, it's that I don't have much imagination in the kitchen, nor do I ever know what to cook because my current diet is admittedly kind of limited. It's not as bad as a university student, but it could use improvement.

Enter Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? for the Nintendo DS. Cooking Guide is a digital cook book which was released on the DS two years ago in Japan. I have the European version, which saw release in June 2008. North America is due to see a release this November. I expect that the North American release will be localised to suit that market in terms of voiceovers, recipes, and use of the Imperial system of measurement. Since I imported from the UK (via one of my friends -- cheers, Ross!), the price is higher than I would have paid for if I bought the North American version later this year.

Nintendo has done a good job of creating games outside the traditional gamer demographic, and Cooking Guide is no exception. This 'game' is quite accessible, user-friendly, and provides enough detail and explanaton for novice cooks.

Cooking Guide features recipes for 245 dishes from around the world, including salads, soups, meat, fish, noodle dishes, and desserts. There are loads and loads of pictures throughout, which is really helpful in shopping for ingredients and actually getting down to cooking.

In addition to recipes, Cooking Guide also features a "Cooking A-Z" section which instructs users on basic cooking techniques and provides information about utensils, terminology, and ingredients you can use as subsitites. There are even videos which show you how to do things like julienne carrots, clean a rainbow trout, and fillet a flatfish. Nutrition information is also presented with each dish.

One of the coolest features of Cooking Guide is the ability to save checked ingredients from a dish you'd like to cook to a Shopping List. The idea is for you to take your DS with you when you go food shopping. At the Settings menu, you can choose to exclude ingredients. So for example, if you have a food allergy and you don't want to prepare dishes that require a certain ingredient, you can use this feature.

When browsing the list of dishes, you can choose to view them alphabetically or by country. When you select a dish, you are presented with a colourful picture of the finished product. You can also view the dish's ingredients, the steps needed for preparation, or you can go ahead and start cooking the dish.

During the actual preparation and cooking of a dish, Cooking Guide speaks to you, telling you what to do every single step of the way. If the chef speaks too slowly or too quickly, you can adjust his voice speed in the Settings menu. You can speak into the DS's microphone to prompt Cooking Guide to move to the next step, or you can tap the touch screen with your stylus. At any point during the preparation of a dish, you can take a look at the dish's ingredients list, or you can go back to previous steps. I opted not to use voice commands, because I found the mic was a little too sensitive. It picked up the sound of my chopping and kept prompting me to repeat my command. If you choose, you can also use the timer function to assist you when you cook. I was very pleased with the instructions, and never did I feel as if the chef was rushing me.

Earlier tonight, I made two dishes from France using Cooking Guide. I cooked Poulet Marengo, which is "chicken cooked in a rich white wine and tomato sauce" and Petits Pois à la Française, which is "a simple recipe for French-style peas". Here are the results:

Visually, the food turned out very well. How did it taste? Critics (well, my significant other) exclaimed, "Om nom nom!" and that the meal was "wonderful" and "delicious". We topped dinner off with some store-bought cheesecake. It was a great meal all around.

I recommend Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat? for DS owners who would like an accessible cookbook and would like to expand their diet. Cooking Guide is probably more expensive than basic paper-based cookbooks, but the interactive aspect  as well as the number and variety of dishes available more than made up for the price difference.