'Let's Get Cooking' brews winning dish for Nintendo DSi

Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 1:12 pm

1271423533 'Let's Get Cooking' brews winning dish for Nintendo DSi 'Let's get Cooking' brews winning dish for Nintendo DSi

By Tracy Miller
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Monday, April 12th 2010, 12:06 PM

Nintendo may seem an unlikely candidate to advance the future of e-cookbooks, but "Let's get Cooking," a new offering from America's Test Kitchen and developer Indies zero, makes a good case for bringing your hand-held gaming system into the kitchen.

Like the previous DSi offering "What's Cooking? With Jamie Oliver," "Let's get Cooking" isn't so much a game as an interactive cooking guide, with plenty of tips for beginners.

Such applications draw comparison to the many other digital kitchen helpers on the market, including iPhone apps from popular sites like epicurious.com, the dozens of cookbooks now available on the Kindle and even a Web page pulled up on a laptop computer.

Bigger than an iPhone, more colorful and interactive than a Kindle, and smaller and sturdier than a laptop, Nintendo's new DSi XL is surprisingly suited to kitchen use. With a screen that's 93 percent larger than its predecessor the DS, cooks can glance at it from a short distance without squinting too hard or having to pick it up.

The 300 recipes in "Let's get Cooking" run the gamut from appetizers to desserts and seasonal dishes -- enough to be versatile but not overwhelming. all are from America's Test Kitchen, home to the popular show on public television as well as Cook's Illustrated and Cook's Country magazines.

The game touts its ability to turn cooking into a fun group activity, with options to create chef profiles and communicate with other DSi's to assign tasks based on age and skill level. a voice calls out each cook's name when it's time for his or her assignment, allowing kids to perform prep tasks in front of their own handhelds while mom or dad supervises.

But even without an army of little kitchen helpers in my household, I found lots to appreciate about Let's get Cooking.

The voice recognition function, which responds to commands like "next step" and "repeat", lets you avoid touching the device if your hands have been contaminated by raw meat, or if you're simply busy stirring or seasoning. It's a marked improvement over apps for other mobile platforms that require you to scroll through recipes as you're cooking, smearing up the touch screen or keypad in the process.

When cooking from online recipes, I'm often at a loss as to where to set my laptop in my small apartment kitchen, where space is at a premium and the available spots are a little too near the stove, sink and messy prep areas. The DSi, on the other hand, sat comfortably at the head of my cutting board as I chopped carrots and onions for a shepherd's pie (at one point I set it on top of my toaster - did I mention my kitchen was small?).

The developers have obviously put some thought into making the application as intuitive as possible. Checking off ingredients as I read through a recipe automatically saved them in a shopping list, which appears on the front screen of the game for easy access at the grocery store. Calendar functions allow cooks to plan menus and remember when they last made a dish, and gold-silver-bronze medal rating systems keep track of favorite recipes for each cook in your system.

Detailed descriptions of ingredients, accompanied by colorful photos, are helpful for those who can't tell a chuck roast from a standing rib roast. Cooking videos shot in America's Test Kitchen show culinary novices how to carve a roast chicken, chop an onion and other common tasks. I found myself fascinated by a clip on how to core a tomato - something I never even knew I needed to do.

"Let's get Cooking" seems designed to appeal to cooks, not gamers, but there aren't enough applications of its kind to convince those who don't already own a DSi to purchase one for their kitchen.

Still, as I whipped up a chicken Provencal with the help of my DSi, I found myself wishing more of my cookbooks were Nintendo-compatible. so they must be on to something.

'Let's Get Cooking' brews winning dish for Nintendo DSi

Tagged with: America • cooking • cooking guide • daily news staff writer • DSi • interactive cooking • iPhone • iphone apps • Jamie Oliver • Kitchen • Nintendo • tracy miller