Get the kids to make the dinner (Cooking Guide (DS))

Member Name: sandra101

Product:	Cooking Guide (DS)
Date:	06/09/08 (270 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very easy to use, loads of ideas great graphics

Disadvantages: A little too adventurous for us

Cooking Guide

My 11 year old son would you believe has taken a real interest in cooking over the school holidays. He has been peeling and chopping veg. cooking salmon fillets, marinating steaks etc. and seems to be getting a real kick out of it.

I do think there is a cunning plan behind this sudden involvement as he has recently started to show an interest in girls, coming home from hols with a couple of mobile numbers so is presumably learning to cook to impress them in the future. Or is it because if he can cook he reckons I'll allow him to come home from school and stay on his own as long as he cooks dinner. Yeah right like that's ever going to happen, I'm not going to admit it though while he is still happy to peel potatoes.

When he saw the DS cooking guide advertised he completely fell for it and pleaded to get it. I have to admit I wanted it myself so this was a good way to get brownie points and get something I wanted. What another brilliant piece of marketing by Nintendo, a talking cook book, it proved popular immediately.

The advertising for this title, I can't really call it a game, goes along the lines of "Can't Decide What To Eat? Let Cooking Guide.help"

Cooking Guide takes you through every step from compiling a shopping list, preparation of ingredients and utensils through to a step-by-step guide of how to make your chosen meal.

You can choose recipes by:
Country of origin
A-Z
Calorie Content
Time taken
Easiest
Ingredients available

There are over 250 different recipes to choose from starters, desserts, main courses. We made our way down the list and I have to admit we are not terribly adventurous with food and very little apart from a stew, a strawberry dessert and some salmon appealed. The recipes would be suited to a more adventurous palette.

Once you have chosen the dish you can get the DS to actually make up a shopping list for the ingredients required and then take it to the local supermarket, although walking around Tesco with an open DS in your hand you would look like a bit of a plank.

Say you fancy a nice meat stew, use your stylus to click on meat and then go through the different dishes until you find one you fancy you then click on it for the ingredients etc.

Once you have everything together you click on cook to start the recipe. The DS will show photographs at various stages of the process. Each instruction has a picture and at the end of each instruction the DS pauses while you carry out the duty and you can then either use the stylus to move forward or say continue. As usual the voice recognition didn't work for us because we don't speak with a posh enough accent.

You simply follow the instructions through to the end and voila you have a beautiful dish of food. Each dish shows the calorie content.

There are various helpful videos within the game if you get stuck at doing particular activities.

The graphics are probably the best of any DS game which we have. This is because it uses photographs and videos which show up brilliantly on the screen.

Advantages
Encourages kids and adults to cook from scratch
Teaches basics - such as cutting and dicing
You can get the DS to select a dish depending on what you have available.
You can add notes to a recipe if you changed it, improved it or cooked for a different amount of time.
Easily adjustable recipes for any number of guests

Disadvantages
More expensive than a cook book - (but way more fun)
We didn't like a lot of the recipes
How often would this be used?
Getting voice recognition to move on or repeat doesn't work for me I need to use the stylus.
Not sure that me, cooking liquid and an electronic device which is very dear to my heart should be in the kitchen at the same time.

Example Dishes

Various salads - Chinese cabbage, couscous, Mexicana

Soups - Frittatensuppe, Gazpacho, Lohikeitto, shellfish

Noodle and rice recipes

Sushi

Main Dishes - Beef and green pepper stir fry, Beef Carpacio, Beef stroganoff, Bulgogi
Fried chicken, pork in tomatoes, coq au vin, sole meuiere, Tonno al Forno, Turbot a la crème

Vegetarian Dishes - Aloo Ghobi, Bean Sprout Namui, Russian Mushroom Pie.

Side Dishes - Tacos, Potato Buchimgae

Desserts - Bonet, Mango Pudding, Dorayaki

As you can see world wide flavours and recipes.

The proof is in the pudding as they say (well the main course anyway) my 11 year old followed the recipe for the Saute de Saumon (salmon in a sauce made from basil, parsley and olive oil) we did leave out the garlic though, he had no trouble except for the voice recognition, no help from me, and everyone thoroughly enjoyed their dinner.

If it gets kids interested in cooking just because its on a console I say that can only be a good thing.

Priced around £25 - £30

Update 11/09/08 - Tonight my son made Torrijas unassisted - its like a spanish version of eggy bread, tastes absolutely gorgeous.

Summary: Good way to get the kids interested in food and cooking