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:
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Mmmm, one more reason why I wish I was there and not in Japan. I don’t even like tomatoes and that looks amazing! I didn’t fall for you because of your cooking skills, but maybe that’s something that I should start adding to the list of all the reasons why you’re wonderful? ;-)
Yum yum yum! Now I REALLY need to get this game!
Mmmm, I love gruyere :) I’m not usually a fan of food stuffed in other food but those tomatoes do look delicious!
I’ve got the Japanese version (I forced my friend to buy it for me before he came to visit), but I’m seriously considering to get the English version, too, because of the recipes. I definitely know that this one isn’t in my version and it looks soooooo good. *drool*
@koukou: I’m curious if the North American version has new recipes that my Euro version lacks.
The Japanese version doesn’t Tonkatsu does it? Mine doesn’t, and Tonkatsu w/ Tonkatsu Sauce is like one of my favourite Japanese dishes. I can’t read Japanese, so getting Cooking Guide from Japan would be pointless, but I was just curious.
@Brinstar: I’m actually curious to know if the American and European versions are different myself. I’ve seen some of the recipes from the European one, and I have to say they look delicioso.
As for the recipe for tonkatsu, I just booted it up and it sure is in there. I could, however, send you a translation of the recipe if you’d like. I used to make it all the time and it’s actually pretty easy, so just let me know! :D
Oh yeah — I would love the recipe for Tonkatsu for sure! Drop me an email. Thank you!