Mario Batali Cooks! – Review

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By: High Five Labs

Version #: 1.4

Date Released: 2010-09-24

Developer:

Price: 4.99

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For fans of the Food Network, the name Mario Batali should ring a bell and whet your appetite. He was a frequent star on the Iron Chef series and is currently seen on PBS co-hosting a show called "Spain…On the Road Again," with Gwyneth Paltrow. He is an acclaimed chef that specializes in authentic italian cooking. What does all this have to do with the iOS? Today we will being looking at Mario Batali Cooks! published by High Five Labs.

Mario Batali Cooks! is much a kin to a digital cook book as it is mainly a collection of recipes that Mario has prepared from the various regions of Italy. Why would you need an app for this? Wouldn’t an iBook be sufficient? Lets look at this app and perhaps we will find more than just some old index cards full of recipes.

At first glance Mario Cooks! is your average cooking app. You have a set of recipes that can be search by their region of origin, by course, or several other ways. There are sixty recipes in all from breakfast to desert. Once you have found a recipe that you like the iPhone can be rotated to give you that classic index card feel with step by step instructions. For those that learn better with visuals, there are downloadable videos for each recipe where Mario himself will talk you through preparing the dish. The app respects the mute switch on your device so if you are like me and keep your iPhone on mute, you will need to un-mute it for the videos. Videos are downloaded to your device, but we will get back to that in a bit.

Once you have reviewed the video and start working on your masterpiece, you will find each step comes with a high quality photo to make sure you are on the right track. If a step requires you to do something for a period of time, it conveniently provides you with a timer that will float on top of the app to tell you when to move on. This feature is great if you need to check a different recipe in the app, but I do wish the timer would send you back to the step you were on when you click on it. Instead you must navigate back there yourself. The horizontal orientation and swiping works well for a kitchen setting and makes following the recipes easy.

Another great section in the app is the Market. Every recipe gives you the option to add the necessary ingredients to the market section. Then you can sort the list by recipe or by grouping in the store. This gives you a ready made shopping list before you hit the markets. The Market section also has a wine buying guide as well as a video on picking fresh foods. If you are making some foods other than Mario Cooks! recipes, you can even add in custom ingredients to your shopping list.

You can access your favorite recipes from the bookmark on the main page. The app also lets you download and view all the videos from a central section. If you are often in places without good internet connection, I would advise you to download the videos ahead of time. Be advised though, these videos can fatten up this app faster than Mario’s tasty Arancine. Videos can also be deleted to clear up space. There isn’t an easy way to tell how much space they are taking up, and while I understand the thinking behind downloading the video, in this internet connected age a streaming option would also have been convenient.

The Mario! section has a handy glossary as well as some notes and memorable quotes by Mario. The app can also post a picture of the delicious food you just prepared to your Facebook wall to make all your friends drool. THe app is a solid cooking tool that has a lot of handy features like the timers and the shopping list. I have some small complaints about interface and of course the video can become and issue with devices where space is a premium, but overall I found the app to give a pleasant experience that will opens a world of great Italian cooking to its users. Mario Batali Cooks! is available on the app store for $4.99, and if you love to cook, I would recommend you add this to your cooking tool bag.