Cooking with your Computer

Cooking with your Computer.

The start of Mary Berry’s Bakeoff on the television has inspired this article.  Cooking programmes are so popular on TV, but you may not realise that if you google “recipe” on the Internet you will have literally millions of recipes to choose from.  I find that I rely less on my cookery books nowadays and more on the web, as I can refine my search for a specific dish and find exactly what I want very quickly.  In fact quicker than when I am looking through my books.

It is very interesting to look through and compare different recipes for the same thing.  I am the type of cook who doesn’t stick closely to recipes, and likes to be creative.   Web recipes are easy to compare quickly. 

I find that the BBC Good Food recipes are very reliable.  All the celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Nigella and Delia also have recipes online.  It makes me wonder why people buy recipe books!

Recently I have found that the Guardian newspaper does articles on

“How to make the best …”.  I used this recently for tiramisu but they also cover lots of other recipes.  The articles compare different ingredients that can be used and the researcher does all the hard work in experimentation before coming up with a knock out recipe.  They are exactly as described- truly fantastic recipes that really work.

If your recipe goes wrong, you can google your problem and find the solution to it.  Have you ever found that you don’t have a particular ingredient?   You can find out if one ingredient could be swapped for another.

You can also download Apps to your smartphone for recipes.  I have one called “What’s for dinner?”  It gives you inspiration when you are in a hurry.  There are also websites where you can list the ingredients you have and you will be given suggestions for recipes to cook.

If you are not an experienced cook you may find that you can learn a lot from videos of chefs cooking your particular recipe.  You Tube have lots of great clips, which are entertaining to watch from a variety of places.  There are chefs who start their rise to fame on You Tube.  One such is Yo Yo Max 12, who has a channel dedicated to experimental baking and has lots of very interesting ideas.

There are disadvantages to cooking using a computer however.  One of these is that you may risk damaging your computer by having it in the kitchen.  You may get flour or liquid on it and make it all dirty.  It isn’t a good idea to cover your laptop keyboard in dirt as it will drop through the keys and into the working parts and fan.  I use a cover on my Mac keyboard to prevent this. 

It is probably a good idea copy and paste the recipes you plan to use into a Word document and print them out.  You can then compile a folder of your favourite recipes and make your own cook book.

If you are following recipes from You Tube, you will need to pause the programme frequently.  It may be a good idea to watch the whole thing first so that you have an overview to make it easier for yourself.

So if you are itching to be on the Bakeoff, use the power of the Internet to help you!  Don’t forget that you can order your ingredients online too.