JAMIE OLIVER HAS HAD a fairly good run of things to date.
Not only is he one of the world's most popular television celebrities, he's found time to author best-selling cookbooks and even tackle the UK government on the state of their school dinners.
Despite being from Essex, he's arguably one of Britain's favourite exports, and his latest claim to fame is a rather curious foray into a world usually populated by Italian plumbers.
It's not the first time anyone has released an interactive cooking application for the Nintendo DS - although to be fair, Cooking Mama was hardly Michelin Star material, as it lacked direction and depth. What's Cooking? With Jamie Oliver is the new pretender to the throne, and although at first look it appears to be just another cooking game, looks can be deceiving.
From the outset, you're greeted with several high-quality mugshots of the man himself, which then lead in to the main menu. From here you can choose between diving in to the cookbook or playing an interactive cooking game, which together form the bulk of the content available.
The cookbook consists of over one hundred original recipes devised by Jamie Oliver. Each have been photographed by David Loftus, food photographer to the stars, and faithfully reproduced for the DS platform. You can select your desired dish from the menu, or use the extensive filtering options to decide based on the amount of time, or ingredients, you have available. There's even a vegetarian option available for those strong enough to lift the stylus.
There's a handy shopping list built in, which allows you to keep a track of the ingredients you need for each recipe. You can also add your own items to the list, which is a nice touch. The game keeps a track of everything you do, and if you manage to tire of the existing recipes you can create and store your own - and even share them via the DS's Wi-Fi.
For those confident enough to require a challenge in the kitchen, the aforementioned interactive cooking game will have you dashing around a 3D kitchen, opening ovens and mixing food with the stylus in order to stay ahead of the clock. It's clear that a huge amount of effort has gone into this aspect of the game, as virtually every action you can perform in a real kitchen has been duplicated with varying levels of success. You don't even have to worry about keeping an eye on your food, simply set the clock forward an hour and it'll be cooked instantly. Or burned to a crisp, depending on the level of attention you gave to selecting your ingredients.
We've only had a short time to play with this title, and unfortunately our copy didn't have the voice recognition side of things included, so we'll be interested to see how the finished product stacks up in early November. Until then, if you're keen to take your cooking to the next level, or simply wish to avoid embarrassing yourself in the kitchen this festive season, keep an eye out for this one.
