Jamie Oliver has made an app! (For those that don’t know their smart phones from their um ear phones, an app is an application that runs on a smart phone, normally an iPhone). This app just happens to be for the iPhone and as I am still head over heels in lust with my beloved phone, with an almost Stephen Fry intensity and of course I love my food, so an app for the iPhone with Jamie Oliver, I had to have it!
Called Jamie Oliver 20 Minute Meals (see here for info about it from Jamie’s website), it’s a collection of recipes of, well, um recipes that take twenty minutes. Aimed really at the beginner cook, there’s lots of videos about how to look after your knives, how to chop a chilli etc. etc., this is probably the heftiest (size wise) app I have on my phone and it is all the videos. The actual recipes themselves don’t have videos but have photos for every step, literally every step (pan of boiling stock anyone?), plus they have the occasionally cheery remark from Jamie chirping up. The recipes have a nice feature where you can add the ingredients to a shopping list and arrange the ingredients by recipe or by aisle, you can also specify whether you’re cooking the recipe for two or four people. The actual recipes are a little on the easy looking side, but that’s the point of the app really, although all unique, there isn’t really much I haven’t seen in other similar forms before but the cheesy courgette and mint risotto looks particularly delicious, as does the Dan Dan noodles, Szechuan stir-fry with jasmine sauce, favourite fried chicken, chicken tikka masala, chicken caesar salad, grilled fruit and lime creme fraiche and Eton mess with toasted almonds.
I’d actually been thinking Jamie should do something like this, so Jamie, you’re psychic or either that incredibly in tune with the market of people who will buy anything for their iPhones. I think for me, the most useful feature will be being able to have recipes to hand to browse whilst I’m in the supermarket, although then again, if you have an iPhone there’s nothing really to stop you browsing the many food recipe sites out there whilst you’re in the supermarket as well. Personally what I’d like is some sort of app where I could store all my favourite recipes on my iPhone*, so I could search by ingredient, that would be good. But still, until then, Jamie Oliver’s app is pretty good and although I may not be checking out his basics videos that often, I have a couple of mini foodies in my life who I think would quite like it.
*Idea by me, 2009
