Isabel tackles Lasagne for 3...

I enjoy cooking. I would say that I am ok at it. I can make fish pie, curry (without a jar) and I even cooked Christmas dinner last year - possibly the pinnacle of my culinary career! Admittedly I did have some help from a Jamie Oliver DVD, so I'm not against trying new ways of cooking. A visit from my sister this week seemed like the perfect opportunity to give DS Cooking Guide a go.

Firstly I needed to decide what to cook. You can browse Cooking Guide's recipes in a number of ways including by ingredient, country, number of calories per serving and many more. You can also exclude recipes with ingredients you don't like - you won't find me cooking anything with octopus tentacles!

I selected to search Cooking Guide for a recipe by country. Cooking Guide certainly includes countries whose culinary delights I won't have previously considered such as Argentina, Russia and Peru. I selected Italy and chose Lasagne as I know it is a favourite of my sister and not something I would normally cook.

A nice feature of Cooking Guide is being able to add recipes you like to Your Favourites, making finding them a lot quicker. Recipes have an estimated cooking time, number of calories and a short description with a picture so you know what you're aiming for.

Having made my choice I discovered that Lasagne actually requires you completing three recipes; making the Bolognese sauce, the Béchamel sauce and the actual Lasagne. Not to be put off, I sort out my shopping list. When viewing Cooking Guide's ingredients you can adjust the number of servings which updates the ingredient amounts. A great idea - I can't remember how many times I've written all over my Delia Cookery Course book updating the quantities! Cooking for three, I opted to make Lasagne for 4 as three isn't an option.

Then I'm off shopping to get the ingredients I need. Using Cooking guide's handy Shopping List feature, I check off the ingredients as I put things in my basket. I have noticed that if you are shopping for multiple recipes at the same time that the List feature doesn't add together the quantities you require of the same ingredient which is a shame.

Right, time to start cooking! First we make the Bolognese sauce. The DS Chef takes us through each step with photos to illustrate. We hit a snag with ingredient quantities - it tells us to use specific amounts of some, like '25g of parmesan', but at other times tells us just to 'chop the onion'. How much onion? Luckily the touch screen Ingredients button has the answer.

Quite quickly Cooking Guide's voice activation feature became irritating. This had such promise, potentially letting you move through the steps without getting your DS all sticky. However the DS Chef is a little over active and every time I spoke to my sister Cooking Guide would ask me to repeat myself. Thankfully you can turn this feature off in the settings, which you'll want to do if you're not cooking alone.

While the Bolognese sauce was simmering we moved on to the Béchamel sauce. Thanks to Cooking Guide this didn't take very long. Then we were ready to start putting the Lasagne together. I'd bought lasagne sheets that didn't require pre-cooking so skipped those steps. We put together all the layers of Béchamel sauce, lasagne sheets, Bolognese sauce and mozzarella and at last the Lasagne was ready for the oven.

Cooking Guide's handy Kitchen Timer feature makes sure that we don't forget to get it out when it's done. This gives us a chance to tackle the washing up while we wait.

"Ping!" - and it's the moment of truth. We check in the oven and things look good!

Lasagne. Done.

Cooking Guide has certainly been a different way of cooking. For those who need a bit more of a helping hand it's ideal, explaining required utensils, ingredients, and even breaking down steps with instructional videos and extra photos. The many different ways of choose recipes are great, though the voice activation feature gets annoying - but on the whole Cooking Guide is a handy, slick and efficient attempt at making cooking more accessible.

Review by: Isabel Dale
Version Tested: DS
Review Published: 17.07.08