cooking

Independence Day is coming on July 4th, and that means people will be getting together to light fireworks or watch fireworks shows, and--perhaps most importantly--cook great food.

Though this might seem early with the 4th of July more than a week away, we wanted to make sure everybody had time to figure out their menus and get their supplies ready before the mad rush to the grocery stores. With these apps, you can start planning for the perfect Independence Day feast.

This week's app collection is all about cooking apps for iOS. The first lets you browse recipes from famous chefs on the Food Network; the second gives you a giant database of recipes and cooking guidance for any time of year; and the third is perfect for planning and cooking outdoors on the barbecue.… Read more

If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that humanity is only a few years away from the robot armageddon. The robots are improving too quickly and building each other too rapidly to stop. At least we can console ourselves by laughing at the robots of today. Like this bakebot. "A robot baking? How hilarious," you say. Well, get your chuckles in while you can, human. (It's actually pretty funny though.)

Personal favorite part of the video below? When Bakebot tosses the empty bowl on the floor. Just like a real chef! (We all do that, right?) Bakebot is well-known at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), where it was built by MIT graduate student Mario Bollini.

Bollini cooked up the bakebot using the PR2 research and development platform, developed by Willow Garage, to bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch.

"My task is to have the PR2 bake cookies all the way from locating the ingredients in front of it on the table to putting the cookie in the oven," Bollini said.

The bakebot (which is not the first robot chef we've seen) begins by examining the table using a laser scanner and camera to locate the cookie sheet and butter. It identifies all the other ingredients and supplies by color and size. The robot then follows a coded version of the recipe that takes it through mixing the ingredients, scraping the cookie dough onto the baking sheet, and patting it into a large cookie. … Read more

Apple is staying on message about the imminence of the post-PC era proclaimed by CEO Steve Jobs.

In a midweek meeting with Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope at Apple headquarters, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said he "remained remarkably optimistic about the demand for the iPad and the long-term market opportunity for tablets."

As a result, Apple's COO sees "no reason why the tablet market shouldn't eclipse the PC market over the next several years," according to a copy of Shope's note on the meeting sent to CNET.

Shope himself believes that iPad shipments will surpass expectations this year and next and that demand for PCs will suffer as the tablet market continues to take off.

With Apple seeing improved supply and rising demand for its tablet, the analyst is forecasting iPad sales of 8.1 million for Apple's third fiscal quarter, ending in June, a jump of 72 percent from the same quarter last year. That estimate compares with only 4.69 million iPads that Apple sold during its second quarter when some analysts had been eyeing sales of anywhere from 5 million to 9 million.… Read more

MacGourmet Deluxe can help you collect, edit, use, and share your favorite recipes and recipe-related notes in an easy, intuitive, iTunes-style interface, which is much improved over previous versions. This Deluxe version includes all three optional plug-ins for MacGourmet: the Mealplan (to help schedule meals and sync up with iCal), Cookbook (for creating and sharing PDF cookbooks), and built-in nutritional data from the USDA database (which makes it easy to calculate nutritional info for entire recipes). The main recipe interface is highly customizable and includes a large, easy-to-read "Chef View" for laptop-assisted cooking, which you can control with … Read more

Some things are fun to look forward to. The promise of ice cream is certainly one of them. The mere mention of a trip to the ice cream store gives everyone within hearing distance a delicious idea to focus on no matter what they may have been doing before. Suddenly thoughts drift to favorite flavors...and indecision: one scoop or two?

The answer, of course, is two. The Cook's Essentials Double Ice Cream Maker gives those making homemade ice cream two delicious options. The double-barreled kitchen gadget makes two separate batches of ice cream with each container holding .75 … Read more

My iPad spends a lot more time in the kitchen than I ever thought it would. Thanks to a virtually inexhaustible supply of recipes (courtesy of apps like Epicurious, How to Cook Everything, and Martha's Everyday Food), it's become downright indispensable.

Of course, kitchens are inherently messy places, what with ingredients always splashed and spilled everywhere. How can you keep your precious iPad safe from all the gunk that lands on your fingers, your countertops, and everywhere in between?

One option is the Original Kitchen iPad Rack, which mounts your tablet underneath a cupboard--high and above harm's … Read more

When you write about Nathan Myhrvold, it's kind of hard to keep it short. Perhaps best known as Microsoft's first CTO, he's also worked with Stephen Hawking, been involved in thousands of patents, zapped mosquitoes with lasers, won awards as a wildlife photographer, and now, published a massive cookbook that attempts to fuse the worlds of the geek and the gastronome.

As it turns out, Myhrvold himself doesn't keep it short, either. His new culinary effort, "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking," is a six-volume, 2,400-page, 50-plus-pound declaration of a paradigm shift in the world of food.

The stated goal of the ambitious book is nothing less than "reinventing cooking" by looking at cuisine through the lenses of science and innovation (ever wondered how to use electric fields to kill wine bacteria?), while not leaving out all the recipes and techniques you expect in a cookbook.

Some of the methods and recipes outlined in "Modernist Cuisine" aren't going to be too accessible to the average weekend chef, however. Myhrvold and his team borrowed as much from the lab as from the kitchen, using tools like homogenizers and centrifuges, and ingredients such as hydrocolloids and enzymes, to formulate recipes for everything from "Astronaut Ramen" to "Monkfish with Mediterranean Flavors."

In other words, the message is about quality, not quickness, as with so many modern recipes for the harried cook.

Just take this little bit of description from Myhrvold's approach to the ultimate cheeseburger (from the video below of an interview with a local Seattle TV show):

"We infuse smoke flavor into the lettuce; we make a special cheese slice. When the cheese melts, it doesn't separate out and get greasy. We grind the meat in a particular way so that we align all the grains of meat; we cook it in a very specific way using liquid nitrogen..." … Read more

Thanks to apps like Epicurious, How to Cook Everything, and Martha's Everyday Food, iPads make excellent kitchen companions.

Just one problem: how do you protect your pricey iPad from the perils of the kitchen? I'm talking messy ingredients, hot stoves, sticky-fingered kids, and the like.

Simple: mount it underneath a cabinet. That not only gets it up off the counter (and out of harm's way), but also puts it closer to eye level so you're not constantly bending down to check your recipe.

One of the easiest and most affordable options I've found is the … Read more

Kitchen electrics have a tendency to make us rationalize their existence. Perhaps it is convenience that is the deciding factor, or maybe an appliance's design appeals to us somehow. And then every once in a while, an appliance comes along that manages to give us some new way--or thing--to cook. Sometimes, appliances can even help us do something that otherwise we would not be able to do.

There can't be too many ways to cook ebelskivers. The distinctive round puffy pancakes require indentations to cook properly that only a specially designed pan can deliver. Either that or the … Read more