14 DAY TRIAL // Tired of playing robot games and fighting virtual enemies? This week's Free App is actually an app. It's called "The Photo Cookbook – Quick and Easy" and the AppStore editors chose it because of its neat design, great photos, and very good recipes.
This app is usually $3.99 (€3.03), but you can download it for free for a week. There are, however, 3 in-app purchase options for $2.99 (€2.27) each that will get you additional Chinese, Asian and Baking recipes. The Photo Cookbook looks good on your iPhone, but it makes an amazing app for iPad because you get to see those high-res photos much better.
The app has been described as your private cooking lesson. It's just like an experienced cook goes over all the steps of preparing your next meal.
When you open it for the first time, you will be presented with a tabbed interface and right below that are the main food groups: meat, fish, vegetarian and desserts. That's the quick and easy section. For the Italian recipes you get antipasti, first course, second course and desserts & baking. In the Asian category, you can try starters & soups, noodles & rice, main meals and desserts. And the baking category has cakes & traybakes, pastries, small cakes & biscuits and breads.
Even though only the first category is free, the other ones offer at least one free recipe. Going back to the Quick & Easy ones, when you open a recipe you will be presented with the ingredients and a nice big picture of all of them laid on a table top. Then you will see each step described by a short text and a picture. If you need special tools to make a step happen, like a food processor or a ridged griddle pan you will be asked to get one. At the end you even have a picture of the final product on a plate.
The basic version of the app has 84 recipes and you will get 60 for Quick and Easy, 5 Asian, 15 Italian and 4 in the Baking category. If you purchase all three optional categories, you will have a library of 240 recipes.
Each meal has four buttons on top. You can like it to find it easier at a glance, check the nutrition facts like energy, proteins, carbohydrates and Fat, add your own notes to it and share the ingredients list via email.