Archive for February, 2010

This weekend I joined Emily Millette and Jeremy Purser for cooking dinner in their home, Chana Masala. They were very helpful in answering some questions I had prepared for them (and made me a delicious meal). Here is a snippet of our conversation:

Me: “How do you usually begin to find recipes?”
Emily: “I usually go to epicurious.com, but sometimes I really just don’t like what I’ve spent all that time making.”
Me: “So do you think it would be helpful to have some sort of recipe generator, where you fill out a profile to begin with foods you like/dislike, and then get recipe suggestions from your profile…kind of like pandora for recipes.”
Emily: “Yes, definitely, I really like the pandora-like idea. It would be nice to do a thumbs up or down option at the end, maybe create a rating system that way. And the profile idea also sounds helpful. You can think about people with food allergies as well.”
Me: “So how do you feel about an option to generate recipes by either choosing to shope for supplies, or use supplies already in your home?
Emily: “During the week, by the time I get home from work I don’t want to go out and get things. If I were good I would go to the store and buy things for everyday of the week but  I can’t really think that far ahead.”
Jeremy: “Yeah, and we don’t really like eating out a lot. We usually try new recipes on weekend.”
Emily: “Yes, we like using things we already have, but go shopping for new recipe supplies on weekends. We use CSA so we try to keep that as the bulk of things we use in our meals, so it would be nice to have something that could show me the things I could make using what I already have. Just something to surface an idea of what I can make.”
Me: “So what are some problems you run into while you are cooking where you feel like you could use some sort of visual aid?”
Emily: “I often look up how to weigh things, like how to weigh a cup of packed brown sugar. Or conversion charts. I do have a book called Cooks Illustrated that has really good illustrations of how to cut up complicated things, like Artichokes or pineapple. I’ve learned a lot from this book. It also has things like complicated skinning, like cabbage is a difficult thing to understand how to cut. It helps to see it in the illustration”
Me: Do you ever look up videos of how to cook things, or cooking shows in general?”
Jeremy: “Not usually, maybe if I happen to be watching a cooking show where they are making something I might like I might look up a recipe from there. But I don’t think it would be very helpful to be referencing a video while cooking, because you’d want to keep pausing and rewinding.”

I continued to observe and ask questions as they were cooking. I thought it was interesting that they kept walking back and forth to their computer to follow the recipe, and reading it to each other out loud. At that point they agreed it would be helpful to have that reference in the palm of their hand. I thought the illustrations in the book she was showing me were very clear & helpful-something I’m sure someone who was a novice at cooking could really appreciate.

The idea was brought up that it would be helpful in the beginning when you choose to go out and shop for your supplies to have a grocery list on your mobile device. This meal also took a little big longer to make than expected, so they brought up the idea of having an accurate indicator that shows you how far away you are from completing your meal. (Dinner Time.)

When the Chana Masala was finally ready, we just had to garnish it with some basal and wala! A delicious meal. At this point we discussed how we would rate the meal…maybe using forks up/down, or having a way to start bookmarking recipes and sending them to friends to share.

Not to mention I got my Karl Fix!