Available on: iOS, Android
Reviewed on: iPad
Price: Free
Introduction:
Chicken tikka masala might be on the cuisine world map but, heck, it's not easy to dish up a full course Indian meal, what with the multiplicity of spices and ingredients required. The 'Sweet 'n' Spicy- Indian Recipes' App, available both on iOS and Android claims to make Indian cooking hassle free. Just how good is that claim? Read on to find out.
Usability:
The 'Sweet 'n' Spicy- Indian Recipes' App stores more than 3000 recipes, ranging from vegetarian, non vegetarian, regional to vegan and low calorie. So there is a recipe for every Indian. One of the most unique features of this app is that every recipe carries a calorie meter which gives you the exact calorie count. Very handy for weight watchers.
The app opens with the main window with four top panes and five lower panes. The top four includes Search, Categories, Popular and Latest. The five lower panes include Featured, Recipes, My Kitchen, Favorites and Information.
When we tap on the Search pane, the keypad appears which enables you to type and find the recipe of your choice. The next pane, Categories, include the preference of food which include vegetarian, non-vegetarian, vegan, low calorie, regional and thirty minute recipe. It can be swiped upwards and downwards. Each category stores numerous recipes with step by step procedure which makes it very easy to understand.
The Popular pane stores few of the best known Indian delicacies like Butter Chicken, Mutton Curry, Besan Barfi, Aloo Paratha to name a few. The Latest option stores the latest Indian recipes. This helps you improve on a plain-jane Dahi Vada with an improvised variant like Stuffed Dahi Vada. We can already taste it!
On the bottom end of the user interface we have the Featured pane which includes droolworthy pictures of the recipes. The pictures have the cover-flow like interface allowing us to flip through a myriad of different recipes . On a closer look at a particular recipe, we could navigate up down for various ingredients and method of cooking.
The Recipes pane does not do much except for directing us back to the Category pane on top. The third My Kitchen option is very unique as it gives you the options of selecting your own ingredients which allows you to create your own unique recipe. Very helpful for people who want to go easy on the Ghee or Lal Mirch (Red Chilly) in their food, very typical ingredients of Indian recipes. Or, if you like to improvise, you could reinvent a regular recipe.
The Favorite pane lets you store all the chosen recipes. It saves you the time and effort of going through all the 3000 recipes again.
And finally the Information pane gives us details about the app. It includes social networking integration as the app allows us to share information to our Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Each recipe in this app comes with ingredients, instructions, reviews, nutrition value, alternates and share option. These options make it very easy to understand and the easy language makes it very graspable. But since it is an iPhone app, it gets pixelated when used on a larger display of the iPad. Overall the user interface is very user friendly, easy for a layman to learn. Try handing over your iPhone to your granny! We bet she'll be churning out delicacies in a jiffy - but, then again, she probably doesn't need an app to do that. Surprise her by cooking up a storm yourself.
Verdict:
This app does a good job of including the various aspects of Indian cuisine. The user-friendliness makes it easily adaptable to varying cooking styles, from a seasoned cook to a first timer. Plus, it's free.
Rating: 4.5
Usability: 4.5
Price: 5
Wow Factor: 4