Last updated 12:25, Saturday, 15 November 2008

Jamie wants you to Pass It On, Gordon wants you to Cookalong, Delia wants you to cheat and Nigella just wants you to enjoy every sinful mouthful.

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Remember anyone? St Margaret Mary's School 1958/60

While we go mad for various cookbooks and TV food shows, our supermarkets are still full of pre-prepared vegetables and ready meals in plastic cartons. It’s completely possible to “cook” dinner for six without so much as breaking an egg or chopping an onion.

A recent survey found that the majority of Britons (74 per cent ) are most likely to cook up spaghetti bolognese over any other dish – not surprisingly, we’re scared stiff at the thought of making a souffle.

While the Welsh are apparently the most scared of going into the kitchen and Londoners get spooked at the thought of making Yorkshire pud, braveheart Scots are fearless in the face of fridges and cookers. (You’d expect nothing less from a nation of haggis-lovers!)

Eating factory-prepared food is all very well, if you don’t mind the taste of mysterious additives or the soul-less “ping” of the microwave to announce that it’s ready, but there’s no denying that pulling something out of a packet destroys any of the romance attached to eating – or cooking. It’s time to reconnect with your kitchen – you know, the room with the fridge and the kettle in it – and get to grips with cooking.

Here we test the latest and greatest in cooking technology.

THE CONFIDENT BEGINNER – The Cooking Book, edited by Victoria Blashford-Snell, is published by Dorling Kindersley, priced £25.

IDEAL FOR: Beginners looking to expand their repertoires. Packed with 500 pages of tempting and easy-to-follow recipes, as well as food preparation advice, shopping tips and a DVD.

EASE OF USE: Ironically, the most innovative element of this package, the DVD, is the least useful. Instead of demonstrating recipes from the book, the DVD includes a rather eclectic selection of cooking techniques.

Perhaps more advanced chefs might find demonstrations on how to trim and decorate pastry, whisk egg whites, cut carrot batonnets, butterfly a leg of lamb and scale and trim a fish, useful. But this particular novice was hoping for a demo on how to make ’Chicken with Pancetta’.

Having discarded the DVD – although I did pick up a few tips on how to poach an egg – I turned to the cookery book.

VERDICT: Packed with great recipes! My partner was thoroughly impressed by a chicken dish with olives and capers plus a lentil side dish, that I whipped up with relatively little effort. The book also contains a mini-recipe shopping guide you can pop in your handbag. Or if you can’t find the motivation to go outdoors, the recipes have also been thoughtfully integrated into the ocado food shopping website (www.ocado.com).

THE GADGET GUY – Cooking Guide, Nintendo DS, £29.99

IDEAL FOR: Technology whizz kids who prefer consoles to cookers. The Cooking Guide has 250 recipes to choose from all over the world, depending on your skill level, available ingredients and time to prepare. The Nintendo DS is a handheld games console with a touch screen, so simply click and point your way around the numerous menus.

EASE OF USE: Straightforward, with great results. If you don’t already own a Nintendo DS, however, Cooking Guide becomes an expensive option – the consoles cost around £100.

THE VERDICT: Excellent. Being able to choose recipes based on available ingredients ensures you can still eat interesting food, even if the fridge is looking slightly bare. And with plenty of dishes from all over the world, chances are you won’t have tried some of the recipes before, let alone cooked them yourself. The step-by-step guides are simple and even read out loud.

THE ETHNIC ADVENTURER – Easy Japanese Cookbook, by Emi Kazuko, is published by Duncan Baird Publishers, priced £16.99.

IDEAL FOR: Novice cooks with ideas of grandeur. Follow this step-by-step guide to cooking tasty Japanese food at home. Includes a free CD of Japanese music.

EASE OF USE: The ring-bound volume enables you to flip easily between Part I, which covers essential ingredients, techniques and equipment, and Part II, which has all the recipes. I spent two years in Japan, so I had a basic grasp of the main ingredients already, but the book introduces them very simply to newcomers.

THE VERDICT: I cooked a three-course meal starting with squash miso soup, with tofu and mangetout, then seared bonito (tuna) sashimi and beef steak with sesame miso sauce. My partner is new to Japanese food and was impressed by the mix of bold flavours, such as the ginger, soya sauce and lime dressing for the tuna on a bed of daikon (radish).

THE JAMIE FAN – Jamie’s Ministry Of Food: Anyone Can Learn To Cook In 24 Hours, is published by Michael Joseph, priced £25.

IDEAL FOR: Those who ’can’t cook, won’t cook... no, really won’t cook’.

EASE OF USE: Even the most basic of cooks will find these recipes easy to follow. The book is also a great tool for encouraging friends to talk about cooking.

THE VERDICT: While co-ordinating communal dinner parties isn’t easy, sharing tribulations and triumphs in the kitchen is fun.