Fried Gyoza

Fried Gyoza

Fried Gyoza,
originally uploaded by kokeshi.

I got to play Cooking Mama today: it’s a game for the DS where you learn how to cook various dishes, with each stage presented as a Warioware-style mini-game. There’s a certain amount of repetition, enough that I can remember what goes into gyoza, although occasionally I felt they’d privileged gameplay over consistency. You can practice your techniques (slice, peel, cut, knead) or go over recipes until you’re able to make them as well as Mama, who looks a bit young to be a Mama, unless I’ve misunderstood someting along the way.

What’s interesting to me, apart from the tricky question of what it is that you’re practising (is it skill with the stylus or are you remembering the recipe? and how do you tell?), was the emphasis on cooking for lots of people at once: made me wonder if the people who make noodles for me trained with a similar game, and that I’m an oddity for not cooking in batches.

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