chef

My poor iPad has survived flour, oil, lemon juice, and countless other kitchen mishaps. Maybe it's time I look a little more seriously at a dedicated kitchen computer. My options have just expanded with the arrival of the Archos ChefPad, an Android tablet built to handle the rigors of the cooking life.

The ChefPad is a full-blown 10-inch Android tablet running Jelly Bean with a 1.6GHz processor and 1GB of RAM behind it. There are the usual front and back cameras, in case you want to launch your own online cooking show. What makes it kitchen-specific are the preloaded cooking apps and easy-to-clean case.… Read more

Great chefs are crazy.

There are many kinds of crazy. Some of these culinarians rant, rave, and spit fire and brimstone. Some pore over their ingredients like scientists: quiet, brooding, and deeply serious.

All believe they can create their own particular gastronomic dreams, ones nobody else can copy. Especially not a computer.

IBM thinks different.

Having seen its Watson computer crush mere humans at the trivial game of "Jeopardy," the company is now setting the machine's sights on bigger business.

According to The New York Times, the world of haute cuisine is one in which IBM would like to make a robotic incursion.… Read more

There are tons of photo-editing apps out there and ImageChef is another contender in a saturated market. However, its large variety of fun templates and user-friendly design make it stand out above the rest.

To get started with ImageChef, you have to either sign in with your Facebook username and password, or you can choose to register by entering your e-mail address, a password, and your name. A lined column on the left side has a button at the bottom labeled Find Friends. A blank screen sits just to the right and has three menu options: Create, User Made, and … Read more

Perhaps more so than any other single fruit, vegetable, or herb, garlic gets its own dedicated gadgets. It should probably not come as much of a surprise that garlic has demanded so much attention. After all, the pungent little cloves do tend to stand out amongst everything that they come in contact with. Yet, we cannot seem to stay away from the species Allium sativum even if we try. However, we can avoid touching it.

Prepping garlic is one of those kitchen tasks that is easy to do yet can be time-consuming. The Chef'n Garlic Machine Garlic Press ($10.95) … Read more

Food enthusiasts have a hard time not trying new things. Everything from new recipes to funny-looking vegetables at the market are fair game to the curious. And of course, the same thing can be said about cooking techniques. Given the opportunity to try out the AquaChef Professional Water Oven by Kitchen Advance, I dove right in.

The first thing one notices about the AquaChef is its remarkable similarity in appearance to a deep fryer. Of course, since sous vide cooking uses water as the cooking medium (as opposed to oil or hot air as in an oven) that is where … Read more

Prep work won't disappear, but clutter and mess will.

The power of the kitchen lies in its ability to transform a heap of raw ingredients into a cohesive meal. As we chop, slice, and dice our way through the prep work, it is almost like magic how proteins, veggies, and starches turn into recognizable meals thanks to a little knife work. But there is more than just cutlery involved.

Being able to produce a kitchen gadget or utensil out of thin air (or from with a kitchen cabinet or drawer as the case may be) is one thing, but … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Many an iPad has been besmirched by kitchen grease and condiments. Save your super-expensive tablet from spilled milk by picking up an Android-powered NetChef.

NetChef is primarily a recipe device, but it also holds photos, plays music, connects to Facebook, gives you the weather, and runs Android apps.

There are 500 built-in recipes for those times when your Internet goes down during Thanksgiving dinner prep. An endless supply of recipes is available from manufacturer Sungale's own database and all the Android cooking apps you can download.

NetChef runs Android 2.3. The current version of the gadget is … Read more

The year gone by saw Twitter become the medium where the message was, sometimes, "Oh, Lordy. I shouldn't have done that."

Some would divide Twitter's history into two distinct periods: before Anthony's Weiner's penis and after.

Yet who are we to cast stones at Twitterati when we have occasionally betwitted the social network ourselves? So please let me share my own encounter with a celebrity who seemed to reveal a lot more about his sensitivities than one might have imagined he would.

Here's what happened.

I was walking up New York's Sixth … Read more

Epicurious for Android lets you bring your handheld device into the kitchen and to the grocery store to serve as a cooking companion, and it's one of the best in the category. The home screen gives you quick links to specific categories of recipes (e.g. recipes for kids, party snacks, cocktails), but by entering a keyword into the search box at the bottom of the interface you can browse more targeted online recipes.

If you want even more control over your search, you can skip the search box and hit the search button at the bottom of the … Read more