The Web Is Cooking

Unless you've been living on a dessert -- uh, desert -- island, you must know that the Web is really cooking -- literally. When it comes to finding great recipes, locating exotic spices, or learning to prepare a complicated dish, the Web has become a virtual master chef.

Cindy Martin, 46, a part-time culinary student, enjoys using the Web to find recipes she's seen on TV. But recently, Martin and her fellow classmates at the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago found themselves running to the computer for help with their homework. "We were trying to make ice cream, and someone knew of a great recipe they'd seen on a Web site," Martin says. "So we used one of the computers at the learning center to surf the Web for the recipe, which we found. We made the ice cream, and it was delicious."

This edition of @work offers a tasty sampling of the best that the Web has to offer -- sites that provide tips and techniques, advice on cookware, and even booking a table when all you really want to make for dinner is reservations. It also offers an in-depth comparison of four of the most popular food sites, as well as insights from an influential digital chef and Martha Stewart's recipe for success on the Web. So get out a bowl, strap on an apron, and feast your eyes on Fast Company's menu for the best bytes on the Net.

Recipes for Success

"I can't believe I surfed the whole thing." When it comes to searching the Web for tips on preparing great meals, the biggest problem is that the portions of information are just too generous. Log on to Yahoo! or Lycos, do a keyword search for "recipes," and you'll get so many links that you'll have indigestion. To help you avoid that too-full feeling, we've carefully gathered a collection of recipe sites that should please even the pickiest surfers.

If you're not quite sure what you're craving and you have time to browse, then visit the Recipe Network (www.allrecipes.com), a fitting URL indeed: It's got recipes galore, organized in individual sites by category, such as vegetarian (www.vegetarianrecipe.com), salads (www.saladrecipe.com), and cookies (www.cookierecipe.com).

If time is an ingredient that's in short supply, but you still want the scope of a general recipe site, then take a look at soar, The Searchable Online Archive of Recipes (http://soar.berkeley.edu/recipes). You can browse SOAR's archive of more than 60,000 recipes, arranged by type of entrée (main courses, side dishes, restricted diets), region (Africa, the Middle East, Europe) or ethnic group (Chinese, Cajun), and food type (pizza, meat, cheesecake). If a recipe exists, chances are good that you will find it here.

Another indispensable site for time-starved chefs is ucook.com (www.ucook.com). This site is the brainchild of Susan Purcell, a busy mother of three who created the site after many fruitless attempts at tracking down recipes in her own vast library of cookbooks. So she mentioned her frustration to her friend, culinary legend Julia Child. Child suggested developing a search technology for finding recipes by name, cookbook title, preparation time, nutritional information, ingredients, ethnicity or region, dietary preference, and course. What Purcell created is a recipe index of the books found on many chefs' shelves. Searching the database to find out which book has a particular recipe is free. However, if you want the recipe itself, you'll have to fork over some dough for each one that you request. To buy the entire cookbook, click on the picture of the jacket cover next to the recipe you've found. That will link you to that book on barnesandnoble.com.

Ever wonder how Seinfeld's Soup Nazi made his crab bisque irresistible? Ever wish you could make a Frappuccino like the ones you get at Starbucks? Then stop by Top Secret Recipes (www.topsecretrecipes.com), which is the online version of Todd Wilbur's best-selling books of the same name. Wilbur is a native of California who enjoys concocting "kitchen clones of America's favorite brand-name foods." The site doesn't offer the authentic recipes, but Wilbur's extensive experience has made his knockoffs the next-best things.

If your palate isn't satisfied by merely a searchable cookbook collection, try Meals For You (www.mealsforyou.com). You can search recipes according to word, phrase, and ingredient, and you can get complete menu plans by category, such as weight loss, vegetarian, or gourmet. Once you've selected a recipe or menu, you get not only the directions but also preparation times, nutritional information, and even recommended wines for some dishes. By clicking on "Shopping List," you'll get a list of all the meal's ingredients, which you can print out and take to the store. Now that's really cooking.

But Web-based recipe sites aren't just for Julia Child wanna-bes. Some sites, such as The Reluctant Gourmet (www.reluctantgourmet.com) and Messy Gourmet (www.messygourmet.com), are aimed at the more timid and reluctant cooks among us.