The left side of the screen shows your current menus on top. These are the menus that you are currently planing.
Action buttons come next.
Adding a menu creates a new entry in the top section.
When you are done with a menu, you can delete it or archive it.
Any Menu can be duplicated into a new menu in the top section.
The bottom section can display your menu archive or the selected menus that accompany recipes books you have downloaded from the library.
Buttons at the bottom of the screen let you toggle between the archive and the suggested menus.
A Menu is first and foremost a list of courses.
In View Mode...
Here the screen shows a menu with three courses each having one dish. The two Edit buttons are all you need to make new entries.
In Edit Mode...
You can choose a name for the course and set the course duration. The duration is taken into account by Le Sous-Chef when sequencing the recipe steps for your menu: this is the time between this and the next course, the time needed for you and your guests to eat the course.
You can reorder and delete courses at will with the usual iPad gestures.
Once Courses have been added to a Menu, you can add and edit the list of recipes in the menu.
When you tap the "Add a Recipe" row in a course, you are taken to the Recipes screen where you can search for a recipe and choose it by tapping.
The Recipe is added to the course you chose. You can reorder the recipes, even move them from course to course.
When you add a recipe, its name is added to the list, but you can change the name for the purposes of this menu without changing its name in the database.
Le Sous-Chef consolidates the ingredients from all the recipes in your menu into a single list.
Each item in the list can be flagged depending on the need. The list can be filtered to show only those items you need.
This screen also displays a list of the tools needed for the execution of the recipes.
Perhaps the most powerful feature in Le Sous-Chef, the Step Sequence displays the complete list of steps from all the recipes in your menu in the order they should be executed.
Using the time at which you plan to serve the first course and all the timing information from the recipe steps and the duration of each course, Le Sous-Chef gives you several views of the making of your meal with a built-in timer to assist you every step of the way.
This screen is full of easy-to-use features that provide real help in the kitchen.
There are two ways to create a new Menu:
- you can 'start from scratch' by tapping the "Add a Menu" button
- you can duplicate and existing menu by selecting it first, then tapping the "Copy Into New Menu" button.
As you might expect, a duplicated Menu will have the same number of diners, the same course containing the same recipes as the menu it was copied from.
You can duplicate a menu from any section: Current, Archived and Suggested.
Note that the only way to make modifications to a suggested menu is to duplicate it.
Tap the name field to see the keyboard and change the Menu name.
Tap the date Field to obtain a date and time picker.
Tap the diners field to obtain a number picker. Note that the default number of guests an be set in the Options section from the A la Carte screen.
The next step in making a new Menu is to add one or more courses. The Menu table is already in edit mode: just tap the "Add a Course" button.
Here is what a menu with three courses would look like in Le Sous-Chef before any recipes have been added to the courses.
To add recipes, enter the Recipe Edit mode by tapping the "Edit Recipe List" button...
The Recipe Edit mode is where you change the content of the courses.
Two types of entries can be made into a course:
- recipes from your recipe library
- a line of text that you type in
The Menu feature in Le Sous-Chef tries to be as versatile as possible. So you can create empty courses, or you can have courses that contain only items not linked to any recipes.
One example of this might be the inclusion in your Menu of a course named "Cheese" and having several items listing the names of the cheeses that you will be offering.
Another example would be a dessert course listing the flavors of ice-cream that is store bought.
When you tap the "Add a Recipe" button, you are taken to the Recipes page. To select a recipe for your Menu, simply choose it in the list.
This is the Recipes screen that you can access directly from the A la Carte. So all the search options are at your disposal. The only difference is that when you select a dish, instead of taking you to the recipe pages Le Sous-Chef adds it to your current Menu Course.
You can view the recipe pages for a dish from the Menu screen simply by tapping on it (after it has been added to a course...) when the Menu table is not in Edit mode.
To exit Edit mode, simply tap on the "Done" button above the Menu.
The Sharing option presents the Menu in a display format. There are four features listed in the Sharing screen.
The email option will paste the menu into the body of an email just as you see it on the screen. Just type in the recipient addresses and you are ready to send the menu to your guests.
If you wish to post the menu to your favorite social network site, use the second button. This will copy the menu into the pasteboard of the iPad and launch the URL that you have specified in the options screen in Safari. Once there, you can simply paste the menu on your blog or wall.
If your printer is airPrint-enabled, use the print option for physical copies of the menu for your guests.
Finally, for any other uses outside of Le Sous-Chef, use the last button to simply copy the menu to the pasteboard without any further action from Le Sous-Chef. Just switch to another app and past the menu where you please (pages, notes...).
You can choose the font in the Options screen, where all the fonts available on your iPad are listed.
In the top half of this screen are the menu's list of ingredients on the left, and list of tools on the right. The lists are consolidated from all the recipes in your menu.
The list of ingredients can be scrolled, and tapping on an ingredient image reveals it in a larger size.
Tapping on the blue accessory button reveals a menu with three options with which to annotate each ingredient: needed, have and unknown.
On the bottom half of the screen is a text view of the list of ingredients. It is filtered using the gray buttons to show all the ingredients in the list with their status, or to show only the ingredients in the list that are marked as 'needed'.
When this text list is not empty, several options appear at the bottom of the screen. If you have an AirPrint enabled printer on your wireless network, you can print the list of ingredients. You can draft an email with the body preloaded with the list. And finally you can copy the list to the pasteboard of your iPad, which allows you to switch to another app and paste it in a document of your choice.
The list of tools is static and offers no other features.
The step sequence screen shows all the steps of all the recipes in your menu. They are sequenced in the order in which they should likely be executed, based on the recipe's timing information.
Each step can be marked as 'Done' or 'To Do'.
A 'Done' step is collapsed to show only some of the text.
A 'To Do' step show the full text and all related images, the list of ingredients used at this step, as well as the time at which it should be started. If the timer has not been set, this shows how many minutes into the sequence it must be started. If the timer is set, this shows the actual time at which it should be started.
Because there is only one timer, when you start the timer, Le Sous-Chef verifies that you have no other meal under timer. If you do, you are asked to confirm that you want to use the timer for this menu.
As the timer is launched, the time of service is computed by Le Sous-Chef, and each step displays its start time. You may navigate to other screens in the app or other apps in the iPad without losing the timer.
If your actual execution timeline varies from the timer, you can reset it to the first 'To Do' step in the menu step sequence: all times are then readjusted to the new timeline.
When you enter the screen, you are shown all the steps in all the recipes in your menu combined into one list.
This can be daunting!
Use the buttons on the left to drill down and see steps for a course, a recipe or a recipe component.
