The list of necessary kitchen utensils – whisk, wooden spoon, fish spatula, immersion circulator, nitrogen canister – now seems to include an iPhone. Because now not only must the celebrity chef have the de rigueur stack of cookbooks and (ideally) a reality television show, but a cell phone app as well.

Mark Bittman launched his app over the weekend. British food goddess Nigella Lawson launched her app Monday; Jamie Oliver's app launched last October. And now Gordon Ramsay has one in the works for July. We'll see if Ramsay's app comes with those quaint iTunes explicit warnings, like Amy Winehouse or Ludacris songs.

Of course cooking with your phone is inherently problematic, as it's not quite as washable as, say, a spoon. Jay Rayner, the Observer's restaurant critic and Top Chef Masters judge, put it this way: “What I would love to see if someone going into the Apple store on Regent Street to explain that the reason their iPhone is broken is because they smeared pesto all over it… I think people will find when their iPhone is covered in crap, that cooking with an iPhone is not such a good idea.”

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