BUDDING CHEFS SEIZE CHANCE TO HONE CULINARY SKILLS
Housebound residents try their hand in the kitchen
Many people nationwide are improving their cooking skills after being housebound for the past three months due to the novel coronavirus pneumonia outbreak.
Every day, hundreds of thousands of followers have sought updates from food blogger Xia Fangzhi. She runs a blog titled Mom Xia’s Kitchen — featuring video footage of Chinese and Western cuisine — on the videosharing platform Douyin and on Sina Weibo.
Xia has seen the number of her followers on Douyin rise from 8 million before the outbreak to more than 12 million.
“With restaurants closed and more time being spent at home, cooking can help people find moments of calm,” said Xia, a mother of two in Changsha, Hunan province.
One of her most popular videos during the outbreak has focused on liangpi — a noodle-like street food made from rice or flour — which has been viewed more than 30 million times.
Tens of thousands of viewers have sent photos to Xia, showing their cooking assignments at home.
“At the start of the outbreak, with limited access to meat and fresh vegetables, food made from flour, such as pastries and noodles, was popular among viewers, because most families have access to the staple,” she said.
A Douyin report on home cooking said that from Jan 24 to March 9, the top three homemade recipes were those for making cakes, liangpi and youtiao (fried dough sticks), with flour the basic ingredient.
Spending more time indoors gives me a chance to devote myself to cooking. Cooking for my loved ones makes me happy.” Ge Mingyi, auditor in Beijing
Other popular recipes included pizza, roujiamo (Chinese hamburgers), milk tea, eggfiled pancakes and double-skin milk puddings. The report said users had become creative by using fewer ingredients to make delicacies.
Retired teacher Wang Gang, who lives in Anqiu, Shandong province, he has tried his hand at making cakes, youtiao and roujiamo, winning praise from his family for his efforts. “These recipes are friendly for starters, such as myself,” Wang said.
Due to the unexpected interest in making pastries and noodles, yeast powder sold out in supermarkets and online. The powder expands the pastry, making it soft and fluffy.
In February, Angel Yeast Co, a major producer, said that due to prevention and control measures, its products were temporarily out of stock in supermarkets.
On Feb 20, big data analysis of consumption habits since Spring Festival released by on-demand service platform Meituan showed that sales of yeast powder and distiller’s yeast had risen nearly 40 times in the past month, compared with the same period last year. Potato and coriander were the most popular vegetables for food delivery orders on Meituan, the report said.
Wang Bin, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Commerce’s Market Operation and Consumption Promotion Department, said at a recent news conference that since the outbreak began, household spending for necessities had grown steadily, with people ordering food deliveries, or cooking at home instead of dining out. Food sales in January and last month rose by 9.7 percent year-onyear, he added.
According to the recipe app Xiachufang, whose motto is “never fail to live up to food and love”, cooking at home has become especially popular during the outbreak.
From Jan 24 to March 24, downloads of the app rose to nearly 1.6 million, more than double the number for the previous two months, according to data service provider Qimai Technology.
With three cooking apps downloaded to his phone, Ge Mingyi, an auditor in Beijing, has prepared dinner every day since Spring Festival.
“Spending more time indoors gives me a chance to devote myself to cooking,” Ge, 39, said, adding that in the past two months he has spent at least 20,000 yuan ($2,818) on groceries.
He has made many complicated dishes, including lobster spaghetti, red wine beef stew, duojiao yutou (spicy fish head), songshu guiyu (squirrel fish) and Chinese-style caramel sweet potatoes. “Cooking for my loved ones makes me happy,” he said.
Like Ge, many people have improved their cooking skills in the past two months. A Meituan report said many new home cooks are young people living in cities, who are cooking for fun, not out of necessity.
Ni Li, a 20-year-old college student, is experiencing her longest vacation to date, in her hometown of Suqian, Jiangsu province. Her college in Shanghai has yet to announce the opening date for the new semester.
“I have prepared three meals a day during this time and have searched online for most of the recipes,” Ni said.
To meet the rising demand for home cooking, Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu), a social shopping platform centered on fashion and beauty products, has shifted its focus to food. It has launched an online community activity called “Everyday Recipe at Home”, which has been viewed nearly 400 million times.
In view of the rising demand for home baking, sales of implements such as eggbeaters and even kitchen scales have risen on e-commerce platforms. From Jan 24 to Feb 14, egg-beaters were one of the 10 bestselling products, with sales surging by 260 percent year-on-year, according to Pinduoduo.
Data from Tmall International show that sales of imported kitchen appliances, organic cake flour and walnut oil have soared since Spring Festival. Sales of dough-mixing machines on the platform rose by 400 percent year-on-year from Jan 24 to Feb 12, while those for noodle-making machines grew by 280 percent.
The data also show that sales of frozen food, including dumplings and pizza, have risen, along with those of meat and yogurt. Demand has also grown for sauces and baking mixes.
The People’s Daily website and Sina Weibo launched a Delicious Food Challenge competition from Feb 27 to April 1. As of March 24, the competition had attracted more than 7,500 participants online, with a total prize pool of 100,000 yuan.
With most restaurants closed, chefs have been taking their kitchens online to help food lovers prepare good meals.
A recent Taobao report showed that in the past month, some 160,000 food and catering businesses have joined the online shopping platform, with the number on Taobao Live, a livestreaming feature, rising by 121 percent year-on-year.
Businesses such as the Cantonese dim sum restaurant chain Jin Ding Xuan, the Xibei Group, which focuses on cuisine from Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Meizhou Dongo, which specializes in dishes from Sichuan province, and the hotpot chain Xiaolongkan, have been livestreaming shows from their kitchens. Chefs cook items from their menus to attract viewers to buy semifinished dishes.
According to the China Cuisine Association, 93 percent of restaurants nationwide closed during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 outbreak, with more than 70 percent of chains shutting all their outlets.
On March 20, Guo Jialiang, a chef from Jin Ding Xuan in Beijing who specializes in Huaiyang cuisine, launched his third cooking video on Taobao Live.
This cuisine derives from the native cooking styles of the region surrounding the lower reaches of the Huai and Yangtze rivers, and is centered on the cities of Huai’an, Yangzhou and Zhenjiang in Jiangsu.
“Spring bamboo shoots are a popular ingredient in season,” Guo said in one video that gave instructions on how to cook them.
Although moving online has eased pressure for the teahouse chain a little, “it is far from enough to make ends meet,” Qiu Bing, Jin Ding Xuan’s chief marketing officer, told online media outlet Lie Yun.
Qiu added that the outbreak has served as a reminder to the traditional catering sector that it should focus on converging offline and online operations.
A recent promotion on the recipe app Douguo by Yu Yonglin, a chef at Cindy’s Cafe in Beijing, attracted more than 32,400 views, helping to sell 288 portions of semifinished Hainan-style hotpot with coconut water and chicken.
Zhong Feng, Douguo’s co-founder, said the app’s users are all interested in cooking. As a result, the chefs’ livestream broadcasts quickly became popular.
According to Economic Information Daily, the app plans to invite more than 1,500 chefs to livestream cooking courses.
Since March 25, Kugou Livestream has aired a new cookery program, with major catering businesses broadcasting a particular cuisine until Friday.
The businesses include: Yunhaiyao, a chain specializing in cuisine from Yunnan province; Hong Kong-style desert chain Honeymoon Desert; Yang’s Dumplings, which focuses on fried dumplings; Mai Chi Lin, a Hong Kong-style beverage and desert chain; Taoyuan Village, which sells Taiwanese-style breakfasts; Song Fa Bak Kut Teh, which specializes in Singaporean cuisine; A Gan Guo Kui, which sells stuffed flatbreads; and Pizza Mazarin.
A recent report by the China Chain Store and Franchise Association said that 92 percent of 71 catering chains, involving some 61,600 outlets and 1.3 million staff members, have taken their business online and opened takeout channels to reduce losses. But the report added that growth of takeout orders has been relatively limited.
With the outbreak in China easing, restaurants have gradually resumed operations nationwide.
Social distancing has kept diners away from their favorite restaurants. As a result, food documentaries and cookery shows such as Darling, Come to Dinner and Go Fridge, have been helping viewers get through the hard times. On March 16, Un Repas Chaud (A Warm
Meal), one of the latest shows, aired on Dragon TV, iQiyi and Bilibili.
Most of the 45-minute documentary was shot by netizens in Wuhan, Hubei province, the outbreak’s epicenter, where a lockdown was imposed in late January.
Centering on local people’s everyday chores, the show focuses on their feelings — including fear, anger and hope — in the battle against COVID-19.
Director Zhang Lai said food can help allay panic and anxiety. Within a week of being released, the documentary had been viewed more than 15 million times, receiving a rating of 9.9 out of 10 on Bilibili. On Feb 14, Tencent Video released Pot of
Fire, a documentary enabling viewers to enjoy hotpot together online. With two new episodes released every Friday, audiences have the chance to savor different types of hotpot from across the country. As of March 25, the 10 episodes, each lasting 12 minutes, had been viewed more than 74 million times.
The show salutes front-line medical professionals fighting the virus and also acts to comfort people who have to stay at home due to the outbreak.
Its general director, Qu Nan, said: “No food other than hotpot can better show how much Chinese like to gather together to enjoy happiness. I believe that spring will finally come after the outbreak.”