VIDEO: Squinting in concentration, Vietnamese artist Nguyen Thi Ha An drops a bright red chili into a bowl of pho barely bigger than a coin — the finishing touch to a miniature model that's eaten up days of her time pic.twitter.com/HUZ6lXkKWj
— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 20, 2020
Food lover knits her favorite snacks out of wool pic.twitter.com/eN2PcsecEV
— Reuters (@Reuters) August 22, 2020
Influencers around the world are amassing millions of followers by presenting and eating beautifully arranged plates of food
But now the Chinese government is waging war on the trend, with food shortages becoming a rising concernhttps://t.co/9IRPhyAx9c
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) August 20, 2020
… ‘Muk Sna’ is one of a growing number of stars who straddle two huge internet trends called Mukbang and ASMR:
– Mukbang originated in Korea and loosely translates as “eating broadcast”
– Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) is a category of video aimed at creating noises and sounds that elicit a physical response
For some, the idea of watching and hearing someone eat piles of food on camera is not appealing.
But the trend, started about 10 years ago, has become extremely popular in Asia.
Now, though, the Chinese government is cracking down on the videos, which soon may be banned altogether in the country…
Anyone searching for terms such as “eating show” or “eating livestream” is now being served with warning notices.
Users on popular app Kuaishou are being warned to “save food; eat properly” and on Douyin, the Chinese sister app to TikTok, a warning pops up saying: “Cherish food, refuse to waste, eat properly and have a healthy life.”…
Most of ‘Muk Sna’s’ followers are in Korea, Vietnam and Thailand.
But she worries for her 50,000 Chinese fans, many of whom are thought to be lonely people seeking a shared experience when eating their own dinner in front of their phones or computers.
“I’m hoping that only the worst channels will be affected by this to allow for the beneficial and good channels to remain open,” she says.
“I don’t eat much in my videos and try to eat healthy food.”
If we’re being honest, what proportion of Western ‘cooking show/video’ viewers ever make, or even attempt to make, the various dishes we spend hours admiring on YouTube or Hulu?
Alison Rose
Because I am a miniature person, I adore miniature versions of basically anything, so that first video is my fucking jam.
It also reminds me of one of my favorites from ye olden days at I Can Has Cheezburger
HumboldtBlue
I have a small mind and yet I can still grasp the lowest hanging fruit.
Now I just need to get some tail.
mrmoshpotato
Late night munchies?
This thread does not exist! Good night! *pick your grrrr face emoji
Parmenides
I’m either looking a food for how they make it or furiously trying to make enough for a family dinner, which is always something I’ve never made. Does anyone else do that. Make something you’ve never made for big dinners. Its a staple in my family. When else are you going to try the stuff you’ve wanted to make but don’t feel like taking the energy.
Or as my mom always said, “if it doesn’t work, you’ve at least got a story”.
oatler.
There’s “Korean Girls Eat Texas BBQ”, “Americans Try Haggis” etc. I like Chuck “hope you’re having an ameezing day” Wiens’ streetfood tours where he makes the O-face when he tastes something. Also the 18th century cooking guy who puts nutmeg in everything.
Redshift
Oh, sure, I love GBBO, but I have no interest in learning to make any of it.
James E Powell
@oatler.:
18th century cooking guy? I’ve never seen that one.
Down the rabbit hole I go.
Keith P.
I eat pho on a weekly basis, so I want one of those models for my office.
Omnes Omnibus
Watching a skilled person do something well can be enjoyable even if one has no interest in doing it oneself.
oatler.
@James E Powell:
Just punch in ‘Townsend’s’
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: Connecticut Public TV?
RaflW
I watched a lot of PBS weekend cooking shows back in the day. I can’t say I made all that many of the specific dishes, but I think it has contributed to my experimenting, being mindful of technique, and my tendency to cook without recipes, or diverging from recipes with some confidence now.
Like, when a recipe calls for 2T of oil, I count seconds/gauge how it spreads in the pan or bowl, not counting metal spoonfuls. Learned that from TV. And if I’m wrong, oh, dang, did I eat too much olive oil? (My partner always jokes, from some NYT article years ago “Olive oil, it’s like heart medicine”. He points out that Italians live longer than Americans!)
What I mean is, like, when the Dr said to me to limit beef and pork, I was sort of crushed, because I’d figured out a fairly decent Bolognese by trial and error after visiting Bologna, and working one recipe and then off to the races. Ah well! I now make a sauce that the residents of that fair city wouldn’t recognize. But in switching to ground turkey thigh (fresh, never frozen, from the coop butcher, and absolutely not ground white turkey, the driest most boring crap), I just kind of figured out how to get it really, really seared, deglazed, and then brown the (random squirt from a ‘toothpate tube’) tomato paste before adding the real, imported Italian crushed tomatoes. Maybe it’s vaguely like some other Northern Italian regions sauce? Or maybe it’s just bastard American stuff (but not from a supermarket jar. Putuh ptuh feh.)
HumboldtBlue
@James E Powell:
Sweet mother of artisan hardtack, bon apetit.
Hola mi Gente.
Pete Downunder
@RaflW: An Australian chef who won our version of Master Chef admitted the other day that all cook book authors lie about how much oil they use – the truth is always far more than specified. The only “honest” one is Jamie Oliver who often says use a glug of oil. I don’t think that’s an internationally recognized unit.
piratedan
whenever I need a smile, I click on this old try channel favorite…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsUtcrQ7M0c
somehow the idea of watching Irish folk getting hammered on American booze is worth it just for the commentary of the proceedings… and what did you think Kelly…. “I thought they were all a bunch of Arse…..”
RaflW
While we’re on the subject, have folks watched Posh Nosh? Not every episode is perfect, but when I first stumbled across it, I had so much fun watching it.
Kent
The problem that I have with trying to re-create interesting Asian dishes, is that I don’t have the ingredients and if spend the time running around to various high-end groceries in the Portland area collecting them I find that I’ve spent more money than it would cost me to eat at my local Thai or Chinese restaurant anyway. And then I have a bunch of stuff in my refrigerator that I never get around to using again before it gets bad.
I do some “hack” stir fry dishes that aren’t particularly authentic but using easy Costco ingredients and sauces that the kids like which is good enough for home. Gives me an excuse to explore new restaurants. Or rather, it did before pandemic world descended on us.
That said, by far the best cooking or food show that I’ve seen recently was the Latin America street food series on Netflix. It’s not recipes. But rather follows the lives of poor mostly women who cook and serve splendid street food in various Latin American countries. I only wish they had also visited Chile.
Kent
By the way. My one food show story is that my wife and I ran into Anthony Bourdain and his crew at a small B&B hotel we were staying at in Pisco Elqui in northern Chile. It would have been around 2008 give or take. We spent the evening sitting around a communal open air table under brilliant stars drinking pisco sours and eating cerveche and chatting all night about life and travel. Super nice guy down-to-earth guy with a super nice crew. I never did see that episode, if it even made it into a show. They were doing something on Chilean pisco and street food but we mostly just talked about other stuff.
Emma from FL
I love the Chinese cooking shows that show not only cooking talents but also something about the person’s life and environment. Basically for me they’re tourism with recipes. I know that it is quite unlikely that I will ever be able to visit some of these places, but I enjoy learning about them. Yunnan, with its ethnic diversity and amazing rivers; Shaanxi, with its stunning cave houses and eerie rock formations; Sichuan with its endless night skies and snow so white it looks blue.
I realize it’s all a bit of a fantasy; in fact, I call it “rural porn for the stressed city dweller”. But you can glimpse enough of the culture and the environment to make it fascinating.
Emma
I did make a pretty darn good (if ugly) shortbread using Darren McGrady’s recipe on his YT channel the other day. My mother, the purist, didn’t like the idea of adding dark chocolate chips, but I said “damn the torpedoes!” and chucked a cup of them in. So good and easy that it might be my new staff party staple. Maybe add some of the rum that’s been sitting in the pantry for years now.
I don’t make a lot of Chinese dishes, mainly because I can’t get the wok hei that chefs at restaurants easily achieve, so no point trying to make restaurant staples at home, IMO. I AM motivating myself with thoughts of chwee kueh and other Singaporean dishes, though, once my chilies finally ripen and I can start making sambal. My brain will say that it’ll all have been worthwhile, whatever the results, based on the price of all the dried shrimp I had to buy.
NotMax
Currently doesn’t seem to be available anymore on free streaming (except it is on Kanopy, if your library subscribes to that service), several years ago much enjoyed the movie Le Chef.
A clip. “I’d have heard the eggplant scream.”
NotMax
@Kent
There’s also Taco Chronicles on Netflix, which is interesting up to a point. Did find myself doing some selective fast forwarding on some episodes.
gene108
@piratedan:
Did not see that before. Learned it was Ciara’s first alcohol shoot. And a legend is born.
gene108
@RaflW:
I watched a bunch of PBS cooking shows, when they were on Saturday afternoons, in the late ‘90’s, and like you I learned about techniques and spices my mom never used.
Also, I learned to cook eggplant in a way that I liked to eat it. Hated the way my mom made it growing up.
Emma
@Kent: The easiest Chinese dish you can do that restaurants in the US don’t bother with are soups. In southern Chinese households (including those in the diaspora), it’s unthinkable to have a family meal without soup, but I guess it doesn’t make money for restaurants. Anyway, pig bones should be pretty cheap, just buy some at your local Chinese store, simmer for 2-3 hours, skimming off the scum, take out the bones, add root vegetables, cook for however long they need, and then boom, basic Cantonese-style soup.
Hoppie
@oatler.: I have argued with so-called Italian restaurants over the years. You cannot make “Bolognese” lasagna without nutmeg. I lived in Bologna several years, and know this. Bulgnais rules!
NotMax
@Emma
In case you’ve never seen it, cannot recommend Tampopo highly enough. Best ramen ronin movie ever.
SectionH
@Parmenides: I think a lot of us have done that once in a while. I remember calling my Mom long distance to ask about her meat sauce recipe for pasta.
I once did an outdoor party for 40 or so people, based on many dishes that work served at “room temperature,” and I literally hadn’t cooked for years even then. I married a man who loves to cook, but he didn’t want to throw that party so I took the plunge. I was too busy to be scared. A few friends brought other things, and it did work. But no new dishes for company ever again.
Sigh, company for dinner. Some year I hope. I’m gonna get maudlin inna minute.
piratedan
@gene108: don’t know how many times i’ve watched it… it just never seems to get old (at least for me). Each group of “tasters” have their own charm and Ciara’s “booze debut” is indeed the stuff of online legends… eye color commentary notwithstanding.
Emma
@NotMax: Oh yes, I watched that movie years ago and still have visions of the shot with the glistening soup :3 (gotta buy pig feet, neck bone, and/or backbone for that, though, plain old leg bones aren’t good enough for tonkotsu broth. Not to mention the actual cooking process. I ain’t got time for that shit, definitely just get it at restaurants!)
gene108
@piratedan:
I thought the eye color comments were cute. It’s like she was almost a bit buzzed.
NotMax
@SectionH
Back when our gaming group was meeting weekly, would volunteer to give the host a break and cook the dinner for around 16. Never knew how many would appear or wander in over the course of an evening on any given week, so 16 was a good target to aim for.
Cooking was a joy. Transporting everything prepared from my humble abode to his was a major PITA.
Emma
For the respite part of the thread, I’m binge-watching University Challenge on YT and being negged in spirit by Jeremy Paxman. At least I’ve done better as a single person than entire teams! Although that may have been a fluke…
Amir Khalid
@Emma:
Can you find belacan where you are?
Kent
Yes, I’ve watched those too. Pretty good. Although I think the street food series is much superior because it is about the people more than the food. The character profiles are just amazingly well done. Makes you want to travel Latin America listening to their stories.
NotMax
@NotMax
One time prepared a big stockpot’s worth of buffalo meat chili, which I dropped off in the morning with instruction to gently reheat for the dinner.
Somehow, mysteriously, the stove at the gathering place was set at high – and burned the sh*t out of it by the time I arrived.
Will say, humbly, that the crowd was more numerous on the weeks people learned I was doing the cooking.
joel hanes
@HumboldtBlue:
The Mi Ranchito cooking videos are among my very favorite.
She has such a casual attitude.
And the way she chops onions!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hoppie: I’ll just have the tire rims and anthrax.
Citizen Scientist
@Kent: Very cool. You may have met my cousin who worked for Tony B. for years across all of his shows. We always joked that Tom was going to show up for one of our annual family reunions with Tony in tow, but unfortunately it never happened before Tony passed. Whenever cousin Tom was shown on the show, it seemed Tony would give him a hard time, but he always said that TB was a really nice guy.
Emma
@Amir Khalid: not at my usual Chinese supermarket, but maybe at the higher-end Japanese / pan-Asian supermarket a bit further away. I’ve seen sambal oelek there before, but it’s not the kind of sambal that I’m used to, and since I found a relatively easy recipe from a Singaporean cookbook, I figured I may as well give it a shot. My aunt keeps sending pictures of all the different kueh she’s been making, so maddening >:(
And since I’m on a soup kick tonight (I was actually making soup before this thread began lol), I like the good old chicken rice stall macaroni chicken soup. It gives me an excuse to buy fried chicken (or I just buy roast chicken), remove the meat and simmer the carcass, throw in carrots, potatoes, and onion, macaroni at the end, and somehow the soup still tastes really close to what I would order in Singapore. It’s magic.
joel hanes
@joel hanes:
Ah, she doesn’t do it in that one.
In the cheese enchilada video, she holds a whole onion in her left hand and coarsely chops it by slicing toward and nearly to her palm.
I love the ancient, battered cutting board, and the way she measures salt, and the clay pot or speckleware cooking vessels too.
NotMax
@joel hanes
Have a (probably) 70 year old device reserved for chopping onions. Essentially a mason jar with a screw-on lid which has four chopping blades at the end of a metal cylinder, topped with a plunger one repeatedly depresses. So old and so much use the paint on its wooden knob has worn away, Does a more satisfactory job than any food processor.
piratedan
@gene108: I believe that she was certainly in a ‘pain free” zone, just different people manifest their intake in different ways and the way that she manages her diction is simply awesome, I think the font complaint comment is the real tell here too.
Hoppie
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Inauthentic Bolognese lasagna is widely available for everyone. I learned long ago to not want other people to like what I liked — that made it too expensive. BTW , I make my own.
Kent
@Citizen Scientist: It was a long time ago and I don’t remember any of their names other than Bourdain of course. But perhaps.
joel hanes
@NotMax:
My great-aunt had one of those, sixty years ago. I don’t have any problem chopping with a good vegetable knife on a board; it’s kind of meditative.
(I did get tired of fine-chopping four to six cups of pecan meal for the annual Christmas Russian teacake cookies, and bought a shredder/slicer attachment for the Kitchenaid stand mixer that does a fine job in about a tenth the time)
I have one grandmother’s depression-era Griswold skillets, and the other grandmother’s flour sifter.
Emma
@joel hanes: I looked up Russian tea cake cookies, and it turns out that they’re an American cookie? They sound good, I’m just confused now.
NotMax
@joel hanes
Heh. Have in the abode both a waffle iron and an electric skillet with cloth cords.
Jay Noble
ASMR is not only auditory. It can be auditory, visual or a combination of the two. I’m very triggered by visuals of back/shoulder/neck massages with just the ambient sounds. The whispering ones actually annoy me. I do get the goosebumps from music now and then. More so when I was in band.
There are also the process vids which are just incredibly calming – Restoration of an old rusty tool or Tonka truck or the How Things Are Made videos.
laura
I miss cooking for a crowd. The batchelor gentleman’s luncheon was saturday march 15th and that was the last time we’ve had more than three people in the house at once. If there wasn’t a pandemic I’d be planning a late summer italian buffet – antipasta, panzanella salad, a baked rigatoni, grilled vegetables and fresh fruit and nuts to finish. There’d be wine too. And friends to share it with. Maybe next year if we’re lucky.
NotMax
@joel hanes
Thing that possibly helps it work so well is it has a thick wooden disk which fits in the bottom of the glass container. Cutting board-in-a-jar.
James E Powell
@Hoppie:
I agree with you about the nutmeg, but suggest that arguing with restaurants is a waste of time.
joel hanes
@Emma:
They’re a big favorite with most everyone who tries one.
Rolling the hot just-baked cookies in confectioner’s
floursugar is tiresome, and our fingers turn red. Our recipes use more pecans and less wheat flour, and a bit more butter than some. If the name confuses you, you can call them “angel drops”.SectionH
@NotMax: Transporting is always a bit fraught, even with one dish. Well, I’m a klutz, YMMV. But you’ve clarified something for me – seriously – which is that cooking is not a joy for me, but hospitality is. Just one person, biggish gatherings, numbers don’t matter. It’s related to cooking, which I am quite competent at, but I don’t love. I love being hospitable, having a time and place to share food, conversation, maybe it’s for a reason, like your gaming group, maybe just getting together is the reason.
Emma
@joel hanes: more nuts, less flour, hell yeah. I think I’ve actually gotten some from a neighbor as part of a Christmas cookie package before, but I have no real memory of what they tasted like. I guess I can imagine, though, if it’s nuts, butter, and sugar. I’ll have to add them to my ever-lengthening list of kitchen ideas…
YY_Sima Qian
Huh, no one can accuse the CCP regime for ever having a sense of humor…
There is propaganda campaign to exhort people to conserve food. Restaurants are expected to reduce the servings to that for 8 – 9 people, when servicing a table of 10, for the banquet package deals. Other restaurants appear to interpret the government encouragement as reducing the serving by 1/3, but keeping the prices the same. So far, the campaign remains at the rhetorical level, no mechanism for any sort of enforcement is instituted, probably aimed at curbing the bad Chinese habit of over ordering food at social functions, with the goal of having at least 1/4 left over, to show that the hosts spare no expense to entertain the guests.
I think the Chinese government is concerned about potential disruptions in global food supply caused by COVID-19. The fact that 1/3 to 1/2 of China’s bovine population had to be culled in 2019 due to African Swine Flu did not help. Hubei had to cull hundreds of millions of chicks during the lock down due to breakdown in logistics for feed supply. The severe flooding in central and easter China over the past couple of months will negatively affect harvests. Probably why China has continue to import grains from the US and beef/lamb/diary from Australia, despite the political tensions, or grains and meat products from Latin America, despite the raging COVID-19 epidemic leading to contaminated packaging (possibly causing outbreaks in China). On the other hand, the authorities have taken pains to emphasize that there is no food shortage, probably to prevent mass panic. Prices have remained relatively stable compared to pre-COVID days.
For those interested in traditional Chinese cooking, look up Li Ziqi’s channel on Youtube. She lives in mountains in central Sichuan Province, and her videos are focused on preparing traditional Chinese foods from raw and fresh ingredients right out of the garden, and not limited to Sichuanese fare, either. I finder her videos therapeutic, with relaxing music, bucolic ambience, excellent cinematography, and mouthwatering dishes. They helped me get through the 80+ days of lock down in Wuhan.
NotMax
@Section H
Transporting was especially a pain because it’s five steps down to ground level from the cottage, then a hike across the lawn to get to the additional four steps down to the level of the driveway. Multiple trips necessary.
opiejeanne
@Jay Noble: Rescue and Restore is great for watching someone restore old toys. Marty’s Matchbox Makeovers is fun, and his humor is droll? I’m not sure how to describe his silliness with Kevin the Koala hand puppet.
I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows because I have gotten bored with cooking every night. I’ve been using Chef John’s recipes on YouTube for inspiration, and for the visual instruction. I’ve made a number of his recipes as well as a few of those by Alton Brown and Ina Garten.
SectionH
@NotMax: Oh damn! My Mom had a nut chopper like that – much smaller jar than you describe – but it was fucking amazing. I remember using it in her house in the late ’70s, and it must have been decades older then. Dunno how it disappeared, because DAMN, it chopped nuts like nothing else ever. My wonderful DiL gave Mr S a modern version a couple of years ago, which the packaging claimed was a/an Herb Chopper. It doesn’t chop herbs, nor does it chop nuts, which if you read far enough into the brag, it claims to do too. I cannot bear to tell her that, so I don’t. Mr S tried it once, and refused to use it again. Don’t blame him a bit.
@NotMax: I bet you’d do it again if it were safe, PITA notwithstanding. Pain in the knees, that’s me wrt steps. You have a railing, I hope.
joel hanes
@Emma:
nuts, butter, and sugar
and just enough salt.
Yutsano
@YY_Sima Qian:
I decided to look this up, and I am fascinated by what I saw. My (admittedly limited) knowledge of Japanese kanji helped me with some of the characters, but there were a few points where I was lost especially on the spices used. I was also today days old (it being 0043 here at the moment) when I learned coriander/cilantro was used in any Chinese cuisine. I had thought it was more limited to Southeast Asia because coriander loves warmth.
joel hanes
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thanks for the pointer.
They’re beautiful, and I want her cleaver, and if I had endless cabinets, I’d want her wooden ware.
I wish there were subtitles or accompanying text that named the ingredients.
opiejeanne
@SectionH: My mom had a nut chopper that was a little metal chute that screwed onto the top of a jar. It had tines arranged along an axle, and you turned the crank on the side of the chute.
I had one that I bought when we got married, and the kids would always volunteer to chop the nuts with it, and it eventually wore out. I don’t know what happened to Mom’s.
Emma
@Yutsano: I’m not great at spice ID, but there’s white peppercorns, star anise, galangal, cinnamon bark, Sichuan pepper, turmeric, dates, cloves, fennel seeds, and a few things I can’t name…
Emma
@Emma: the rectangle things at the bottom right might be the green parts of lemongrass.
SectionH
@opiejeanne: My mother’s chopper just had a spring-action up and down motion, plus twisting it to chop nuts evenly.
I so don’t miss that era otherwise, I mean ffs, but damn I miss that thing.
eta: no chute, you put a handful of nuts in the glass container, put on the lid, and chopped. That was it. The chute sounds kinda cool, but way too techie.
YY_Sima Qian
@Yutsano: Cilantro is indeed a foreign imported spice to China, but now commonly found in northern and northwestern China cuisine, especially for seasoning meat broth soups.
Most Chinese don’t know this, but the chili pepper was imported into China, from Mexico, merely 150 years ago. Different regions in China have really made the ingredient their own, and chili pepper has become a signature element of regional cuisines in Sichuan (spicy and numbing), Hunan (straight up spicy and aromatic), Hubei (straight up spicy, less extreme than Hunan), Jiangxi (straight up spicy, and more greasy than Hunan), and Guizhou (spicy and sour).
bjacques
@RaflW: Probably dead thread, but I loved that show, with Arabella Weir increasingly coming to regret marrying into Richard E Grant’s family. Also David Tennant…
I’m liking that 18th century cooking (Jas Townsend & Co) show on YouTube. First search hit is mushroom catsup. As it happens, I have a copy of Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife from 1729 with roughly the same recipe: “To make Englifh Katchop” (p. 80). The “juice from mushrooms” is made as Townsend describes it.
Further investigation is needed…
Another Scott
@SectionH: Sounds like a “Blitzhacker” – I remember the K-Tel commercials.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-1960s-Blitzhacker-Food-Chopper-/352766505176
Cheers,
Scott.
Feathers
@Emma: Dead thread, but the answer to this, and also snickerdoodles, is that someone went home and tried to recreate a cookie they had had elsewhere. Thus an American cookie called Russian tea cake, that a Russian would not recognize.
Tokyokie
@opiejeanne:
Dead thread, but I inherited that sort of nut chopper (it has a yellow metal top) from my mother, and I love it. But the handiest antique kitchen tool that I possess, which was my grandmother’s, is a small metal spatula with a wooden handle that has the thinnest blade I’ve ever found. I can push it under anything, and it comes in handy in removing freshly baked cookies from the cookie sheet without leaving parts of them behind. But the coolest thing about it is that on one of the sides of the blade is a finely serrated edge, an inch or so long, so you can lift and cut things in the skillet with it. And I’ve never seen a contemporary spatula with that feature.
Emma
@Feathers: Ah, good thing I checked this thread today, thanks!