What a viewIn Netflix series Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan Cuisine, Chiu Chow cooking is the star of the show
Documentary lovingly explores the unique tastes and techniques behind the culinary customs of eastern Guangdong, in China, and elevates television food shows to new heights
What are television food shows really about? If they were really about food we’d all feel obliged to watch, because everyone has to eat. So, are they actually disguised travelogues winging their way in from their enticing locations? Are they merely occasional instalments of “chefs behaving badly”, starring obnoxious (usually male) skillet-slingers in chefs’ whites who glory in grilling their hapless underlings?
Tedious boors are thankfully off the menu in new Netflix documentary series Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan Cuisine, a 20-episode presentation of culinary highlights from across the eastern Guangdong region embracing the city of Shantou. In bite-sized helpings of 11 or 12 minutes – in the company of a voice-over artist, but minus redundant presenter – the appetisingly shot series homes in on the rich cooking traditions, some observed for centuries, behind Chaoshan’s unique flavours.
Chinese motherwort in congee, the bean paste in steamed-fish recipes and the cinnamon, aniseed and galangal essential to a successful hotpot are unlikely ever to have received such star treatment. And whoever knew that South China Sea lizardfish had to be assaulted quite so heartily to make hand-pounded and squeezed fish balls? Or that bittersweet Chaoshan olives, stewed, juiced and pickled, were harvested from trees in a 500-year-old grove?
No doubt the series producers knew they’d placed a safe bet taste-wise in an area historically important as the homeland of countless Indonesians, Thais, Malaysians and Singaporeans of Chinese blood, and their efforts have turned out so slick they almost look like tourist-board promotional films that have sneaked into the schedules.
And so, an answer: in the continuing absence of Smell-O-Vision and Taste-O-Vision, perhaps food shows are about – or should be about – visual and aural clues as to the delectability of ingredients and dishes, and introducing them to ever-broadening audiences. Thus are cultural cues exchanged. The headliners of Flavorful Origins: Chaoshan Cuisine are the featured foodstuffs – and if a pan-China expansion franchise is planned, this show could simmer away happily for years.