Learn to cook like a 5-star hotel chef!

China Herald introduced us to ChinaOnTV, a website that shows English-language programming online. From their website:

ChinaOnTV.com is a U.S. based online video network, with all content presented in English. The mission of ChinaOnTV is to continually increase the public’s awareness of China’s history as well as contemporary Chinese life and achievements, in order to foster international trade, business ventures, cultural understanding, travel, peace and good will between the peoples of all nations.

Our attention was drawn to the Cuisine section under the Culture page, where you can choose to view episodes of the Dragon TV/CCTV 9 cooking show "You Are the Chef." The show pairs host Heidi Dugan with chefs from top hotels in Shanghai to prepare and cook one of the chef's dishes.

One of the things we liked about these mini cooking segments is that Heidi and the chef actually go shopping together at what look to be regular supermarkets here in the city before they go back to the set and start cooking. We liked hearing the professionals point out what to look for in the meat and other ingredients to ensure freshness and quality. We're also fans of Heidi Dugan, who has a natural screen presence and seems to be enjoying herself each time out (although it's a little jarring when she abruptly switches between speaking Mandarin and English).

The benefit of having ChinaOnTV serve as the repository for these episodes is that they're all on-demand, so people who actually want to follow along can do so at a time that works for them. Unfortunately, it appears that some of the newer episodes on the site aren't loading; we hope they're up and running soon so we too can learn how to make baked abalone with sabayon. That is, if the staff at the Lianhua supermarket down on the corner can help me figure out what sabayon is.

Eric Hu is Shanghaiist's Food Editor. Email tips, recommendations, and news and gossip about Shanghai's food scene to food at shanghaiist.com.