#TGD: Chef gives Chinese dairy know how

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How do you sell dairy products to a market that has historically consumed limited milk, cream and cheese as part of its diet? By teaching the locals how to cook and eat it, New Zealand’s biggest company, Fonterra, believes.
At its high-rise Shanghai head office, the dairy giant – which exported more than $2.5 billion of dairy products to China last year – has built a special commercial kitchen to show Chinese chefs how to whip cream.
Western foods are becoming more popular at bakery chains throughout the country and in hotels and restaurants, but most use locally produced non-dairy alternative products made from palm oil.
Dairy is almost twice the price, has a shorter shelf life and takes about a month to arrive from New Zealand.
Fewer than 10 per cent of Chinese people consume dairy products, but Fonterra’s China business development manager, Kefei Bu, said the market was growing fast.
«Dairy is not in Chinese cooking at all, but we see a lot of these fusion restaurants, for example, developing fried rice with mozzarella cheese. Chinese people pick it up very quickly.
«Bakery is not Chinese typical food at all. Most traditional cuisine is steamed, not baked.»
He said Fonterra was the biggest supplier of dairy ingredients to Shanghai’s 2500-3000 bakeries, including chains Ichido and Lillian, which use Fonterra ultra heat-treated (UHT) cream and pastry sheets in their famed egg tarts.
However, just as most New Zealand chefs are poorly versed in using red bean paste, trainee cooks in China are not taught how to cook with butter because traditional Chinese cuisine does not use it.
At Fonterra’s Innovation Centre training kitchen, local cooks learn about the melting point temperature, consistency and mouth-feel of New Zealand dairy products, including cream cheese and UHT cream.
There was some resistance from chefs as dairy cream was very different to work with from non-dairy cream, and it was expensive for bakery owners. But consumers were beginning to understand that the trans fat in artificial non-dairy products was less healthy.
«The [saturated] fat level and colour is similar but the mouth feel and nutrition is so different. There is no calcium in non-dairy. Technically, it has a much higher melting point, so in the mouth it’s waxy. More consumers are also concerned about the production process of non-dairy.»
The market was in a transition phase. Most bakeries Fonterra served still used locally made non-dairy cream in at least half their products, but most now used whipped UHT cream on decorative party cakes. Fonterra was working with bakery owners to develop new recipes using dairy.
Around half the pizza served in China uses Anchor mozzarella, including at Pizza Hut. Most hotels, some airlines and Starbucks outlets carried its single-serve pats of butter.
«Our product is the highest price on the market . . . If you think about people in this market, in this country where they have issues such as melamine [contamination], pollution in the air and water, they’re so eager to find the better supply to have safe food,» said Bu.
It faced competition from multinationals such as Nestle, which had Chinese production capacity, and European and American brands. But so far, Fonterra had a strong foothold. «Most consumers believe New Zealand has the best dairy supply in the world in terms of being natural, fresh and safe. That’s the advantage we have in this market.»
Asia NZ Foundation has funded Jazial Crossley’s travel to China.
 
Source: Stuff

Mirá También

Así lo expresó Domingo Possetto, secretario de la seccional Rafaela, quien además, afirmó que a los productores «habitualmente los ignoran los gobiernos». Además, reconoció la labor de los empresarios de las firmas locales y aseguró que están «esperanzados» con la negociación entre SanCor y Adecoagro.

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