Meet a food lover couple: Hype Foodies (CK & Diana)
CK & Diana are one of the top food influencers from Washington, also run Hype Films Productions. However, they do not call themselves “influencers”, they just love food. They post delicious food shots on Instagram to more than 20k followers. We spoke with them about their passion for food and we got an awesome banana bread recipe as a bonus.
Can you tell us about your favorite childhood food?
Our favorite dish we make at home are Vietnamese “Nuoc Mam Wings” or Fish Sauce wings. We caramelize the fish sauce with salt, pepper, sugar, garlic and chicken powder and create a glaze we marinate the wings in. Favorite dish growing up has to be “Yao Hon” which is Cambodian Hot Pot. The broth is similar to Tom Yum, but less sour and more savory. You dip slices of beef and veggies into the hot pot and then eat with rice. Both dishes are inspired by our Southeast Asian heritage.
What did food mean to you before the lockdown?
Food before the lock down was an inspiration for us to get to know different cultures through taste. If you can’t travel there, you can at least taste the culture through the food and we wanted to highlight that on our instagram. Food brings different types of people together and we need more of that these days.
How did your food choices change during the lockdown?
Our food choices changed after the lockdown to less of a variety and more of things we could cook at home. Ironically enough, we got more in touch with our own Southeast Asian roots and culture by experimenting with dishes we’ve eaten growing up and learning recipes we can now feed our future kids with. Before the lockdown, our typical day would be us going to a restaurant to shoot a video or photograph dishes, but now restaurants would have us take food to-go and we would film/photograph at home instead. It has gotten us to get more creative with what we have available at hand.
What do you miss the most? What did you discover new?
We miss interacting with different chefs and hearing their stories. We love to film chefs behind the scenes cooking up a storm and capturing some beautiful slow-motion of them cooking and doing what they are most passionate about. Something new we discovered is that we aren’t that bad at cooking ourselves! Our recent handful of videos are of us cooking and all the dishes came out amazing… besides sushi. We still need to work on our sushi skills!
Do you have a food hack or a 2 mins recipe you can share?
We have been abusing our air-fryer during this quarantine as it is now our most used appliance in our kitchen. Here is a banana bread recipe we used yesterday. Cooking spray, 3/4 cup all purpose flour, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking soda, 2 bananas mashed, 2 eggs beaten, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/4 cup milk, 2 tbsp veg oil, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, 2 tbsp chopped walnuts, set air fryer to 400 degrees and cook for 15 minutes. DONE!
Don’t forget to follow @hypefoodies on Instagram!
Once again, we thank C&K and Diana very much for participating.
