Early Look: Cantonese Doggy Pot [anything]

This has been a video that's been in the works for a while.

This dish is a very a traditional Cantonese dish, reportedly popular in the 19th century, called gouzaie (狗仔鹅): literally translated, "doggy goose pot". What it did was use the flavor profile that would have traditionally been applied to (more expensive) dog meat in Cantonese cooking, and apply it to the (less expensive) goose meat instead.

It's a tasty dish, albeit almost extinct in Guangdong these days. It's one of Dawei's (Steph's Dad) favorite dishes to make, and he's been wanting to teach you guys for a while. There's also a sort of beautiful symmetry to it - while traditionally, the dog would be swapped out for economic reasons... I think today most people would similarly be in the market a 'dog substitute' for cultural reasons. In its own way, it can be a way that these flavors can be passed on, in the modern day.

That said, it's been obvious to me that the entire topic is a veritable hornet's nest. The tradition of dog meat has been a common racist line of attack against Asians for... centuries. And these days, as China has integrated culturally with the world at large, there are incredibly wide swaths of the population that similarly do not eat dog. There's a very large segment of educated, urban elites in China that would simply like to forget that the practice ever existed, and will it into extinction.

Both me and Steph love dogs, and similarly do not eat dog. But it's really hard for us, ideologically, to blindly repeat the common refrain that we've been taught that we should repeat: i.e. that eating dog is a backwards, barbaric practice only undertaken by the lowest, most morally despicable rural people... and that soon enough China will join the choir of civilized nations in banning this savage tradition. I mean, at the very least, we can't exactly follow up a post lamenting the decline of traditional Qixi traditions (and celebrating their continuation in rural pockets) whilst reciting that sort of narrative.

We... have complicated feelings.

So, we've tried to approach the topic as respectfully as possible. The first third of the video is me (Chris) chit chatting about how we think about the topic, second third of the video is Dawei teaching us the dish (using duck to substitute in for goose), and the final third of the video is our vegetarian-friendly take on the dish... using tofu in place of duck or goose. I enjoyed how it all came out, hope y'all can give it an (open minded!) try :)