The Traditional Dog Meat Flavor Profile

[00:00] So uh… don’t worry, we’re obviously not eating  any dog today. The dish we’re doing is something   gouzaiya – doggy duck pot – which uses the  traditional Cantonese flavor profile that  

[00:17] would be used with dog but with duck meat instead.  It is a tasty dish, so if you just want a recipe   you can jump to this point in the video… but  I did kind of feel the need to say something  

[00:38] crystal clear at the onset here, because the  internet is the internet. Asian Americans,   being Americans, do not eat dog. Educated  urban Chinese also do not eat dog. But the  

[00:52] core truth is that dog is a traditional,  historical protein source in China,   so does exist here or there, and it’s  a truth that’s proven to be a goldmine  

[01:06] for the more slimy breed of influencer. So  we wanted to have an honest conversation. Because what can be eaten, what can’t be eaten –  these are the kind of fundamental questions that  

[01:20] are studied extensively by anthropologists.  Because how do we learn cuisine? I mean,   we learn it from our elders – our parents, our  grandparents, our tribe – the result of an almost  

[01:33] unfathomly long process of our ancestors throwing  culinary ideas at the wall, desperately hoping the   calories stuck, and passing down to us what did.  It’s from this millennia of cultural evolution   that we get this amazing diversity of global  food, genius and often highly specific ways of  

[01:52] preparing certain ingredients… I dunno, it’s kinda  trippy it’s how every single one of us got here. But just like how if you talk to  a biologist they’ll tell you that  

[02:06] there’s all sorts random little accidents  that you can find in our genetic code,   I think our culinary code also has a lot of  little random accidents – stuff that was passed  

[02:21] on because maybe it was useful at some time, or  at the very least it didn’t really harm anything.   Like talk to a Chinese traditional medicine  practicioner, and they’re likely to give you  

[02:37] a highly developed post hoc rationalization  on why cold water bad for you. Ditto with   someone keeping Halal, maybe they’ll tell that  of course you can’t eat pig because look at them,  

[02:54] they’re so dirty… or someone from the British  and American tradition that obviously you can’t   eat dog because they were our hunting  buddies, or they co-evolved with humans,   or something along those lines. We’re often  really quite good at explaining our own behavior.

[03:12] But even if we took those historical explanations  at face value, now I don’t have a time machine,   but I’m pretty sure that our current Anglophone  behavior of doggy diapers and dropping way too  

[03:27] much cash – I mean, village resources, on doggy  day care might’ve been viewed as almost as   messed up as eating them. Because there’s been  this shift – for most of the human experience,  

[03:42] the problem we had was not enough calories and  infectious disease. But in our modern world,   those are kind of solved-ish problems, the  issues we have instead stem from loss of tribe,  

[03:58] loss of clan, not enough human connection. And so  for us, I think dogs often help us fill that void. And that’s also buttressed by  another reality of our modern world,  

[04:12] which’s that in the shadow of three  centuries of the twin cultural towers   of first the global British Empire followed  by American economic and cultural hegemony…  

[04:27] a lot of people around the world learned how  to speak English. They learned to listen to   rock and hip hop. They learned to eat KFC.  Slowly our modern British and American norms  

[04:43] and taboos became global norms and taboos –  and this obviously’s happened in China too.

[04:55] And for me, for you, I think looking at those  pictures of Shanghai there’s a comfort there,   like most of my Chinese friends fit that kind  of bill. Because to us, the spread of our own  

[05:10] culture often feels… really quite natural. Like,  one of my favorite little cities in Southeast   Asia is Vientiane, capital of Laos… some really  nice French food there by the way, and if you  

[05:23] look online there’s a lot of people that’ll tell  how with the new fast train, the city’s getting   ruined, it’s becoming a Chinese colony, there’s  Chinese characters on the street everywhere… but  

[05:36] like, drop yourself into Vientiane. Look at the  signs. People they seem to notice the Chinese,   feels aberrant, but it’s like… we can’t even  see all the English. For us, what’s become this  

[05:55] internationalized educated class, it’s  just… the air that we all breathe. So young, urban people, these days, in China  they basically do not eat dog. Like ask an  

[06:08] average educated 20 year old Cantonese native  of Guangzhou about dog meat the thought would be   just as abhorrent as it would if you asked it in  Brooklyn. But not everyone in China is an educated  

[06:24] 20 year old Cantonese from Guangzhou. And so dog  meat exists in China, it’s a traditional protein,   it’d be a lie to say that it doesn’t  – but the consumers they lean older,  

[06:37] less educated, and more rural. For  better or worse, it’s a dying tradition. Now I am an American, so I love dogs, but I also  really love cultural and culinary preservation,  

[06:59] so I kinda have complicated feelings. And I  think that’s why I really love gouzaie – doggy   goose pot – or today we’re doing gouzaiya,  doggy duck pot for ease of international   adaptation. Again, it’s the traditional Cantonese  flavor profile that would have been applied to  

[07:16] It’s a way that this culinary knowledge  can be passed down without us having to   confront and think too hard about the nature  of meat and mortality and existence... so I’ll  

[07:35] hand it off to Dawei, Steph’s Dad, an old school  cook who will teach us this old school dish… then   for the vegetarians in the room, I’ll come back  in and show you our 100% vegan doggy tofu pot.

[13:25] So right. Again, the basic mix of flavors for our  tofu today is going to be from 2-3 dried and aged   tangerine peels, chenpi, furu – fermented  tofu, and for this one I decided to go for  

[13:37] a red fermented tofu for color, twenty grams  of the darkest brown sugar that you can find,   powdered also good, and eight smashed garlic  cloves. And just like Dawei we’ll scrape the  

[13:49] bitter white pith off of the chenpi peels  and then slice into thin strips… but unlike   him we’ll be frying up all of our aromatics  at first. So… to a hot wok drizzle in about   a tablespoon of peanut oil and go in with  your garlic, 2-3 inches of smashed ginger,  

[14:06] and the white bits from about three green garlics.  And if green garlic is not available to you,   just up the garlic-garlic by three cloves. Fry  those over a medium flame until they’re fragrant,  

[14:21] about 30 seconds, then up the flame to high  and swirl in a quarter cup of Shaoxing wine   and toss in the sliced chenpi. Bring that up to  a rapid boil and give it a quick 15 seconds or so   to infuse, then go in with two cups of water and  your dark brown sugar. Bring that up to a rapid  

[14:38] boil once again to let the sugar dissolve, then  transfer over to a pot and place that over a very   low flame, covered, to let everything brew and the  flavors come together for at least a half an hour.

[14:50] And… as that’s going we’ll get 450 grams  of our tofu and slice it into sheets,   each about 1 centimeter thick. Then in a  separate bowl toss in a half teaspoon of  

[15:02] salt and mix in a bit of hot, boiled water  from the kettle to let that salt dissolve,   then carefully lay the tofu pieces in, and  submerge it all with more hot, boiled water   from the kettle. Cover, and let that sit to brine  for about twenty minutes. Then after that time,  

[15:20] thoroughly drain the salt water from the  tofus… and then now, we can fry those up. But real quick, before we do, in a bowl  with two cubes of red fermented tofu,  

[15:32] plus a half tablespoon of its red liquid, toss  in a quarter teaspoon of salt and ladle in a bit   of that aromatic liquid. Mix that super  well, breaking down the fermented tofu,   and set that aside. Then, to a hot wok, drizzle  in two, two and a half tablespoons of peanut oil  

[15:50] and then go in with the drained brined tofu.  Let those fry over a medium-high flame for 5   to 8 minutes, or until the bottom begins to get  golden brown… periodically moving the wok around  

[16:02] to cook evenly if you’re working off of a round  bottom like us… then, carefully flip those tofus.  Give it another minute or so on the  other side just to firm it up a bit,  

[16:14] then toss in your aromatics liquid together with  that bowl of the red fermented tofu. Keeping the   flame at around medium or even medium high  – we want this at a heavy simmer/light boil  

[16:26] to allow for our liquid to reduce… cover with a  breathable lid, and let that boil for 20 minutes. Then, after that time, taste your sauce and  season everything accordingly – we added another  

[16:38] ¼ tsp salt and MSG, together with a sprinkle  of white pepper powder. Allow to continue to   reduce on high to your desired consistency, for  us this was another two minutes, and then mix in  

[16:51] the green part from three green garlics… or swap  that for a little cilantro if you couldn’t find   green garlic. Then just serve that all up, we  went with a claypot as a serving vessel but a  

[17:04] normal bowl is more than fine… and then with that  you’ve got yourself a vegetarian doggy flavor pot. So right! The most traditional meat to go  into this flavor profile… well besides dog…  

[17:19] there’s actually goose, which is a more gamey  tasting meat that has a stronger flavor. And   when we were filming, Chris asked my Dad if  venison would work, especially a wild hunted  

[17:32] one… and he said that it would be great in this  kind of flavor profile. So if you’re a hunter,   maybe explore this flavor profile… or maybe  a heritage turkey as well? And as for the  

[17:45] vegetarian version, besides fried tofu, you can  also put maybe straight up tofu… or tofu puffs,   or tofu skin in it… it would also be  really good. So right, check out the   recipe in the description box… a big thank you  to everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon,  

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