Puppy Chow
Sichuan cooking expert Fuchsia Dunlop will eat your dog. Particularly yappy Pomeranians, pesky poodles, milling mutts and perhaps the Montauk Monster are all potential fodder for the Chinese menu. Dunlop writes in today’s Times Op-Ed page of the Beijing Catering Association’s decision to take dog off the menu during the Olympics. She goes on and on about Marco Polo and the history of dog food in China and how it’s not even seasonal appropriate fare (apparently eating Fido in August is like wearing white after Labor Day), until finally she gets to the meat of the matter:
“In case you’re wondering, there is nothing alarming about the taste of dog: smothered in chilies and aromatic spices in a Hunanese winter stew, it might remind you of lamb.”
Well, thank you Miss Dunlop. At last. As we all know, anything smothered in chilies is delicious. If you are lucky and we get around it, we will share with you our chilies-smothered recipe for Breasts of Pain torn from a Thrasher magazine in ’80s (the recipe calls for a 12 pack of Bud longnecks, in addition to chilies, chili powder, jalapenos and hot pepper sauce). Dunlop does have the presence of mind to point out that eating other things that many find morally questionable–such as shark fins, live turtles and Tibetan monks–does not seem to bother China men one bit. Any regular reader of this space would know that we are only concerned with thing: how does it taste? Okay, we might be concerned with a couple other things, (perhaps the quality of life of the dog in this video of a drunk woman in a bikini demonstrating the Wii fit), but the point here is that now thanks to a few squeamish officials, adventurous travelers and obese Americans and Germans will be robbed of their chance to sample a local delicacy. The Olympics always seem to bring this sort of fervor. Seoul deemed dogmeat unsuitable for area eateries when the Games descended on that fair city and the World Cup has grappled with canine and kitty comestibles for years. Though it should be pointed out Atlanta said nothing to dissuade places from serving up cowboy caviar during the ’96 Games. God bless America.
