I have a complicated relationship with French gastronomy. It is objectively nuanced, interesting and delicious— just no more so than the food of any other culture. Just as we make blanket assumptions about groups of people we are less familiar with, consumers base purchasing decisions off of what they do or do not know — and that starts with chefs themselves. There is an embarrassing imbalance of French cuisine taught in culinary school — for my alma mater, roughly 1 month meandering through France compared to 1 week for the entirety of Asia. We relished in the full range of French techniques from the bizarre (ever heard of canard à la presse?) to absurdly wasteful (i.e. consommé), but barely touched upon techniques like Japanese sushi aging, Chinese velveting, or Indian tandoor cookery. Recently, a fellow chef told me, to my face, that “all Asian sauces are just jarred things mixed together.” When I responded with, “Are all French sauces just butter with a few things mixed together?”, she disagreed vehemently.

This problem may be sown in education, but it grows well past that. While French establishments takes on many forms, from bistros and boulangeries to brasseries and patisseries, most Asian cuisines are asked to contain themselves in value-driven “Cheap Eats” type concepts or be accused of being “inauthentic”. In blogs, cookbooks and other media, this treatment can be observed in the form of acceptable substitutions. It may be of utmost importance to procure proper herbs for a dish from Provence, but it’s uncommon to see that level of scrutiny for ingredients like Shaoxing wine or fermented white pepper. If you search for “ramen noodle recipe”, the very first result on Google is a recipe containing eggs, not kansui (alkaline water). Misrepresentation and lack of representation reinforces incorrect worldviews that the particularities of these “other” cultures’ techniques or ingredients or traditions don’t matter, or are somehow inferior.

This dessert is an on-the-nose statement about the stereotypes of quality, ability, and importance we place onto whole groups of food (and people) without questioning the status quo. I took the idea and look of a classic Chinese mooncake and “reimagined” it with fancy French techniques. The red bean filling has been made into a fluffy mousse, the salted duck center into a custard akin to a crème anglaise, and the kansui-and-golden-syrup wrapper replaced with an oolong-flavored biscuit. Calling this not-really-a-mooncake item a “mooncake” is also a reminder of how frequently we chefs tend to cherrypick a few ingredients or techniques and globalize them into a representation of an entire dish. I served this mooncake alongside some freshly made soymilk, another incredibly misunderstood item. I still have no idea what mass-market soymilk in the U.S. is flavored with because it’s such a far cry from what soy tastes like, yet when my peers taste fresh soymilk the reaction is often “This tastes weird.” Ultimately my “mooncake” is different, but no better, than the traditional version.

Bonus Course: Dog Food Is A Necessity?

Sneak peek of my videoshoot with LuckyRice

I can’t recall how many times I’ve heard some type of insult lobbed at me or my family that revolved around Chinese people eating dogs. When I competed on Cutthroat Kitchen a few years ago and expressed my dislike for lasagna, a stranger tweeted how ironic it was that a Chinese chef would question the meat contents of any dish. I was stunned and humiliated. Despite being a dog-owner and dog-lover in the U.S., my being Chinese meant the shame of being part of a dog-eating culture would follow me forever.

This used to make me angry until I actually visited some of the places that do eat dogs. Passing through these impoverished villages in Asia and beyond, I realized very quickly that rights (human rights, animal rights) are a privilege, not a given. In those areas, dogs are no different than the animals we regard easily as livestock: chicken or pigs or cows. Even if my insides twinged at seeing the cages of dogs being readied for slaughter, I simultaneously felt guilty for judging these strangers for doing what they had to do, just to survive.

Coming home, I struggled with being what felt like the perpetual bystander having no control over how my culture or identity was interpreted. It was not up to me to decide what was “right” or “acceptable”, only to accept the verdict and its consequences. Eating dog was (and still is) deemed inhumane, but spending hundreds of dollars a month on human-grade dog food is now acceptable, even enviable. My childhood lunches of kidneys and pig feet were “disgusting” — until eating “authentic” Asian food became new currency in the foodie bank. This doggie treat is a sobering look at how easy it is to judge when we do not understand. It’s a pretzel bao filled with pork belly and pig ears, a labor-intensive treat that is met with delight here — but reeks of entitlement elsewhere.