Poultry

The importance of fowl, of poultry, in the Cantonese diet cannot be overestimated. Chickens, ducks, geese, and pigeons, as well as game birds such as partridge, quail, and pheasant, are dietary musts, though ducks and chickens are the birds eaten most often. And the various, inventive ways of cooking them are exhilarating. They are baked, roasted, steamed, fried, cooked wrapped in lotus leaves, or encased in salt or clay, and they are of course used as the bases for flavorful stocks and cooking broths.