Russ was home on Sunday! It’s always great to have my family back home during meals, and this time it let me blog on what a traditional home cooked dinner for a family of four looks like.
I’ve mentioned before that when we cook for more people in a Chinese meal, we don’t increase the portions as we’d do with starters, entrees and sides in western cooking. Instead we make additional varieties of dishes, i.e., more different starters, entrees or sides.
Traditionally for a family of four, we may make four dishes. For six people, we’d probably have five dishes and a soup. When eating out, we follow the same guideline when ordering food. Which is why as I blogged in my post on Chinese banquet, we typically have 10 courses or dishes at a banquet round table for 10 diners.
Therefore it’s amusing for me to see a group of 10 diners each ordering their own Lunch A or B from the menu in a Chinese restaurant in the U.S. The table could end up with five orders of Beef Broccoli and another five orders of General Tso Chicken.
This happened to my husband’s family when they gathered together for my father-in-law’s birthday party in a small town in California years ago. Each person ordered a dinner A or dinner B. I thought it was the strangest thing,
This boggles the mind of a Chinese diner. Why eat one thing when you can sample 10? We would instead decide together what to order to ensure that there would be enough different dishes to be shared among ourselves. If one particular dish was very popular we’d upsize it to a large order.
It’s common for us to attend a dinner for a group of about 15-20 people and see as many as 15 or more different dishes. I’m talking about only savory dishes, not counting dessert. Typically, a whole dining table would be filled with plates of a rich variety of food and tucked somewhere else would be plates and chopsticks.
The thing that is different from western party buffets is that each dish at such Chinese gatherings aren’t very large portions. Like at Chinese banquets, we’d just get a spoonful or two of each variety.
This is why it’s hard for me when I have to put the serving amounts for the recipes I write. I cook my usual one dish–which could fill two cups, maybe. This dish is equivalent to an order in a restaurant but it serves two people at home when we have dinner. But at a dinner for four, that same dish serves four. That’s because I’d have other dishes. Got it?
Cooking so many dishes sure sounds like a lot of work. And it is. It is a little less work because the portions are small. It’s much easier to have a dinner party for 10 serving a western meal than a Chinese dinner. The first representational dinner I attended in Hong Kong at my husband’s boss’s home was a sit down for 10 people and I was surprised that there was just a starter, a main chicken dish, maybe potatoes and a vegetable. Followed by dessert.
What’s cooking?
In a Chinese meal what is served–or ordered–has to be a variety. There should be a chicken, pork and beef, shrimp or squid or fish dish. If you want more pork dishes, you might serve pork belly and maybe pork ribs. Even in seafood dinners, there should be a variety–shrimp, clams, squid, crab, fish, conch, lobster–all of the above!
We also want to have different vegetables. We tend not to do one large platter of mixed vegetable; so you could have one dish of Fried Gailan With Garlic or Fried Shanghai Bok Choy and another dish of Fried Chives with Pork, Snow Peas With Shrimp, or Spicy Eggplant. We like to separate the vegetables because then we can enjoy the different flavors.
Different cooking techniques
The dishes should showcase a variety of the cooking techniques. There should be some cold, some stir fried, some deep fried, some braised, some steamed, and boiled (soup.)
We also like dishes that is served at room temperature. A popular easy-way-out is take out Chinese Cold Cuts, Roast Pork or Roast Duck to add to the variety and reduce the work load.
Contrasting flavors, good looks
Last of all, besides a variety of flavors, we also want the varied dishes to look different visually. They should have a variety of colors. Not all of them green, or white, or red. Or brown. And certainly not all black!
Let’s see how I did.
Five dishes for four people. Actually only Russ was home and there was only three of us. But he can always bring leftovers home. (I’m a typical Asian mom, we love to feed our kids.)
Cold, and white. Cold tofu, dribbled with oyster sauce, sesame oil and spring onions. (There’s your recipe.)
Steamed, and pork. Brown color?
Beef, and stir fried. With Chives. Green.
Shrimp with Green Pepper, stir fried. More stir fried is acceptable. More green? Maybe I should have used red pepper.
A quick soup. Boiled up some chicken stock and dumped in fishballs, enoki mushroom and Taiwan bai cai.
There you have it. The portions are small. But four dishes, one soup for family of four or five. Home cooked meal by mama. Recipes in separate post.
