HOME DINNERS（家廚酒席）

A higher standard of cooking is required in the preparation of a home dinner. Every detail of the culinary art can be more conveniently carried out in one's own kitchen. As it is more important to aim at quality rather than quality, it is usual to provide a dinner of only eight or ten dishes, which should include a choice soup. Some foreigners, perhaps mistakenly or jokingly, call a home dinner “coolie chow”, but, as a matter of fact, the most pleasing and tasty dishes are often met with at these meals.

Since the inauguration of the New Life Movement it has become a recognised practice to entertain at home, the food being prepared on the premises. If the host does not possess a cook sufficiently skillful for this purpose, he usually gets around the difficulty by enlisting the services of some capable cook known to him. It often happens that the cook thus secured is in the employ of one of the host's many friends: he borrows the cook, and at the same time invites the employer to the dinner. At the end of the repast the host will remark on the excellence of the food served, while the friend, whose cook's services have been requisitioned, will say just the reverse. The other guests, if ignorant of the arrangement, are naturally astonished at the lack of modesty on the part of their host, and the seeming rudeness on that of the friend. When the secret is disclosed, it is only right that the host should praise the accomplishments of his friend's cook, while the friend should remain modest in regard to them.

A dinner at home has many advantages over one at a restaurant. The guests can be made more comfortable, and are permitted greater leisure in the enjoyment of the repast. Cleanliness is more likely to be observed in the preparation of the food, thus making it more wholesome. Lastly, it is generally more economical.

When a regular dinner is given at home, the host, from modesty,always calls it“plain dinner”Pien Fan(便飯).