Serves: 5

To attempt a complete Chinese meal from the start, therefore, is not recommended for the beginner. She would do far better learning to cook one dish at a time, until she knows what she's about. That dish (which could then be incorporated into an otherwise Western meal) might be a soup, Chinese-style vegetable, meat, seafood or sweet dish. Thus, with each meal, the beginner can learn the techniques, sharpen her skills, build her repertory and, most important of all, develop a feeling for Chinese cooking.

Since there is no single main dish, the question inevitably arises: How many dishes should there be? The answer: Plan on as many as there are people to be served. This is the general pattern:

For 2 - soup, a meat or seafood dish, rice
For 4 - soup, a meat dish, a seafood dish, vegetable dish, rice
For 6 - soup, 2 meat dishes, 2 seafood dishes, a vegetable dish, rice
For 8 - soup, 3 meat dishes, 2 seafood dishes, 2 vegetable dishes, rice

NOTE: This is a guidepost, not a hard-and-fast rule. If these menus seem too involved, adapt them to your own needs. Plan on fewer dishes, prepared in larger quantities. (And should unexpected guests drop in, a dish can be stretched with more vegetables and rice.) Also, desserts are not indicated since the Chinese do not generally serve them with their meals. If you include dessert, count it as a "main" dish.

Planning the meal:
Planning a Chinese meal is an art in itself. It calls for the selecting of individual dishes, relating them to one another and working out the harmonies and contrasts between them. When planning a Chinese menu, remember that pork is the favorite, followed by duck and chicken that characteristic seafoods are fish, shrimp or crab and that the vegetable can be whatever is in season. Egg dishes are also popular, with custard-like steamed eggs often served in place of soup, meat or seafood.
Whatever the ingredients, whether simple or costly, each dish should stimulate the eye, the imagination and the palate. It should be colorful--never dull, dreary or drab. (If it has no color of its own, garnish it with yellow egg threads, pink slivers of ham or green scallion tops.) Its taste and aroma should always be delightful too.

Within the meal itself, there should be proportion, balance and variety. Variety, for example, can be achieved in many ways: by the ingredients themselves, the way in which they're cut, and the methods by which they're cooked. As for proportion, the same ingredients should not be repeated too often. (Too many meat dishes are as bad as too many vegetable dishes.) For balance, a heavy meal is best preceded by a clear, light broth a light meal, by a soup that's rich and hearty. A smooth dish should be offset by a crunchy one a pungent dish by one that's bland.

No meal is enjoyable for the hostess if she has worn herself out preparing it. Confusion and its counterpart--fatigue--can be kept to a minimum by following a few simple rules: Allow plenty of time for preparation. Choose a few dishes that can be prepared well in advance or that can be conveniently managed the same day. Choose only one that calls for last-minute cooking. And never plan on two dishes which need the same cooking pan at the same time.

It's essential always to be realistic about what can be comfortably managed in the kitchen. If a stove has four burners, the first can be used for soup the second for a slow-cooked dish the third for rice and the fourth, first for tea, and then at the last moment for a stir-fried or deep-fried dish. (If you're a beginner, don't attempt both stir-frying and deep-frying at the same meal since these call for too much last-minute attention.) If there's to be a fifth dish, it can be barbecued meat or poultry roasted in the oven. Some dishes can be prepared in advance: cooked earlier in the day and reheated at the last minute or partially cooked a day or two ahead and refrigerated. In the case of long-simmering dishes, some cooks divide the simmering over a period of several days. The final cooking is then synchronized with the last-minute dishes.

It's always advisable to cook ahead as much as possible. The Chinese do. They get such variety in their meals because they rarely start from scratch. They prepare all sorts of dishes in advance-slow-cooked, cold, and deep-fried dishes, soups and rice. Even spareribs can be barbecued a day or two ahead, then reheated and browned before serving. Still another way to get more mileage out of four burners is to cook the rice and soup, then remove them from the stove and keep them covered so they'll stay hot. This will give you two more burners for last-minute cooking or reheating.

Getting Organized:
Menu planning should be done, not at the last minute, but a day or two ahead. Begin by listing the dishes you want to include then check the ingredients they call for against the supplies on hand. Draw up a shopping list to cover the missing items. Also indicate second-choice dishes just in case you can't get ingredients for the first.

Work out the cooking time for each dish, including preparation time. Then draw up a timetable to indicate when each should be started. (Work backward from the time dinner is to be served.) Post your menu where you can see it so nothing is forgotten.

If, for example, your dinner is to be at 7:30, and you're serving a cold vegetable dish, sesame ham sticks, red-cooked duck, mushroom soup, stir-fried pork and vegetables, rice and tea, your timetable for relaxed and leisurely preparation might read something like this:

5:00 p.m.
*Get ingredients ready for slow-cooked duck. Put these in pot.

5:30 p.m.
*Put slow-cooked dish on stove. (Once this is on the fire, it may virtually be ignored. It can cook an extra half hour without harm and will remain warm for some time after the heat is turned off.)
*Start organizing stir-fry ingredients. (The more advance preparation you do here, the better. For details, see the "Guide to Stir-Frying.") Cut meat. (If frozen, let thaw.) Soak dried ingredients.
* Start soup. Get out stock, other ingredients. Wash, peel, and cut vegetables for soup.

6:00 p.m.
*Wash rice. Put in pot with water, let sit quietly. Continue preparations for stir-fried dish (washing, cutting, parboiling, mixing sauces, etc.).

6:30 p.m.
*Put rice on fire.

6:45 p.m.
*Put soup on fire.
*Prepare the cold vegetable.

7:00 p.m.
*Turn heat off under rice. (Rice tastes better when it sits quietly both before and after cooking. When the heat is turned off, do not lift the lid but let the rice continue to cook in its own steam.)
*Add dressing to cold vegetable and refrigerate.

7:15 p.m.
*Set the table. Boil water and scald the teapot. Keep the pot warm.
*Slice the cold ham. Add dressing.
*Set out all ingredients for stir-frying, all utensils, all serving dishes.
*Boil fresh water for tea. (This is assuming you plan to serve tea with the meal, Cantonese-style. It may, of course, also be served as an after-dinner beverage.)

7:25 p.m.
*Brew tea.

7:30 p.m.
*Serve soup, ham, cold vegetable. Stir-fry the pork dish.

7:38 p.m.
*Serve the stir-fried pork, duck, rice and tea.

LEFTOVERS
Leftovers are no problem to the Chinese, who come from a long tradition of wasting nothing. Sometimes leftovers are reheated** and eaten for lunch the next day. More often they're completely transformed: bits of meat and vegetables become key ingredients in fried rice, noodle dishes, soups and egg foo yung. Plain rice turns up in soups, casseroles and congees. Leftover meat shreds garnish freshly cooked or cold vegetables. Leftover fried fish becomes a delicacy when reheated two or three minutes in a sweet-and-pungent sauce.

If any ingredient is remotely edible, the Chinese have found a use for it. Bones from chicken, duck and pork go into stock, as do the liquids from parboiled vegetables and certain soaked ingredients. Vegetable tops and the outer leaves of cabbage are never discarded but added to soup. Chicken and pork fats are saved for stir-frying. (These should never be mixed they should be stored in separate containers.) Even ham skins, melon rinds and leftover tea leaves have their uses: ham skins, boiled until soft, are diced and used in soups and stews melon rinds stir-fried as a vegetable and tea leaves used in smoking fish and flavoring hardboiled eggs.

In a sense, the Chinese also plan for leftovers through their sparing use of ingredients. It's not unusual for a housewife to buy a single chicken that will eventually appear as three separate dishes, served at three separate meals. (The chicken breast may be stir-fried, then the giblets deep-fried and the dark meat braised. Or perhaps the legs and wings will be steamed, the bones used in congee, the neck and giblets for stock, the legs and back deep-fried.)

Fresh vegetables, too, are rarely used up all at once. Over a period of days, a given vegetable will be added a little bit at a time to soups and stirfried dishes. Canned Chinese vegetables also go a long way. Water chestnuts, mushrooms and bamboo shoots, sparingly used, add a touch of crispness or taste to a variety of dishes.

In addition to utilizing leftovers, the Chinese also cook ahead to maintain a constant supply of ingredients. They frequently have on hand cooked rice and noodles, meats which have been slow-cooked and roasted, fishballs and meatballs. These ingredients make many shortcuts possible. With them as the starting point, a vast range of dishes can be prepared. For example, cooked meats and fresh vegetables can readily be stir-fried together: the raw ingredients are added to the pan first, and the cooked ones put in at the end only to be reheated. Countless other variations are also possible by the addition of canned or dried ingredients.

Since much Chinese cooking is improvisational, having a bit of this and a bit of that on hand is not a burden but a delight. Inevitably these ingredients stimulate the imagination and suggest all kinds of combinations: a few peas can be tossed in for color, a few shrimp for flavor, a bit of bean curd for contrast. All this makes possible greater variety and complexity within a given dish, greater interest and richness within a given meal.

** When reheating leftovers, add a few tablespoons of water to replace the liquid which has evaporated. (When leftovers are reheated by steaming, this is not necessary.) When reheating deep-fried foods in the oven, put them on a rack over a drip pan so the excess oil can drain away. When reheating dishes made with cornstarch paste, add fresh paste because cornstarch tends to turn watery in leftovers. Finally, never reheat steamed fish and seafood leftovers. Resteaming makes them tough and flavorless. They are better eaten cold.

The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook. ©1994 by Gloria Bley Miller.

More Recipes from the Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook Cookbook:
13- Preparing a Complete Meal
14- Serving a Chinese Meal
15- Setting a Chinese Table
16- Chopsticks and How to Use Them
17- Guide to Stir-Frying
18- Chinese Teas
19- Chinese Wines
20- Glossary of Chinese Ingredients: A-K
20- Glossary of Chinese Ingredients: L-S
20- Glossary of Chinese Ingredients: T-Z
21- Substitutions
22- Storing Information
23- Soaking Information
24- Chinese Terminology
25- Mail Order Sources