NEW YORK -- Author Pearl Kong Chen learned to cook because her husband kept bringing people home to dinner.
'He is very hospitable,' Mrs. Chen said in an interview during a trip to New York. 'He would call (mostly on weekdays) and say, 'So-and-so is visiting San Jose -- can I bring him home?''
Many of the recipes she developed or adapted over the past 15 years are in a new cookbook she wrote with her husband, Tien Chi Chen, a research scientist, and dietitian Rose Tseng, chairperson of the Nutrition and Food Science Department of San Jose (Calif.) State University.
Mrs. Chen's husband had worked in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. and San Jose before taking a leave of absence from his job to teach at and head the United College of the University of Hong Kong. They will be returning to the Yorktown Heights area early in 1984, Mrs. Chen said.
Bringing guests home to eat is not a Chinese tradition, she added.
'The Chinese used to take people out to dinner ... In China kitchens are very small and very primitive.'
Before co-authoring 'Everything You Want to Know about Chinese Cooking' (Barron's, $19.95), Mrs. Chen was a guest demonstrator in home economics classes at San Jose State University and taught menu planning courses in a program for high school home economics teachers and a college course in creative international cooking.
After her mother died of cancer, she also began catering fund-raising dinners for the American Cancer Society.
'There's very little room for creativity in Chinese cooking,' she said. 'Everything has been done before and passed down verbally from chefs to writers.
Certain recipes require certain ingredients and cooking methods and should be served at certain times, often as seasonal specialties, she said.
Many Chinese specialties are named for generals or artists or great gourmets, such as her grandfather, Kong Hungyun. He was royal librarian to the Imperial Chinese Court and the acknowledged leading gourmet of Canton (now Guangzhou) for half a century during the Qing dynasty, Mrs. Chen said.
His private kitchen covered a city block and his reputation for hospitality was matched only by his quest for culinary perfection, she says.
Some of his favorite recipes in her book include tai shi bean curd, spinach velvet soup and deep fried custard.
Planning worthy of a general is evident in her recipes and menus for entertaining.
You have to be very well organized, she said.
She said some westerners make the mistake of serving two or more stir-fried dishes at parties, which takes the host or hostess away from guests and cancreate an awkward situation, especially for groups as small as four people.
If you have 10 or 12 guests, your absence from the table is less noticeable, she said.
For a party of four, she suggests starting with a cold dish, such as drunken chicken, jellyfish, five spice beef or oil-blasted shrimp. She would add one oven dish (not strictly authentic, since Chinese homes lack ovens) or a steamed dish, one braised dish and one stir-fry, plus fruit for dessert.
She prefers not to stir-fry at the table in an electric wok because, 'It takes too long to heat up and cool off. It might mess up guests' dresses with spattering oil.'
But an electric wok works fine for chrysanthemum firepot dishes, which are cooked like fondue, she said.
Guests cook their food piece by piece by dipping each ingredient into broth kept hot in a pot that in China is fueled by charcoal in a central chimney.
