Look at the guide, find a niche restaurant that seems to be good, call friends to have a big meal, and then make up a simple dinner. Under the transportation cost of one or two hours, it is not easy to cross half the city to make an appointment, and too many expectations seem to be extravagant hopes.
But how long has it been since you cooked your own meals for a dinner party?
The last time I cooked a dinner party, I may have secretly cooked a hot pot with my classmates in a college dormitory: a pack of candles, a simple iron pot, or better equipment, such as an electric cooker or electric wok; Wash the vegetables, throw the quick-frozen dumplings, refrigerated beef and mutton slices (or more affordable slices), shrimp balls and other ingredients into the pot, and eat them after shabu. It's certainly a cooking potluck. No one resists washing the dishes, washing the dishes, and there is nothing to wash anyway. After graduating, there are fewer similar experiences. Cooking for an hour, eating for an hour, washing dishes, mopping the floor for half an hour, no matter how troublesome it is, you can also order takeout, just eat with the lunch box, and you don't need to change to the plate, otherwise you can't escape from washing the dishes in the end.
Speaking of which, there's no better way to get out than to eat out. As long as we invite friends to dinner, we will consciously start to look for a restaurant that is reliable, or has a lot of reviews, or has recently been new, or it is not time-consuming. In the past, parents or grandparents were still more accustomed to eating at home, thinking that eating out was not always so clean and not so affordable, and I don't know when they seemed to have turned to eating out, inviting relatives and friends to restaurants to order food during the New Year's holidays.
A still from Chinese New Year (1991).
A feast for community. If you eat in a restaurant with a local flavor, take the menu, and you can't turn a few pages, you may see "pig killing dishes" or "sheep killing dishes". This strange name of the dish is confusing for a moment. Are there sheep and pigs that can be cooked without slaughter? Since there is none, why do you want to emphasize the word "kill"? At this time, ask a few more words, and the waiter will quickly explain that this is a farmhouse specialty of the cold winter wax moon, which is fried with freshly slaughtered local pork, and the original flavor of the local juice is fresh, tender but not greasy. Although its method is not fundamentally different from other farmhouse dishes, there are always some differences in the name, such as according to the naming rules, the meat selected for making "pig killing dishes" is killed and put into the pot, and it is never frozen meat or frozen meat. In fact, "killing and stir-frying" cannot be done, nor can logistics achieve it, and it is not bad if there is no over-freezing. Because of this constraint, the "pig killing dish" is at least a little bit more tender and tender.
Probably because of the violent nature of the name, "pig killing dishes" are rare in non-flavored restaurants. After all, it has the process of slaughtering written into the name of the dish, and it may at some point awaken customers to imagine the cruelty of animals hidden behind the scenes of food production. The nomenclature of the "higher" in modern society is to remove morality, ethics, and all words related to it. That's another story. The reason for mentioning "pig killing dishes" at the beginning is that the only way to find a dinner party scene that still retains some classical traces in this century is to eat "pig killing dishes", which is indeed a dish, but it is also a form of dinner that is about to disappear.
Four Springs (2017) stills.
The people who participated in the dinner were like rushing to a community feast of brothers and sisters, with no treats, no gifts, no bookkeeping, and no planning, except that when the year was over, someone picked a sunny day, called the butcher, and dragged the pigs fed to one or two hundred kilograms, which were usually not slaughtered in pig farms, out of the pen for slaughter. Butchers are generally male. Although they were called "butchers", they were not professionals who specialized in this trade, they were also farmers who cultivated crops, learned their skills from their elders in the early years, could handle the angle and depth of the knife entry, and were familiar with the timing of drawing the knife and bleeding. Killing pigs has to build a stove, ** slaughter, bloodletting, shaving, cutting, sprinkling salt and drying, etc., neighbors and relatives living nearby will come to help, if there is no personal hatred, the host will generally not refuse who comes, all present, can find something to do. It's almost time to eat, pick a few pieces of good meat, slice it in the pot, or stew or stir-fry, or boil it cold, please sit around and eat it and share a big meal. Local writer Huang Xiaoji's "A Village's Food List" (Guangxi People's Publishing House, February 2020 edition) recalled his hometown and said that butchers are the most blessed people, and he is right about which meat is delicious. Or the people will follow the butcher's advice, which piece of meat to cut, which fat sausage to use, and the master is embarrassed to hide it.
This is unknown. Maybe the host's family doesn't care, just let everyone eat happily.
The more interesting setting is that the stove for cooking "pig killing dishes" is set up outside the kitchen, such as finding a dirt excavation at the edge of the yard, digging out a pit, and laying a few stones or bricks to reinforce it: it looks like a child "playing at home"! Political anthropologist James CScott's "Cocoon and Self-Bondage" (China University of Political Science and Law Press, May 2022 edition) speculates that agrarian societies turn wandering people and shellfish pickers into peasants, bound to land and grain, and this is the basis for the birth of the state. If it is said that the kitchen with a roof is a symbol of the "grain nation", then is the annual temporary stove, cooking and eating in the open air, putting aside the concept of "private property", and "playing house" with familiar people, is it a kind of temporary departure from the agrarian society? Get rid of the tedious, constant, fixed daily life. Although there is also this scene in the flowing water of the village red and white ceremonies, but because there is accounting, it is different, and the difference is fundamental.
The following is a scene of French villagers killing pigs for cooking.
French villagers kill pigs for cooking. **From "Making Consumers" (by Anthony Galluzzo, translated by Ma Ya, Guangdong People's Publishing House, Gravity, June 2022).
They are usually slaughtered at the beginning of winter, and in the same way as in rural Chinese society, the carotid artery is cut, bled out, and then burned, watered, and shaved. Antoni Galluzzo, a Frenchman who is engaged in consumer culture research, tells the story of the French peasant's "pig-killing dish" in "Making Consumers" (Guangdong People's Publishing House, Gravity, June 2022 edition), which, according to him, is a dining scene around the 19th century. Farmers are free to raise pigs in their yards and houses, fatten them for a year, and slaughter them at the end of the year at All Saints' Day (one of the Catholic and Orthodox festivals), which is enjoyed by the family and neighbors. Of course, this tradition has continued for many years in modern society, otherwise it would not have been photographed by new technologies. He said there was a contradiction between parents teaching their children how to breed and slaughter them, and at the same time saying in another place that "the family would go to the butcher to help." In the former case, slaughtering is assumed to be a necessary skill in every household, while in the latter case, slaughtering is a social division of labor, with a dedicated butcher and family members just going to help. There are all kinds of situations, and we cannot tell what the degree of social division of labor and commodification is.
In my impression, my hometown in the countryside of Sichuan in the 90s of the last century is still common "pig killing vegetables", at that time, my young mother saw the pig out of the slaughter frightened, holding me to hide in the bamboo forest, hiding in a relatively dense plot, even if the pig broke free can not break in, until the hair did not dare to lead me out to work. The butcher is a neighbor who has experience in slaughtering, and the neighbors of the whole yard will come to help with the work. More than a dozen people had to work for most of the day to eat pig-killing rice.
One year, I suddenly had to pay the butcher. That's where the change begins.
If I am not mistaken, in the late 90s of the last century and the beginning of this century, the ** of asking the butcher to slaughter a pig was about 15 yuan, and according to the convention, the default butcher could take away two or three catties of fine meat or pig intestine as a reward for his contribution. There is nothing wrong with paying for services. It's not that it was free in the past, but it is better to say that there used to be a young labor force in every household, and a balance between "helping" (accepting favors) and "returning favors" (returning favors) can be roughly achieved, and there is no need to worry about the specific gains and losses. When a large number of laborers go to the cities to work, this balance is broken. The experience gained in the cities also taught them that they should be paid for the services of labor, and that paying for it was the easiest and most straightforward way.
A still from a bite of the tongue (2016).
At this time, what has changed is that eating pig rice is no longer more than a dozen people sitting around. Each family has a different arrangement, the rhythm is different, if it is not for the close relationship with the owner's family, not many people are willing to stay around a pig for a long time as in the past. If someone wants to slaughter a pig, they will usually release a message in advance, telling the people in the neighborhood whether they will keep it for themselves this winter, or if some of it can be sold, so that neighbors in need can make reservations. Slaughter a pig, keep enough for yourself, and then sell it to subsidize the family. After a few more years, there were almost no more people who slaughtered pigs. Pig farmers sell the slaughtered pigs directly to the market, and then buy meat from the market, what parts are needed, how many catties are needed, and what is the proportion of fat and lean, all according to the planning of family needs. In this way, it also saves a lot of trouble, such as the entanglement and discussion of which one to send more and which one to send less after slaughtering the pig.
Nowadays, the scene of "playing at home" has gradually disappeared, and "pig killing dishes" have become an earthy dish in urban restaurants - in the past, traditional cities probably also had "pig killing dishes" or "sheep killing dishes".
Eat out. There is no "playing house", and naturally I will return to the kitchen.
Inviting people to dinner and dinner is also indispensable to prepare and cook in the kitchen. Eating "pig killing dishes" is just a temporary, annual New Year's dinner, it is close to a certain "natural society" shared state, of course, it does not mean that there is no private boundary at all, can bring a few children, can you take away a few catties of meat after eating the pig rice, all are bound by some unspoken rules, if someone crosses the line, may be criticized by the neighbors, and someone will make "pig killing dishes" in the coming year, and they are not welcome. In contrast, the boundaries of the kitchen are clear, it is an enclosed space, only windows and doors open to the outside, and "uninvited" is not welcome. There is not much difference between urban and rural kitchens in this regard, and if there is, it is whether they know and interact with their neighbors. In rural society, a neighbor passing by your kitchen window may probe and ask, "What are you doing?" As literary historian Michael McKean's "The Secret History of Family Life" (East China Normal University Press, April 2022 edition) argues, the concept of privacy is a relatively modern product, but the boundaries of private places in the kitchen are not unique to the last two hundred years.
The Secret History of Family Life, by Michael McKean, translated by Hu Zhenming, East China Normal University Press, April 2022.
It's just that it takes a lot of effort to invite people to your home. From agreeing on a time, buying groceries, cutting vegetables, lighting a fire to cooking, to washing dishes, mopping the floor, one link after another. If you lack cooking skills and are not familiar with the essentials of cooking and seasoning, a pot of "dark cuisine" is not a reasonable way to entertain guests.
Inviting people to their homes seems to be just the old-fashioned hospitality of their parents or grandparents, and even they now choose to dine out, check out food selection strategies on their phones, and invite guests to restaurants.
Preparing and cooking in the kitchen is, after all, a kind of family holiday life memory. Its meaning is probably irreplaceable. When we were children, our relatives' friends came to visit each other during the New Year's holidays, chasing each other, how many times did we break into the lively kitchen? Adult women stay in the kitchen, no one is idle, and everyone has some work in their hands, either washing vegetables, selecting vegetables, or cutting meat slices. The kitchen is like a temporary public place for them during the festival, gathering together, doing things, chatting at the same time, "the east is the family and the west is short", there are babies to take care of, and they may also hold the child in their arms, and watch out for bumps and crying at any time. If there is a man who happens to be there to help, it is most likely someone who is considered to be a "chef", standing there in charge of the kitchen, instructing others what to do with a certain piece of meat. Men who do trivial chores such as washing and chopping vegetables are rare, and they either gather in the living room to play cards, watch TV, drink wine and eat peanuts, or run out to fish, and when the meal arrives, their families call them back for dinner. With the change of new technologies and gadgets, in recent years, they have begun to give up other ways to play, tired for a year, tired lying on the sofa, bending their backs, bowing their heads to brush short**, playing games, and moving in a unified manner.
First, the sitting posture is unified, and the sound of mobile phones with different patterns and decibels fills the whole room.
As for the more diverse places, it has to be the kitchen: some people are standing and sitting, some are half-squatting. They are all doing things, standing and sitting are all in the service of the work in hand, and there are not many other movements. Children wander among adults, listening to the sound of stir-frying and the clashing of pots and pans overhead, crisp; If we are lucky, we will meet an adult who is eating a salty dish, and we can eat a piece of hot meat as long as we tilt our heads and open our mouths.
Stills from Love and Blind Date (2017).
When the meal was ready, all the idle people, men and women, came to the kitchen to serve the food. But when it came time to wash the dishes, what I saw was a different story. The host's family first warmly arranges entertainment for the guests, such as drinking tea and playing cards, and then cleans up the leftovers and washes up a pile of oily, dirty pots and pans. Neither the host nor the guests were more excited than at the beginning of the preparation of the meal; Sending off the guests, dragging the tired body after a day or even several days of hard work. If you still need to cook a meal to entertain another group of guests the next day, it is simply fatal, but fortunately, this kind of situation is rare, invite guests to come, this year is family A, next year is family B, today at home, tomorrow to relatives and friends. What remains unchanged is that people who are accustomed to housework may not be able to be idle when they arrive at other people's homes, and they also have to participate in washing and cutting vegetables, and the only trouble saved is that they don't have to think about what dishes to buy and what arrangements to make, and this matter often needs to be tossed a few days in advance. It's no wonder that they chose to go out to dinner.
Snatched away by the screen.
In the early years, people who came from the planning era, agrarian or nomadic societies experienced material scarcity to some extent, and the commodification of eating was definitely a kind of dining fashion. It at least indicates that the host family is willing to spend money on the relationship. Originally, the problem that could be solved by stir-frying a few dishes in the kitchen, but he chose to invite the guests to the restaurant and handed over the choice of ordering to the guests, which is not a trivial matter, and it makes people wonder if there is something to ask for help. Of course, this is an old saying. Nowadays, if you don't invite guests to expensive restaurants, you probably don't have this meaning, and most of the time it's simple, fast and sincere to go to restaurants for dinner. In addition, inviting people to eat at home requires that the guests can cook, have the kitchen space to cook for multiple people, have the energy to prepare food, and do not dislike the trouble of washing dishes, and not many people meet these basic conditions. Economic historian Joel Mock describes the family of the past as a "unit of production" where people planted, harvested, processed food, cooked; In our current experience, a family, especially a one-person family, is actually a "consumption unit".
Dining in restaurants does liberate a part of the human labor force and allow people to devote more time to productive social work – cooking is considered an unproductive activity. This transformation began with the Industrial Revolution and the Great Division of Labor, and its social consequences were experienced by later generations, with mixed pros and cons. At this time, when we talk about cooking and productivity, we are by no means to reflect on why "cooking and hospitality" has become less from some social or historical mechanism. Many things have changed, but the result is clear: instead of taking the time to cook a meal that you are not sure about, you should spend money to ask a friend to order at a good restaurant.
So, where does the time saved go?
A still from Perfetti Sconosiuti (2016).
We used to probably talk about talking to friends, but now there are not many people who have the confidence to say this. Sitting around the dining table with friends, dozens of centimeters apart, fingers and eyes fall on the mobile phone screen, even if it is half a moment, you can't leave, worried about being abandoned by the Internet, worried about missing the news. As for the act of picking up the mobile phone and swiping the short**, it is not an exaggeration to describe it as "absent-minded". Interestingly, on the one hand, we expect our friends sitting next to us to put down their mobile phones and concentrate on eating, and on the other hand, we will expect others on our mobile phones to "** Is that embarrassing question "Is it there" is a kind of urgency - to be able to reply to messages quickly.
At this time, when I talk about eating "pig killing dishes", people have to sigh at the great changes. From having a meal without many boundaries and preparing food in the kitchen, to going out to a restaurant for dinner, to having a treat and not talking to the guests much, these are just changes that have happened in one or two generations. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman said that we modern people are often faced with unexpected uncertainty and change, and may embark on a utopian path of reminiscing about the order of life in the past. In fact, how to invite guests to dinner is only a difference between the past and the present. What kind of friendship is it possible for a young person to venture into a meal today? Agnostic. Maybe no friendship is possible.
Chef Alain Ducasse wrote "Eating is a Civic Behavior" (China Social Sciences Press, Gulou Xinyue, January 2019 edition) suggests that we, as diners, "whether we have only a sandwich for lunch or sit at the table with friends, whether we only have ten minutes or two hours to eat, it is entirely up to us whether we want to make small talk or not, even if the small talk is short, this is so that we can have enough time to eat again." He has this idea because he thinks that we don't pay attention to what we eat, we don't pay attention to our friends who eat next to us, and sometimes we don't even notice whether we're full. What is the culprit? TVs, smartphones and computers.
This attribution of his may not be convincing. In the old days of television, when children were staring at cartoons while eating, adults would always criticize and say a few words about "concentrating on eating". But as many years have passed, when we look back on those days that have passed, it seems that there is always a plot of eating and watching TV with family or friends. It can be seen that TV and mobile phones are different, and the reason for this is simply because we have glanced at the TV with the people around us, said a few words to the screen, and had some interpersonal interactions.
A still from Friends Season 10 (2003).
Written by Luo Dong.
Edited by Luo Dong.
Proofreading by Jun Liu.