Chinese New Year Dinner - Recipes

This is late in posting, considering the Chinese New Year was on 14 February.  I've been a bit busy with school lately... only a couple more meetings of my Sunday class and then I'll have my weekends back to myself!

A few folks came over to our place for a New Year dinner. It was the first time we had people over for a special occasion and I was frankly surprised that so many people could fit in our apartment!  My mom used to make egg rolls growing up for New Year's and I wanted to do something nice for Chinese New Year this year.  

I made a spring roll assembly station on our kitchen table.  I've posted about spring rolls before (here), and the leftovers make good noodle bowls the next day:

To make spring rolls, you need Banh Trang large egg/spring roll wrappers, white rice noodles and other fillings.  We had vegetarians over so I had options:

• Baked tofu strips sprinkled with sesame seeds or black pepper, with a splash of sesame oil on top (bake at 350 for 20 min)
• Shredded boiled chicken (boil chicken breasts with sliced lime and a bay leaf for 15 min. or so until done, cool, and shred with two forks)
• Cooked shrimp
• Cucumbers
• Bean sprouts (mung or soy)
• Sliced hot peppers
• Mint
• Cilantro
• Shredded daikon
• Shredded carrot
• Chopped peanuts

I made some sauces:

• Peanut sauce (with hoisin, so it's sweet, too)
• Fish sauce with shredded carrot and daikon
• Chili garlic soy sauce

To assemble the spring rolls, put some water on a place larger than the spring roll wrapper and place a dry wrapper in the water for a minute or so until it become a little rubbery.  Place wet wrapper on your plate and wait until it gets pliable enough to wrap.  Place ingredients on the wrapper and roll up like a burrito.  Dip in sauce and enjoy.

I made wonton soup for the first time too.  I made shitake shrimp wontons, which were surprisingly easy.  The wontons are based off of this recipe that I got online (originally from the Washington Post) and what my mom told me to do.  Some changes were that I used cooked shrimp instead of raw.  I've never cooked shrimp before and I wasn't about to start! Yuck!

I chopped up the shitake, some carrots and scallions and added some tamari and cooked with a little sesame oil in the same pan I was going to use to make the broth.  I added some marsala wine and cooked until just tender.  I put that in a bowl, added the shrimp and egg white (reserve the yolk for wonton assembly).  And I mixed together using the best too ever to use in the kitchen -- my hand blender. Love it!

Then, the assembly.  Take your wonton wrapper (if frozen, thaw in fridge overnight), place a teaspoon of filling in the middle, take the reserved egg yolk, beaten, and put a little around half the perimeter of the wonton wrapper.  Fold in half into a half moon.  Dab a little yolk on one pointed end, bring the other pointed end to meet the yolked one, press together, so they kind of look like to little arms holding hands. Place on a baking sheet dusted with corn starch.  When you're done, place in the fridge until about 40 minutes before you want to eat.  When you're ready, boil water in a large pot, add wontons and cook a few minutes at simmering until they float.  Work in batches.  Then, add to your prepared broth.

While the wontons were in the fridge after I finished assembling them, I made the broth.  In that pan I used to cook the filling, I added a carton of vegetable stock, which turned out to be gross. So, I watered it down with equal parts water and a few tablespoons of white miso paste, a few dashes of tamari and sesame oil and it tasted ok.  Usually, you'd use chicken broth, soy sauce and sesame oil and that should be OK.

For the party, I kept the broth in a crock pot and kept that on low all night and added the cooked wontons right when we were ready to eat.  Pretty yummy!  You can add some reserved, chopped shitakes to the broth, garnsish with green scallions.

Serve some green tea, too.

Tiger from deviantart.com.