Kung Hay Fatt Choy!

Our Chinese New Years Eve party was a success. We fed 14 people and had only a bit of leftovers. The company was great and the food was awesome.

This was the menu:

Cooked spinach salad with walnut dressing
Homemade potstickers with lamb filling
Seasoned black mushrooms
Wonton soup with wontons made from scratch
Char siu baos (steamed bbq pork buns)
Pork & shrimp lo mein (noodle dish)
Whole ocean trout, steamed
Sticky rice New Year cake
Almond cookies
Clementines and canned lychee fruit

These were all new recipes to us, so there was an element of discovery and experimentation in the process. The reviews were very positive. I doubt anyone went away hungry. Some even took home leftovers.

Homemade potstickers. Aren't they beautiful?

First course: spinach salad (the green stuff in the bowl) and seasoned mushrooms (in the brown bowl). The first batch of potstickers had already been devoured.

Remnants of the lo mein (red platter) and ocean trout (round platter). The ocean trout was amazingly moist and buttery tasting. Sooooo good.

I was having so much fun eating and cooking and socializing that I forgot to take pictures. So little photographic evidence of the feast exists (note the absence of wonton soup and bao pictures - we were all busy cooking or eating). Oh well. It was delicious. We'll definitely make these dishes again, though probably not all at once - it's a lot of work.

When you invite friends and then refuse to let them bring something for the meal, they instead bring you lovely, useful gifts. Like toilet paper. Thanks, Ellen! We'll think of you whenever... ok, maybe it's better that we don't. But thanks!

We wrapped up the evening by playing with Doodle's wooden play food (who'd have thought a bunch of biology nerds would love cutting apart pieces of wooden food attached with velcro?) and an awe-inspiring round of dish washing. To everyone who stayed and cleaned our kitchen: thank you. You are now our favorite people. And you're on the top of the invite list for next year. :-)

I'm off to enjoy the last bit of wonton soup and almond cookies.

Kung Hay Fatt Choy, everyone!
(that means Happy New Year)