Chinese New Year, and some yummy dumplings to celebrate!

Happy Chinese New Year!  As most of you’ll be aware, today marks the start a new lunar calendar – the Year of the Wooden Horse.

To celebrate the occasion, I thought I’d try my hand at a traditional Chinese dish to share with you all today.  I should confess that while I’m quite partial to good Chinese cuisine, I normally head out to eat it rather than making my own, so this was a first for me.  

These Prawn and Chive Dumplings struck me as not only being rather simple for the first timers amongst us, but also the perfect dish to start off the Chinese New Year. 

In Chinese culture, dumplings are believed to symbolise wealth (thanks to them resembling ancient Chinese silver and gold ignots), making them a popular dish at Chinese New Year celebrations.

I added some red chillies while styling this dish as the colour Red is believed to symbolise happiness, which is so important to have in all our lives.  Chillies also add a little spice, which I thought worked well with the dumplings, and could perhaps symbolise a little spice in our own lives for the year ahead 🙂

I came across the recipe for these dumplings on Appetite for China, a fantastic blog written by Diana Kuan. She has an amazing collection of Chinese and other Asian inspired recipes which I will definitely be trying some more of in the coming year. 

To make the dumplings, all you’ll need is:

• 500g fresh prawns
• 1/4 cup finely chopped chives
• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 1 pinch pepper, preferably white
• 1 pack dumpling wrappers
• 1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

I haven’t made a recipe card for this dish, given I followed the recipe without modifying it (except for one minor thing – I used water instead of egg wash to seal the dumplings).

You can find the full recipe for these Prawn and Chive Dumplings here, on Diana’s blog. This recipe produces about 30 dumplings.

Have fun making your own!

Wishing you all a happy, healthy and successful year ahead. x