Lunar New Year (or Chinese New Year) falls on February 12th this year, The Year of the Ox. So, to celebrate, we asked a few of our favorite chefs to share their lucky recipes with us. Filipino-American chef Dale Talde‘s Prosperity Toss Salad brings abundance, prosperity and vigor. Chinese chef Joe Ng (who can make 1,000 different kinds of dumplings!) shared his recipe for Long Life Noodles because eating them is supposed to encourage a long, happy life. And Cantonese chef and two-time Chopped champion Kathy Fang‘s Lobster Fried Rice is an ideal dish to serve at your Lunar New Year party, since crustaceans such as lobster and shrimp symbolize fortune and luck. Make these recipes this Chinese New Year and you’re guaranteed to please your guests—and bring yourself good luck in the new year!

Long Life Noodles with Chicken, Porcini & Shiitake

“Chinese New Year’s dishes get their status because either their name or contents or look confer the virtues of long life, good health, happiness and prosperity. For instance, our special New Year’s dumplings have a little disc of Uni on top of them. This decoration feels like a golden coin and thus the name gold coin dumplings. In the case of long life noodles it’s considered extremely propitious to dine on long thin noodles (particularly the variety known as ee-min) because their name confers a long healthy happy life.” -Chef Joe Ng of Red Farm in New York City

Ingredients:

• 1 disc e-fu (long life) noodles
• 6 ounces boneless chicken breast cut into ½-inch pieces
• ½ egg white
• 2 tsp Shaohsing rice wine or dry sherry
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tsp vegetable oil
• 6 dried shiitake mushrooms (re-hydrated and coarsely shredded, reserve the soaking water)
• 1½ oz dried porcini mushrooms slices (re-hydrated, reserve the soaking water)
• few Tbsp of vegetable oil for stir frying
• ⅓ cup minced onion
• 1½ tsp minced garlic
• ½ tsp minced ginger

For the sauce base:

• 1 cup strained mushroom soaking liquid (use the porcini shiitake water to make up the difference)
• 1 1/2 Tbsp all-purpose soy sauce (such as Kikkoman)
• 1 Tbsp Shaohsing rice wine or dry sherry
• 1 Tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• ⅛ tsp finely ground white pepper
• ⅔ cup chicken stock (or use more mushroom soaking liquid)
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter (to enrich the sauce)
• ¼ cup scallion, finely chopped
• 2 Tbsp finely chopped cilantro (optional)
• ½ tsp sesame oil (optional)

Directions:

1. 2 hours before cooking, marinate the chicken with the rest of the ingredients for 20 minutes.
2. Blanch the noodles: Cook the noodles in a large quantity of boiling salted water for about 90 seconds or until they just wilt. Drain, rinse in cold water and set aside. 
3. Blanch the chicken: Bring 1 qt. of water to a boil in your wok and with the heat turned to the highest level, add the chicken pieces to the water and cook stirring gently for 45 seconds, until firm in the center. Using a spider or a wok strainer, remove the chicken from the wok and set them over a pot or large bowl to catch the dripping water. 
4. Drain water, clean wok, then preheat your wok over very high heat and then add 1 1/2 T vegetable oil. When the oil begins to smoke, add the reconstituted shiitake and porcini mushroom pieces and stir-fry for about 30 seconds.
5. With the heat still high, add 2 tsp vegetable oil to your wok along with the minced onion, garlic and ginger. Cook, stirring for 20 seconds, without letting anything brown. Next add the mushroom soaking liquid, the remaining sauce ingredients and the chicken stock and bring to a boil. Boil hard until the liquid is reduced by half.
6. Now add the blanched noodles. Cook stirring gently (you don’t want to break the noodles) for another 2 to 3 minutes until the noodles are just starting to become tender.  When ¼ cup of liquid remains in your pan, you may want to adjust the salt, pepper, sugar or soy, then return the chicken to the wok along with 2 Tbsp butter.
7. Toss for 20-30 seconds until the butter is incorporated, mix in scallions and cilantro and continue to mix until the butter is fully emulsified. When done properly, the dish should have just a touch of liquid remaining and the noodles should be just cooked through. Turn off the heat, sprinkle with sesame oil, toss more and serve.

Prosperity Toss Salad

“Yusheng, yee sang or yuu sahng, or Prosperity Toss, also known as lo hei is a Cantonese-style raw fish salad. It usually consists of strips of raw fish (sometimes salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients. Yusheng literally means ‘raw fish,’ but since fish is commonly associated with abundance, yusheng is considered a symbol of abundance, prosperity and vigor. And the process of tossing the fish and salad together is a unification of the family for the holiday.” -Chef Dale Talde of Goosefeather at Tarrytown House Estate on The Hudson

Ingredients:

• 8 oz hamachi or tuna, raw, sliced thin
• 2 Pomelo or citrus
• 1 cucumber, shaved thin
• 1 cup Wood Ear mushrooms, soaked in vinegar and sugar
• 1 cup radish, shaved thin 
• 1 Asian pear, shaved thin
• 10 Goji berries, soaked

For the dressing:

• 1/2 cup Chinese mustard
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup soy
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Salt
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:

1. Combine all ingredients and set aside until ready to serve.

“Chinese families often feature cherry blossoms, tangerines, kumquats, Chinese candies and cookies, nuts and flowers in their home to honor the holiday. Red and gold are festive colors for the Chinese New Year, so in addition to decorating with them, encourage your guests to dress in the theme and wear these colors. One of the most important aspects of the Chinese New Year celebration is the red envelopes! Oftentimes adults give money in these envelopes to the younger generation. Filling them with chocolate coins is also a common practice which you can take part in and pass out to your guests.” -Chef Kathy Fang of Fang Restaurant in San Francisco, Ca

Ingredients:

• 4 lobster tails (grilled, roasted or poached)
• 6 cups cooked white rice (left over night is best)
• 4 whole eggs, whisked
• 1/2 cup freshly shucked corn or frozen corn
• 2 whole Roma tomatoes diced
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions and cilantro (half and half)
• 2 tsp minced ginger
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1 Tbsp black pepper
• 4 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp butter
• half a lemon juice, juiced
• salt to season at the end
• 1 Tbsp peanut oil or canola oil

Directions:

1. Remove the cooked lobster from the shell and dice into small pieces.
2. Heat a non stick pan with 1 tablespoon canola oil.
3. Add tomato, corn, green onion and cilantro mixture into the pan and stir fry for 1 minute or until fragrant.
4. Add your whisked egg and scramble. Season with a pinch of salt
5. Remove vegetable and egg scramble from pan and plate.
6. Add butter to the pan and toss the lobster in along with the garlic, ginger, and lemon juice. Stir fry until fragrant (2-3 mins). Remove from pan.
7. Add 1 tablespoon of canola oil and add cooked leftover rice and stir fry. Add soy sauce, black pepper and salt. A pinch of sugar to round out the flavors is optional.
8. Toss scrambled eggs with veggies back into the pan with the rice and incorporate.
9. Turn heat off, add your lobster and stir. Plate each shallow bowl with a leftover lobster shell. Ladle fried rice into the shell and garnish with green onions.

PS, don’t feel like cooking, just eating?

Beloved NYC restaurant Mimi Cheng’s Dumplings has teamed up with NYC’s leading food distributor, Baldor Specialty Foods, to preserve the Chinese tradition of sharing dumplings with family at the dawn of the New Year.

The two at-home meal kits they have created are below and can be delivered right to your door:

Mimi Cheng’s Pork and Chive DIY Dumpling Kit

Mimi Cheng’s Chicken and Zucchini DIY Dumpling Kit