Chinese New Year 2012

This past week brought the Lantern Festival which marked the end of the two week long Chinese New Year holiday. For our family's celebration, I chose a new dinner recipe and had my children make the decorations. We set the table with chopsticks, small goldware forks I inherited from my grandmother and our red Christmas damask napkins. It was simple but elegant.

DECORATIONS: One of my seven year old son's teachers taught him how to make paper lanterns at school. He came home and began making colored lanterns to decorate the entire house.They are pretty simple: fold a piece of paper in half longways and make three inch cuts perpendicular to and across the folded edge of the paper. Open the fold and secure the two shorter sides of the paper with glue or staples. Add a handle if desired.

Another of our decorations was the vase of "cherry" blossoms. I cut a few scraggly branches off of my Hawthorn tree. The red bark was the perfect match. My teenage daughter hot glued crumpled squares of leftover pink tissue paper in clusters along the branches.

MENU: This year, our dinner menu consisted of noodles, rice, honey-walnut shrimp, spicy egg drop soup, jiaozi and, of course, Mandarin oranges.

Unfortunately, I can't take credit for honey-walnut shrimp recipe, but I can certainly offer a fabulous review. I found the recipe online at Rama Malaysia. It was easy to make but I did make a few small changes to her original recipe-- I decreased the shrimp to 1/2 pound of smaller sized shrimp, used walnut pieces (and increased the amount), added an extra 1/2 tablespoon of honey and increased the sweetened condensed milk to 2 tablespoons.

Honey Walnut Shrimp
1 lb. 51/60 count shrimp
3/4 C walnut halves
3 T mayonnaise
1 T honey
2 T sweetened condensed milk
1 t lemon juice
1 egg white
1/2 C corn starch
2T oil for frying

For the walnut glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Peel and deveined the shrimp. Pat dry with paper towels, add the egg white, mix well with the shrimp and set aside.

Rinse the walnut halves with water, drain and set aside. Heat the water until it boils and add in the sugar. Keep stirring until it turns thick and golden color and then add the walnut pieces. Boil for 2 minutes, then drain and place walnuts on a greased cookie sheet to dry.

Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat.

Coat the shrimp with a thick layer of corn starch and then and then fry in the hot oil until golden brown. Remove the shrimp from the wok and drain on paper towels.

In a bowl, stir together the mayonnaise, honey, condensed milk and lemon juice. Add shrimp and toss with the mayonnaise sauce. Transfer to a serving dish and serve immediately.