Lunar New Year

Grandma also serves the rich, spicy soup with cucumber salad and scallion pancakes.

This cold sesame noodle dish is one of the most popular dishes in Chinese restaurants. My family recipe is simple, made with readily available ingredients. It's a great blank canvas for adding all sorts of leftover proteins. I have made the dish with shredded roast chicken and duck, as well as sliced pork and beef. Sesame paste, often referred to as tahini, can be found in health food stores or the international foods aisle of your supermarket. If you can't find it, try unsalted 100 percent pure peanut or almond butter, which will give you different, but equally tasty, results.

Feel free to use leftover rice from last night's takeout. The secret to good fried rice is starting with cold cooked grains.

Although this is a chilled beverage, it is traditionally enjoyed in the winter. The "fire" of the cinnamon and ginger is supposed to warm you up, while the coolness of the beverage balances the heat. Not being much of a traditionalist, I like to make it during the summer and keep pitchers of it available as an alternative to iced tea.

Ji Geung Lo Mein Editor's note: This recipe is reprinted from My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. At the New Year, noodles represent longevity. Because of this they were never cut when preparing them, and to serve them was to wish those who ate them a long life. In Sah Gau there were many varieties and shapes of noodles, and for vegetarians there were noodles made without eggs. These are what were served to the nuns, along with that special food that came usually with the onset of the New Year, young ginger, more subtle, less hot than the customary kind. These days this young, often pinkish gingerroot is available year-round. This dish illustrates what a "lo mein" is — that is, a dish tossed together, not precisely stir-fried.

Sang Maw Mah Tai Goh Editor's note: This recipe is reprinted from My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. This simple dish is a New Year prize. Its sweet flavor is one of the recurring themes of the New Year. It was special to my grandmother, and it is to me as well. I make it not only every New Year, along with Turnip Cake, but also at other times throughout the year when I fancy it. The water chestnut powder at this recipe's base is cereal-like and can be eaten as a breakfast porridge when cooked with water and dark brown sugar. Among traditional Chinese it is considered a substitute for mother's milk when cooked with water. My granddaughter, Siu Siu, loves it.

Jah Sang Ho Editor's note: This recipe is reprinted from My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. Oysters are one of those three fruits of the sea permissible to Buddhists and were therefore insisted upon for New Year lunch by my grandmother. Cooking them with a batter is traditional. Their name, ho see, sounds like the Chinese words for good business.

Geung Chung Jing Hin Editor's note: This recipe is reprinted from My Grandmother's Chinese Kitchen: 100 Family Recipes and Life Lessons, by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo. Clams are the fruit of the sea that represent prosperity and are, to be sure, permissible to be eaten by observant Buddhists, including nuns.

Glazed with a mix of hoisin, lime juice, and Sriracha sauce, duck confit happily travels from France to China. This exciting dish blends the fresh flavors of carrots, long beans, and herbs with slithery rice noodles and tender duck, its skin crisped under the broiler. When roasting the duck, be careful not to overcook it—you don’t want it to dry out and become stringy.

Cumin makes this easy stir-fry exceptionally fragrant, while the last-minute addition of celery leaves creates a counterpoint of aromatic freshness.

This classic Mandarin Chinese recipe can be made with either ground beef or pork.

This spicy Sichuan dish gets its layers of flavor from two different types of heat: fiery chiles and mildly numbing Sichuan peppercorns.

Ginger and Shaoxing rice wine give a deep, round intensity to chicken, turning it into something sumptuous. The salty savor of country ham and chewy, dense chestnuts help make each forkful a hit.

You'll want to have plenty of white rice on hand to soak up the incredibly complex sweet-and-sour sauce that adorns these ribs.

Sesame balls are classic dim sum. In the yum chat (dim-sum dining) culture, these sticky-sweet treats are eaten between savory bites throughout the meal. Traditionally, the dough is made only with glutinous rice flour, which is quite sticky and will leave you searching for a toothpick. I add taro to make the dough more tender, more tasty, and a lovely shade of lavender. I substitute flavorful figs for the traditional lotus seed and red bean fillings. CHEF'S TIPS: In Chinese cooking, sesame seeds are never deeply browned— their white color symbolizes purity. Be sure to start with untoasted white sesame seeds for a light golden color when the balls are done. Most fried desserts are best eaten right away, but these stay delicious and crisp even at room temperature.

These candies are very chewy. The combination of dates and nuts is classically Middle Eastern, as in Turkish delight, but Chinese confectioners have adopted the combination as their own. You will often see versions of this easy-to-make candy around the Chinese New Year. A celebratory gift, they are traditionally wrapped in thin rice paper, but plastic wrap works just as well. CHEF'S TIP: Maltose gives this candy its distinctive subtle sweetness and chewy texture. It can be found in most Asian or natural food markets.

Just to clarify—there are no tangerines in this recipe and it doesn't look like a pie. But it's still delicious. In Singapore, these turnovers, also known as kuey taht, are a highly prized gift for Chinese New Year. Traditionally, people give away fresh tangerines (tangerine is a homonym for "gold" in Chinese). When Western-style baked goods were introduced, this round turnover was created to resemble the real thing: thus its crackly orange egg yolk wash and clever little clove on top. CHEF'S TIP: Don't eat the cloves. They are only a decorative touch, and biting into one will definitely be a shock to your palate.

Spring rolls are the quintessential Asian appetizer, but I have adapted the concept to dessert. When cooked, these rolls are like cylindrical molten cakes with warm chocolate oozing out of an impossibly thin and crisp "pastry" shell. The kumquats not only cut through the richness with their distinct citrus tartness, but also are a symbol of good fortune, as kum is a homonym for "gold" in Chinese. CHEF'S TIP: Make sure you use thin spring roll wrappers, which can be found in Asian markets, not egg roll wrappers.