🧧🎉 Chinese New Year Feast with Friends | Homegrown Ingredients & Lucky Dishes! 🍜🥟✨ #mealtimetogethers2 #mealtimetogether

We arrived at my friend's house in Wollongong to celebrate Chinese New Year together. This year their homegrown produce has really expanded. Right now they have passion fruit, capsicum, bull's horn chili, at least I think that's what it is, eggplant and basil. Some of these ingredients are even going into our dinner tonight. My other friend just arrived bringing some delicious Korean dishes. Tteokbokki, spicy rice cake and japchae, a Korean potato noodles salad. I brought duck because my husband was too busy and well he didn't want my Thai food but my other friends love Thai food so maybe next time I'll cook for them instead. Now look at all these feasts. We have Korean japchae noodles, prawn with celery, stir-fried eggplant, roasted duck, tteokbokki, spicy hot fish soup, pineapple fried rice and freshly fried dumplings. Dumplings are a must-have for Chinese New Year because their shape resembles ancient Chinese gold money, symbolizing wealth and prosperity for the year ahead. And to wrap up the meal, the host made a simple hand-pulled noodle soup, perfect for a long and prosperous year ahead. Add salt and chicken stock powder to the bowl, pour in soy sauce, add sesame oil and some Chinese vinegar or chou, add chopped spring onion, pour in hot boiled water, boil homemade frozen hand-pulled noodles, add noodles to the soup base. The noodles can be instant but these are homemade frozen ones, just as delicious as freshly made ones. Sharing long noodles symbolizes longevity and prosperity for the new year. For dessert we have matcha mochi ice cream. We ended our meal with ice cream mochi and sweet passion fruit straight from the garden. What a lovely day spent together, welcoming the new year with good food and good company.