Top 5: Lizzie Mabbott’s top five Ways to celebrate Chinese New Year

1. Host a dumpling party – invite friends round, make a few batches of different fillings (you can find recipe ideas in Chinatown Kitchen) and get friends together to fold wontons or potstickers, while cooking and eating them too. Any leftovers can be frozen for later. Dumplings symbolise gold ingots so are often eaten at Chinese New Year to welcome in wealth.

2. Host a dinner party; steamed whole fish to symbolise abundance, plates of long noodles for longevity and finish up with ‘tong yuen’, a Chinese dessert of glutinous rice balls stuffed with black sesame (other flavours are available), served in ginger syrup. You can buy these frozen in Chinatown.

3. Go and see a dragon dance on Sunday 14th February in Chinatown.

4. Take your family out to dinner; my favourite Cantonese restaurant in London is Gold Mine in Queensway. Lobster noodles, roasted duck and steamed egg custard are wonderful here.

5. Try a new style of Chinese eating at Shuang Shuang: a hot pot restaurant where you’re given a pot of bubbling broth and raw ingredients come past on a conveyor belt for you to cook yourself. Great fun.

Lizzie Mabbott is author of Chinatown Kitchen, available here