Chinese meal for 5- Help :S!?

Start out with shrimp spring rolls, use rice paper so you can see all the bright colors of everything inside.
For an entree:
1 x 4 lb duck, cut into serving pieces
5 tbsps soy sauce
4 tbsps oil
3 scallions
4 slices ginger root
3 whole star anise
1 tsp black peppercorns
2 tbsps dry sherry
4 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked for 20 minutes, drained and stemmed
1 cup sliced canned bamboo shoots
2 tbsps cornstarch dissolved in 2 tbsps water
2 to 3 scallions to garnish

1. Rub the duck pieces with a little of the soy sauce. Heat the oil in a pan and add the duck pieces. Fry, turning, until golden brown on all sides.

2. Transfer to saucepan and add the scallions, ginger, star anise, peppercorns, dry sherry, the remaining soy sauce and sufficient water to cover. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and cover. Simmer for 1 ½ to 2 hours or until the duck is tender, adding the mushrooms and bamboo shoots 20 minutes before the end of the cooking time.

3. Add the cornstarch mixture to the pan. Stir until the liquid has thickened. Serve hot, garnished with scallions.

Then for dessert put these two recipes together, garnish the pudding with the potatoes.

1 envelope unflavored gelatin
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup hot water
1/2 cup 2 percent evaporated milk
1 1/2 cups pureed fresh mangoes
4 ice cubes
Dissolve gelatin and sugar in hot water and stir until the liquid is smooth
Mix it with the rest of the ingredients and stir until ice cubes are melted.
Pour mixture into moulds and chill for 4 hours.

1 lb sweet potatoes
1 cup glutinous or sweet rice flour
1/3 cup of brown sugar
½ cup sesame seeds
Oil for deep frying
Put the potatoes in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Drain and peel. Mash the potatoes, then beat in the glutinous rice flour and sugar.
With dampened hands, form the mixture into walnut-sized balls. Roll each ball in sesame seeds until well coated.
Heat the oil to 160°C/325°F. Deep fry the potato balls until golden brown. Drain on absorbent kitchen paper. Serve hot as dessert.

I suggest you look up Simply Ming at Google. His recipe is more of simple way to fix a dinner

Home-cooked Chinese meals is all about using the freshest and colorful ingredients and simplest cooking methods. For a party of 5, you should be looking at 1 soup, 4 dishes and 1 dessert.

Simple dishes you can try:
1) Soup - Chicken soup with potatoes and tomatoes. Bring water to a boil and add chicken (I like to use bone-in thighs), peeled and diced potatoes and tomatoes. Let it boil and then simmer and just let it sit there until ready to serve. Add salt to taste. You can serve it with the chicken/tomatoes/potatoes, or just serve the broth.

2) Dish #1 - any type of stir-fry. I would use pork as pork is the easiest to cook (even if you overcook it, it doesn't taste as bad as overcooked chicken or beef). Use a lot of colorful vegetables - bell peppers, snap peas, baby corn. For the sauce, simple oyster sauce would do.

3) Dish #2 - Stir-fry vegetables. For this dish, go with either bak choy or other Chinese greens. Stir-fry it with a little bit of garlic, ginger and oil. To add more taste, drizzle with sesame oil while in wok/pan.

4) Dish #3 - Chinese meal usually have some sort of seafood, typically fish. If you are not that keen on serving a whole fish steamed, you can also do fillets. One way to do it is to fry the fillets and then serve it with cream corn sauce or sweet and sour sauce (you can easily find pre-made sauce in packages at your supermarket). If you're serving it with cream corn sauce, garnish it with some parsley. If you're serving it with sweet and sour sauce, add some pineapple chunks and green bell pepper to the dish when cooking. It adds color.

5) Dish #4 - This is usually another just-meat or just-seafood dish. If you're going for just-seafood, steamed prawns would be good. Steam prawns and then serve with chili-soy sauce. Just add chili and green onions to soy sauce. If you want a just-meat dish, then getting a roasted duck or chicken would be good, too. You can get both at your local chinatown. Make sure to ask for the appropriate sauces - plum sauce for roasted duck and green onion-ginger sauce for chicken.

6) Dessert - Typically either a sweet soup (ie. red bean soup) or fruits. Because you already have a soup, I'd suggest a fruit plate. Typical fruits include lychee, star-fruit, oranges, watermelon, or anything that you like. No need to use any sauce for this as Chinese people usually like their fruits plain and fresh. If you don't want to do a fruit plate, then maybe try a mango pudding. You can usually find mango pudding mix at your supermarket. If not, there are tons of recipes online.

Drinks - jasmine tea. If you want something different, maybe a Hong-Kong drink - yin-yeung. It's basically milk tea + coffee. You can serve it both hot or cold.

I don't know if you want real Chinese food or American interpretations of Chinese food, but I only know traditional Cantonese cuisine... so here's my suggestions.

* Spring rolls as an appetizer, filled with vegetables; either that or dumplings of some sort (you can buy them frozen at the Chinese grocery, or make them using wonton skins)

* Steam a whole fish with soy sauce, strips of fresh ginger, and scallions - if that's too 'Yuck factor' for you, make or buy a roasted Chinese duck - everyone (except vegetarians, haha) loves crispy roast duck.
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/poultry/r/crispyroastduck.htm
Serve with greens sauteed with garlic and soy sauce, and bowls of Thai white rice.

* I hate Chinese desserts, but egg tarts are tasty. Instead of that, though, I'd probably serve an Asian fruit salad - lychees, dragonfruit, mango, asian pear - doused with green tea liqueur and served with Chinese almond biscuits.

Drinks, drinks.... you could serve green tea liqueur with fresh squeezed orange juice. Not really Chinese.
Serve Tsingtao or Tiger Beer - though in HK everyone seems to drink Heineken...
Jasmine green tea, cooled and sweetened with simple syrup tastes good with gin or vodka to make a mixed drink.