Let Us Rap about Lettuce Wraps

 

We’ve been spending most our lives                                                                                             Living in a Lettuce Wrap Paradise.                                                                                                                                                        Word, to your respective Mothers.

-LL Lettuce RapZ

Ah lettuce!  Or as its known at P.F. Changs:  the Chinese tortilla.  I’m pretty sure Mao ate lettuce wraps all the time.  That, and fortune cookies.  See, lettuce wraps are great because you can take anything and wrap it in lettuce and… bam!  It’s healthy!

Well, in this case, its mostly true!  We made Chicken Sausage Lettuce Wraps using a recipe we found in Bon Appetit Magazine, a solid food publication with some stellar photography.  This recipe is shockingly easy and very tasty.  It basically involves buying ground chicken, mixing it with minced garlic, minced ginger (a Chez Venza customization), sliced serrano, flour, and Asian condiments.  

After chilling for a bit, you pan fry and you’re done.

The recipe calls this “Chicken Sausage,” and it is in the most basic sense.  But this is no more a sausage than a hamburger is.  In fact, my brain wheels are already turning on making an Asian-flavored chicken burger based on this recipe.  It is that tasty.

Now, a quick word on “Asian condiments.”  We’ve done several Asian and Asian-style recipes at this point, and we’ve managed to acquire modest quantities of the various strange pre-made sauces that one has to have.  They are all unusual, inscrutable, and basically mandatory.  Fish Sauce, Oyster Sauce, Black Bean Sauce, Hoisin Sauce, and Ketchup (yup).  No real idea how any of these are made (except that fish sauce ferments outdoors for like a year or something… should we try making our own?) You basically have to have these premade items in order to make most recipes I’ve seen.  In what other cuisine is this done to this extent?  I suppose its like a Westerner always having mustard or mayonnaise on hand.

Back to our recipe!

A quick combination of serrano pepper, fish sauce, lime juice, and sugar makes a sticky, spicy, tart dressing for our wraps.

This recipe is a winner, folks.  Easy.  Quick.  Full of flavor.  Be sure to double the recipe, cause you’ll eat them up real fast!