Thai Larb Chicken Lettuce Cups

It’s a super special week for our dear friend Jaden from SteamyKitchen.com, her newest cookbook Healthy Asian Favorites is out. She’s been working so hard over the past two years recipe testing, writing and shooting her labor of love. We’re so happy for her. Let’s all give her a round of applause and support!

Jaden’s latest book, Healthy Asian Favorites,  is chock full of healthy and easy recipes that you can enjoy everyday. We know how good her cooking is because we tasted practically half the book when we went out to help her on the book last year. Jaden’s cooking is always so approachable, delicious and full of flavor. What’s she’s so good at is taking  classic recipes and making them easy to cook and this time, she’s focused on making them healthy. Seriously, who doesn’t love a cookbook that’s loaded with delicious and healthy recipes. We could all use these recipes every day and throughout the week.

Aside from the Asian classics, Jaden is also very good at creative inventive, fresh and modern recipes. She makes tasty magic with just a few simple and healthy ingredients. This is the kind of cooking that nurtures us every day. Healthy Asian Favorites is a truly wonderful collection of recipes you can trust and turn to on a daily basis.

There’s been a fun round of recipe-sharing celebrations for Jaden’s cookbook this week. Jeanette made Dan Dan Mien Noodles, Maria made Cauliflower steaks with Ginger Soy Sauce, Shauna made Miso Soup and more recipes soon to be shared by Recipe girl and Katies Cucina.

Today we’re sharing Jaden’s fabulous, repeat-fabulous, Thai larb lettuce cups. We just can’t get enough of lettuce cups. They’re so fresh, crisp, satisfying and the perfect way to have fun eating a salad. Be prepared to make a huge batch because they’re so addicting. This is one of the perfect-party dishes that’s so much fun to eat and that leaves you feeling full and happy.

Congrats Jaden on a beautiful cookbook!

hugs,

diane and todd

Watch Jaden’s cookbook trailer that we produced!

Yield: Serves 4

Total Time: 15 min

Printed with permission by Jaden Hair, copyright © 2013. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Jaden's headnote excerpt: Larb is an Asian salad that’s considered the national dish of Laos. It features a sour and spicy warm stir-fried meat on top of cold, crisp lettuce. The dressing is made of fish sauce, spicy fresh chiles, and fresh lime juice. Fresh mint leaves provide a refreshing finish. On the list of my favorite sounds would be the crisp snap crunch of super-cold lettuce as you peel off the layers, one by one. Use iceberg, Boston bibb, or any kind of lettuce that has cup-shaped leaves for this recipe. Keep the lettuce refrigerated until ready to eat.

1 1/2 tablespoons cooking oil1/2 pound ground chicken breast2 shallots, diced1/4 red onion, diced1 clove garlic, very finely mincedMinced fresh chiles, Jalapeño or Fresno (amount up ?to you)1 tablespoon fish sauce1/2 lime, juiced1 teaspoon low-sodium soy sauce1 head iceberg lettuce, leaves separated into “cups”1 handful of cilantro and/or mint, cut into chiffonadeHeat a wok or large sauté pan over high heat. When hot, swirl in 1 tablespoon of the oil and add the chicken. Use your spatula to break up the meat and spread out over the surface of the pan. Cook until browned, about 3 minutes.Push the ground chicken to one side of the pan and swirl in the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of oil. To the oil, add the shallots, red onion, garlic, and fresh chiles and sauté the aromatics until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add the fish sauce, lime juice, and soy sauce.Serve with lettuce cups and herbs.

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Spicy Pork Lettuce Cups with Noodles

Spicy, tomato tangy, savory ground meat. It has become one of the WORC household’s staple instant meal accessorizers.

The zingy muse came from Korean rice cakes. The spice, the touch of sweet, the savory drool inducing rice cakes are highly addicting. Ever hit Momofuku’s Ssam Bar in New York and you’ll know exactly what I mean.

With that in mind, I started sautéing up my own concoction. Cooking by taste, touch, and smell I came up with this magic meat. I’ll use whichever ground meat I jonesing for, from ground pork to beef to chicken to turkey. Lamb would probably rock too, I just haven’t tried it yet. Grab Diane’s uber tasty chili sauce from the fridge, some tomato paste, garlic, shallots, fish sauce and green onions. Oh yeah, and a little sugar to sweeten the deal and diner is a breath away from being done.

After the meat is done, we’ll toss it over rice, if we happen to actually have rice cakes they go great, or toss it up with some noodles. Pile a bunch on some bread with some pickles and it makes a great Asian style sloppy joe. The variations are endless.

But to put an end to this post, here is one variation which is great for a party. Toss the meat mix with some Asian noodles then swirl up the coated noodles onto lettuce cups and top with Thai basil and serve. Double delicious.

-Todd

*White boy qualifier – I hadn’t looked up any Korean rice cake recipes when I was coming up with the recipe. I’m not sure if the meat mix is similar or not to actual Korean rice cakes recipes. It was just my muse.
Spicy  Pork Lettuce CupsServes 3-4. Ingredients 1 T Cooking Oil (we prefer grape seed, peanut, or canola oil)3/4 c coarsely diced Shallots or Sweet Onions2 T crushed Garlic (about 6 cloves)1 1/2 lb ground Pork2 T Fish Sauce1/4 c Tomato Paste2 T Sugar2 t (more or less to spiciness preference) Chili Sauce (we use our house made garlic chili sauce)1/2 c Water4 Green Onions, sliced in 1/2? pieces1/2 lb cooked Noodles (your preference – rice noodles, egg noodles, soba noodles)1 head Butterleaf Lettuce, washed and separated5-6 stems Thai BasilCooking Directions

Heat large sauté pan over medium heat. Add oil and shallots and cook until soft (1-2 minutes), stirring occasionally.Stir in garlic and cook for another 30 seconds.Add ground pork and increase heat to medium high. Brown meat, stirring occasionally to break up meat and help it brown evenly.Add fish sauce, tomato paste, sugar, chili sauce and water to meat and stir to combine. Add green onions and cook for another 30 seconds or until green onions soften slightly.Toss cooked noodles with meat mixture.Put about 1/4 cup of noodle/meat mix in each lettuce cup. Garnish with Thai Basil.

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Bacon Lettuce Tomato (BLT) Spring Roll – I broke the rules. Sorry, Mom.

I sincerely hope after this recipe goes live that no one pounds me with a beating of 20 lashes because I broke some rules. Sometimes a girl needs a little culinary excitement in her life and if it means venturing outside my cultural comfort zone to feed myself, I’ll game for the challenge. I’ll also brace myself for the bruises.

The person I’m most concerned about is my Mother, the kitchen diva who lives to feed everyone with her own two hands before she even thinks of nourishing herself.

Before I delve further into my public apology to Mom, there’s a back-story that you all should be aware of. Mom is a hard-core traditional home cook and although she’s stretched her cooking wings to experiment with other non-Vietnamese dishes, the woman is still deeply rooted to her culinary history. She won’t compromise on technique, flavor, spice, freshness and more intensity of spice.

If the food is bland, she’ll tell you. If she puts a dish in front of you and she changed her mind and is not happy with it, she’ll take it away. And you will starve. Seriously friends, I’m not kidding. We don’t eat unless she’s completely happy with the dish.

But if she’s happy with her dishes for the day, we all beg her for mercy to stop the feeding. We all wave our surrender flag from the food coma pains. Again, I’m not exaggerating.

Now that I’ve made it more clear how deeply, passionately and lovingly abusive she can be when it comes to feeding I hope you can understand why I’m apologizing to my Mom.

Fresh spring rolls wrapped with rice paper, fresh vegetables, herbs and delicately grilled meats was always a staple in our family. When Mom and Dad asked what we wanted for dinner, we’d all call out for hamburgers, pizza and macaroni and cheese. Most of the time, those requests went un-answered.

Our back-up dinner request was always fresh spring rolls because we all loved making the rolls ourselves. We’d have bowls of water on the table and secretly splash water from the rice paper bowls at each other when Mom and Dad weren’t looking. Dad was always the head-meister at the table top grill, nurturing the meat to the perfect, fragrant char. He never really saw the little food fights that were we were battling across the table.

Little brother #3 would throw a cucumber at brother #1 and Dad wouldn’t leave his sight from the meat. He really loves his beef, it’s such a luxury for him.

After a few episodes of annoying the heck out of each other, all six of us kids would focus back on rolling our dinner. A tear of crisp green lettuce layered on top of soft, pliable rice paper was the first step to playing with our food. Next, a few fresh herb leaves were plucked from their garden fresh stems. We’d lace the rice paper with some bean sprouts and cucumber for crunch. A final, thin serving of grilled lemongrass beef would grace our pile of greens.

Our small hands would gather the fillings to one end of the rice paper and roll till we produced a perfectly right spring roll. Dip in fish sauce, bite, enjoy and do it all over again. That’s why we loved spring rolls so much. It was such a fun, communal meal and every bite was different, fresh, satisfying. It was *almost* better than frozen pepperoni pizza.

So, as I grew up, I started to experiment more with what I could roll in a spring roll. I shared this amazing way of eating with Todd and over the years, our love of spring rolls was the brain-child of our first cookbook idea  (this cookbook story is another post).

I’d often tell Mom what I was doing with the rice paper and all the interesting, yet respectful preparations I was making with spring rolls. She would cringe and ask me how that would pair with nuoc cham fish sauce dip. Her life resolves around fish sauce and everything makes more sense when it has fish sauce in it.

I would offer to make her some of my unique spring roll creations and she’s shake her head and tell me it’s too odd for her. If it doesn’t have grilled pork, tofu  or lemongrass beef, she won’t touch it with a 10 foot chopstick.

Regardless of the verbal lectures I’d get from her about the oddities of my cooking and traditional culinary rule breaking, I’d continue to carry on in the kitchen with my erratic spring roll behavior. I’ve tried almost every variation and recipe I can think of for rice paper.

With this BLT spring roll, I’ve totally broken some rules with my Mom because there is no fish sauce in this recipe. But there is pork. I’m respectful of that.

I’ve also committed some seriously offensive spring roll crimes because I added raw tomato and bacon, two ingredients Mom and my ancestors would ever think of adding. I can hear them now, “How blasphemous this child is! Who raised her?!”

I wanted to have a fun, fresh, yet still devilishly-bad bacon creation for the spring roll and thus, the BLT spring roll is born. These rolls are satisfying, gluten-free, low carb and are the perfect lunch to hold you over till you want to crash with your carbs. Think of this recipe as a BLT sandwich in a roll that you can eat a lot of and not feel overloaded on bread.

Mom doesn’t know about this recipe yet and she’ll probably double-freak-out because I didn’t pair it with a fish sauce dip.

So Mom, I’m apologizing to you ahead of time for totally breaking the rules here. But please, to her and all of you traditionalists, don’t judge me until you’ve taken a bite. Or two. Or the whole darn plate because they’re so good!

Respectfully, your Spring Roll Rebel,

diane

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Bacon Lettuce Tomato (BLT) Spring Roll
I’ve added fresh basil to these spring rolls for an added freshness, but if you don’t have basil, fresh mint or any herb will be a wonderful addition. We’ve paired it with a sesame-soy dipping sauce. Depending on the saltiness of your bacon and your soy sauce, you may want to thin out the soy sauce with some water to cut back on the saltiness.

Ingredients:

fresh lettuce, chopped2 medium tomatoes (seeded and sliced 1/4? thick)6 pieces of bacon, friedfresh basil, mint or other herbsrice paperIn large bowl, fill it with water and make it warm by adding hot water. Gently dip each rice paper wrapper in warm water for a few seconds till damp. Don’t over soak the rice paper. Place rice paper on plate, or working surface. As rice paper begins to absorb the water and become more soft and pliable (10-30 seconds, depending on wrappers and water temp.), begin to add the fillings.On the 1/3 section of the rice paper wrapper closest to you, start layering your fillings of lettuce, tomatoes and bacon. You can just have 1 bacon per spring roll but if you want to make it extra flavorful and decadent, add 2 slices of bacon.Start rolling the wrapper over the fillings away from you, tucking and rolling the wrapper with your fingers, making sure all the fillings remain right and round within the rice paper wrapper.Serve immediately, or cover with plastic wrap to eat a few hours later.

Sesame-Soy Dipping Sauce

1/2 c (120ml) Soy Sauce1 T (15g) Mayonnaise1 t (5ml) fresh Lime Juice1 t (5ml) Sesame OilCombine all ingredients in a small mason jar. Close lid and shake vigorously for 15 seconds or until emulsified.

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Recipe: Samgyeopsal Ssam (Pork Belly Lettuce Wrap) — the heart of food

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