Thursday, November 20, 2008

Lettuce Boats.

Ever been to PF Chang's or Pei Wie's?? Ever gotten the lettuce wraps? They are amazing. YUMMY! My family is not the type to get appetizers but we get these every time we go there. I got this recipe from Cooking Light Magazine. The actual recipe is for Korean Sesame Beef with Lettuce Wrap but we just switched up the meet and excluded a few ingredients. This is what we ended up with:

Oh yeah, the name of the post is lettuce boats because we had the wrong kind of lettuce and so it looks like boats not roasts.

Brett and Margaret's Lettuce Wraps.
See these slimy bacteria prone chicken breasts? Chicken boobs as my sister-in-law ( and thus sometimes my husband) calls them. Well right now they're not so good but just wait they're gonna get delicious. (I think that was about 3/4 lb chicken)

So we cut then into thin strips. That is because it is all we were having for dinner. If we were just serving then for appetizers then we'd cut the chicken up really small. We are of course still perfecting the recipe so we might experiments with a few more ingredients.


It's pretty simple. So here we see sugar, wok oil (you can also use vegtable oile with wok oil has a really good flavor to it.), soy sauce (brett love la choy and won't eat any other brand, I grew up on kikkoman, in case you were wondering), sesame oil, sesame seeds, green onions, garlic, and lettuce. Iceberg lettuce is what they use at the restuaraunt but I only had romain lettuce. It tasted just as good, it just didn't 'wrap'. (these ingredients also turn out better if you shadow them with your body like I am in this picture)

So here is the sauce. It's pretty simple.
  • 1 Tbs sugar
  • 2 Tbs soy sauce
  • 1 Tbs minced garlic
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • 1/4 C green onions
Just give all that a mixer-oo in a bowl. Now stir in the chicken
If it looks like some of the chicken in this picture is already cooked that's because it is. Brett thought we cooked the chicken and then added the sauce. So he put the chicken in the wok and then quickly took it back out when he realized that's now how it's done. Although I think it would have turned out fine had he cooked the chicken then added the sauce. (also from here on I played with the pictures in photo shop just to waste more time, so please excuse any wierdness, like how dark the above picture turned out.)
See that wok? It's one of my more stupid purchases. Actually the wok was a pretty cook purchase but the woking cookbook I bought with it was a complete waste of money. But sometimes when I see something in the store I just can't leave with out it. Anyway so put a few tablespoons of wok (or whatever you're using) in the bottom of your wok (or skillet) over medium-high to high heat. Let your oil get hot then add your chicken. You might have to do your chicken in portions depending on how much you have. The point is to cook the meat on high heat very quickly. Thus you can't have too much in the pan at once, the meat pieces have to be fairly small, and you'll need to stir the meat very often. Once your meat is done transfer it to a bowl. Your meat is done. The first time we made this recipe we just put the chicken over rice in the lettuce leaves. It was delicious. But since we've added a few more layers if flavor.

Here is a sauce to drizzle over the top.


So the sauce has six ingredients. I think we've now matched the ones they have at PF changes.
The top three are the most important and the pot sticker sauce the most most important. Start with a table spoon or two or three of pot sticker sauce. Then maybe 1/4 to 1/2 a teaspoon of the Chinese mustard and the chili sauce. These can be pretty hot so go light at first. Now the bottom three ingredients. These can be added to your taste. Soy sauce is of course just soy sauce, the rice vinegar will cut down some of the hotness (at least that is what they say at the restaurant), and the Mongolian fire oil will add more fire. The Mongolian fire oil is Brett's new favorite thing. He adds it to about everything he cooks. Mostly ramen and scrambled eggs.

So here ya go. You have your sauce. This one turned out pretty spicy but delicious all the same. Experiment with your. But if you want it like PF Chang's the pot sticker sauce is still the staple of the sauce.

Now we have the newest addition. The restaurant serves the chicken on a bed a crunchy Styrofoam like noodles. I could never figure out what they were and had given up. Then last week Brett brought these home. And they were exactly the right thing. So your going to cook them in a could inches of hot oil (don't waste your wok oil on this!) heated to 400 degrees. Just drop the noodles in till they puff up and take them out. This will happen almost instantly, almost like magic. Actually I think it may be magic.

Well I hope that video worked for you because it's awesome. The ugly brown ones. That is what happens when the oil is not hot enough. They won't puff up just sit in the bottom and burn.


And there you go. That is it. Just fill each lettuce leaf with some of the Styrofoam noodles, the chicken, sprinkle with sesame seeds and green onions and finally drizzle with some of the sauce.