I have a *deep* love of Asian foods. Deeeeeep. Do you feels me!
Some months back, while I was cruising my YouTube subbies, I came across someone new. That someone new goes by the name of Mark Weins. I swear, cross my heart, that every single upload he does to his YouTube channel makes my tummy grumble in hunger…even if I’ve just finished eating! For Reals.
I have this thing for foods you can wrap in other things. It was while watching Mark eat meals on his YouTube channel that included wrapping delicious nibbles with all manner of fresh herbs and other delights that got me thinking…I’ve not had anything like that in eons and it’s time to change that!
I want something that will feed my desire for something hot sour salty sweet that I can wrap into fresh lettuce wraps and make my inner foodie sing its happy song.
Pork lettuce wraps is what I came up with. Ground pork, lots of fresh herbs, garlic, ginger, lime juice, rice noodles sticks, green onions, crispy fried onions…this is the point I start drooling! I just might lick my own screen now 🙂 Soy sauce, hoisin sauce and salted roasted peanuts. A little vinegar based soy sauce dressing to drizzle on top before I roll these pork lettuce wraps up and I’ve got yummy nom noms!
These are actually pretty easy to whip up. I stir fried some ground pork with lots of fresh garlic and ginger, when it was all nice and browned, I tossed in some dark soy sauce, hoisin sauce, lots of fresh lime juice and healthy handfuls of fresh cilantro and continued to cook it till it was nice and caramelized. Just before taking it off the heat, I added my softened rice noodle sticks. I taste to see if it has the right balance of flavours that I love, adjust if needed and the filling is pretty much done.
I used Boston Lettuce for my wrappers, they’re nice and soft and roll up easily without breaking.
All the other goodies were toppings. I have crispy fried onions that I are part of my East Indian pantry ingredients, They’re really great, come in a big bag and are very reasonably priced. I love the crispy fried shallots and garlic used in a lot of Thai foods, but I don’t always have some on hand, the crispy fried onions make a great substitution I find.
I topped my pork lettuce wraps with chopped fresh cilantro, salted roasted peanuts, crispy fried onions, chopped green onions/scallions and drizzled them lightly with a vinegar soy sauce mixture before wrapping them up and gobbling them down.
This is also the point I realize I have to step up my game in the kitchen. I love to cook and most of the time I go into my kitchen and whip stuff up, I just grab what I have on hand and start adding until I get to the point I think “it’s there”. Recording exactly what I put in and in what measure is not my strong point. I guess I’m at that point where I realize that I can’t really post about what I’m up to in my kitchen and go “a dash of this and as much of this as you need”….does that really translate well in this format? I dunno, it’s really how I work in the kitchen though and it’s a hard habit to break. I keep thinking I’ll remember later and well that rarely works out well :p
Of course, I’m pretty certain that these pork lettuce wraps never got properly documented, not a scrap of paper can I find that has anything on it detailing exactly what went in. There’s a good memory of most, but, you know, it’s not really a recipe I guess, it’s more a “this is what I love to eat. Right here, on this plate deal. ” I *really* have to work on the writing things down as they happen part.
I’ll work on that…promise!
On a final note…these were reallllllly good 🙂
