The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I have been having one of those months where anything goes in the eating department. The amount of cakes, muffins, cookies and other not so great for you sweet baked goods I’ve had this month is sort of shocking. It’s actually probably been more like 2 months… I sort of lost count after Thanksgiving. Sigh.

In and effort to tone it down (it being my thighs) and avoid having to shop in the maternity section before my time, I decided to put some effort towards not eating so much bread and other extremely tempting glutonous products that I love so much for every meal. I’m still going to eat bread, because life would be extremely depressing without it, but just not for every single meal.

My fist go at this was last night when instead of giving in to my craving for pizza, I decided I was going to improvise  some chicken lettuce wraps with the contents of my refridgerator. They ended up to be a sort of a hibrid between Japanese and Chinese flavors and they were very tasty and satisfying, not to mention extremely easy to make. I almost didn’t miss the bread… almost.

Chicken Lettuce Wraps – Serves 2 people

This recipe is an improvisation. You can easily add more or less of an ingredient to suit your taste as well as substiute the butter lettuce to what you have on hand. For a vegetarian version you could also use crumbled firm tofu in place of the ground chicken.

1 250 gram (half a pound) package of ground chicken, preferably dark meat

1 tablespoon peanut oil or other neutral oil

1 small white onion, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, grated

3 tablespoons rice wine vinegar

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

1 teaspoon chinese garlic red chili paste

1 head of butter lettuce, washed with leave seperated with the leave left whole

1/2 large cucumber cut into 2 inch juillienne

1 large carrot, grated

3 scallions, diced

In a medium sized pan sautee the onions and celery together in the peanut oil until the onions are slightly brown but not burnt. Add in the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add in the ground chicken and allow to brown nicely-you may have to turn the heat up a bit if there’s a lot of liquid in the pan.

Once the chicken is brown and cooked through deglaze the pan with the rice wine vinegar and allow it to fully evaporate. Add in the hoisin sauce and the garlic chilli paste and stir to combine. Remove the pan from the heat.

Arrange the grated carrots, sliced cucumber and and diced green onion on a serving plate along with the lettuce leaves and allow everyone to assemble their own at the table.