New Food Friday - Lettuce Wraps

I like food.  Really good food.  I like to cook and eat yummy food but sometimes (and I hope I'm not alone here) I get stuck in food ruts.  I cook the same things each week or month and the really yummy food starts to seem ordinary and mundane.  In an effort to get out of this food rut I thought I'd try out a linky party.  Since this is the first week I don't expect a whole lot of participation but here's your warning for next week.

Here's how it works, this linky is all about new recipes.  I'm challenging you to try a brand new recipe every week.  Blog about it and then on Friday's you can come here and link up.  Tell us if you liked the recipe, what you liked about it, what you would change about it and if you would make it again.  Give us the recipe and a picture would be nice but not mandatory.

I've personally been doing this for a couple weeks, I've made some really good meals, some really blah meals and one really un-edible meal but I've loved the challenge.  It's made me go back through my recipe books and choose something I've been passing over for years.

Lettuce Wraps
This week's recipe was technically made for the first time last week but I made it again this week because we enjoyed it so much.  The only change I would make had nothing to do with the recipe, this is technically an appetizer.  We ate it for dinner and while it was lots of food we ended up not feeling satisfied.  The first time we ate this it was New Year's Eve and we had tons of appetizers so it was perfect, make it for an appetizer, not for dinner.


1 tsp cooking oil
1 Boneless, skinless chicken breast, diced into 1/2 " pieces (I used some shredded chicken I had in the freezer)
1/4 cup grated carrot
1/4 cup slivered onion
1 Tbsp slivered green pepper
1 Tbsp slivered orange pepper
1 Tbsp slivered red pepper
1/4 cup water
1 pkg Ichiban noodles (chicken) broken into 6 pieces
1/4 cup unsalted peanuts
1/2 Ichiban seasoning packet
1 Tbsp Hoisen Sauce
1 tsp liquid honey
1/8 tsp pepper
1/16 tsp chili powder
1/16 tsp garlic powder (I used a clove of garlic)
1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce
1 head Butter Lettuce

Heat oil on medium.  Add chicken, scramble fry until no longer pink.  Add carrots, onion and peppers.  Stir fry until veggies are tender-crisp.  Add water and noodles, stir.  Cover.  Simmer for 2 minutes until noodles are softened.
Add next 8 ingredients, stir until heated through.  Transfer to a small bowl, set bowl on platter and surround with lettuce leaves.  Have person spoon about 1/8 of chicken mixture into lettuce leaf.  Roll.
Makes about 8 wraps.

This recipe starts off so lovely and bright.

Here are my peppers all cut up.  Confession... I didn't notice how little of each colour pepper this recipe called for before I bought all three.  Had I noticed I probably would have stuck with one but I'm glad I didn't notice.  The three colours were so pretty and tasty.

My carrot and garlic grated together.

So for my chicken, like I said I used some shredded, cooked stuff I had in the freezer so I skipped the fry step.  Instead I started by frying my veggies.

Once they were tender-crisp I added my Ichiban.  Now the recipe says to break into 6 pieces but I really wanted it broken up a bit more, I'd do that next time (sorry the photo is sideways, I couldn't bear to fix it).

Once that was done I threw in my chicken and everything else and it looked yummy like this.

This looked much prettier on New Year's Eve when I put it on my Mother-in-law's platter but I had to make do with a cereal bowl and dinner plate this time.

To eat you take a lettuce leaf and fill it with the yummy stuff.

Wrap it up and eat.

This recipe was a huge hit and everybody was wowed by it.  I'm sure it would be the hit of whatever event you took it too.

So now it's your turn.  Try a new recipe, tell us how it went, perhaps it'll be a new favourite.