Student food blog: Asian lettuce cups

We are still "cutting" this week so carbs are still on the d-low (excluding the three batches of cookies, cupcakes, cake, ice cream, sour hearts, tinned caramel and crunchy hazelnut spread).

Also, since iceberg lettuce was cheap at the grocer's I decided to make something that I haven't had in quite a while: lettuce cups. OK, so before you all run away at the absurd idea of filling leaves of lettuce with beef mince then wrapping them up like crazy health-nut burritos hear me out. These are delicious.

I have no idea where Mum got the recipe from. It's scrawled onto a loose piece of refill at home. We usually use pork mince in this but the big yellow supermarket was looking like Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard on Sunday night so beef just had to do. 

You can get out all those delicious Asian sauces that sit in your cupboard collecting dust, rummage out an old carrot from the bottom of the vege drawer and hopefully find some mould-free peanuts (mouldy ones have a nasty habit of being poisonous) and make this for dinner.

If you want some good old carbohydrate in this you could easily cook up some vermicelli noodles and include them in the lettuce bundle. Like Alex

(one of the flatties) says, this may not be the most filling of dinners for strapping lads (OK, so the "strapping lads" bit was me). So you will definitely want to add some of those noodles if you are attempting to feed a few boys.

Asian lettuce cups
Serves 4

500g pork or beef mince
1 Tbsp sesame oil
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp ground or fresh chilli
2 Tbsp sweet chilli sauce
1 Tbsp fish sauce
1 Tbsp crushed ginger
2 Tbsp kecap manis
1 onion, diced
1 spring onion, chopped
1 large iceberg lettuce
chopped roasted, salted peanuts
coriander
1 carrot, julienned, peeled, sliced, however you want it really
1 red pepper, sliced
sweet chilli sauce to serve
1 lime, sliced into sixths to garnish

Sauté the onion and garlic until just translucent. Add the mince and break it up with your spoon so that there are no chunky pieces. Once the mince has browned add the sesame oil, chilli, sweet chilli sauce, fish sauce, ginger and kecap manis.

Simmer until the sauce has come together and become quite syrupy, about 10 minutes. While this is happening, prepare your vegetables. Transfer the mince into a bowl to serve.

Remove the outer loose, ugly leaves of lettuce then wash the remaining core thoroughly. You can do this by flipping the lettuce upside down and using a small sharp knife to cut out a cone shape around the knobbly stem bit of the lettuce. Place the hole under the tap and let the water wash from the inside out. Drain in a colander. Arrange along with the other garnishes on a plate beside the mince.

To serve, take a lettuce leaf, place a spoonful of mince mixture in the centre, place a few carrot and capsicum pieces, a sprinkling of peanuts and a squeeze of lime around the mince then proceed to wrap like a burrito or a spring roll.

Ours looked more like sacks. They tasted great so that doesn't matter.

Imagine that we had coriander sprinkled over ours here. I kinda made this in a huge rush after work. I got a wonderful food processor for my birthday so I used it to chop my onions and garlic to make things faster, but no amount of kitchen appliances could spontaneously produce my favourite herb.

So yes! Enjoy! We sure did.

Have a great week!
Sophie