Ground Turkey Lettuce Wraps

Debbie had bought some ground turkey with no particular plans. While often such an ingredient finds its way into a burger patty, a meatloaf, or even a lasagna, tonight we tried something else. Take two parts questionable memory of a Larb Gai recipe (my mom used to make something similar to this), one part Debbie's urge to turn all kinds of food into a wrapped or stuffed experience, and whirl them together until you end up with this result.

Ingredients

Filling

• 1 pound ground turkey
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• 1/2 tablespoon worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 tablespoon hoison sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon anchovy paste
• 1 tablespoon almond meal
• juice of one lime
• slices of a serrano pepper
• pepper and salt, to taste

Mixins

• 2 small heads boston lettuce
• slices of red onion
• slices of cucumber
• slices of tomato

Directions

1. Cook the ground turkey in a pan over medium heat, stirring frequently to prevent excessive clumping.
2. Stir turkey with wet ingredients, almond meal, seasoning, and serrano pepper in a medium bowl until combined.
3. Taste and adjust seasoning and sauces as necessary. If you don't like it now, adding raw vegetables probably won't help much.
4. Rinse lettuce and lay out leaves on two plates. Spoon turkey mixture over lettuce.
5. Put a few slices of onion, cucumber, and tomato on top of each plate.
6. Enjoy with a fork, or by rolling a leaf of lettuce around some turkey and vegetables.

This makes about 3 to 4 servings.

He said

The resemblance of this to Larb Gai is pretty superficial. We didn't have the rice powder, or a spice grinder handy, so we substituted almond meal instead. We didn't have fish sauce so we substituted a combination of other sauces and some anchovy paste. To top that off, neither of us like cilantro, so we just left it out. And we used turkey instead of chicken. So it's really not Larb Gai at all. But it tasted good and I think that's what counts.

She said

Serrano peppers are quite spicy, so I had one slice and left the rest for Mike, who ignored half the ones on his plate. Hot stuff!

The flavors of the filling were so yummy that I could see repeating the sauce stuff for other uses, too. If we make this again, I think I'll want my veggies diced, since it's easier to use diced veggies rather than sliced for stuffing the lettuce leaves.