Secret Ingredient: Romaine Lettuce! Pt. 2 - Viet Lettuce Wraps

Allez Cuisine!!!


The BBQ Chicken Salad was pretty tasty, but I wanted to try something in a completely different direction this time. If I didn't have Romaine Hearts I probably would've done this with red leaf lettuce. The Romaines taste good, but I think they're just a bit too thin and hard to wrap too well. I had lettuce wraps at this Vietnamese restaurant I went to a couple weeks back with my mom. It was tasty and I decided to replicate it at home. Off to the ingredients~



Julienned Carrots. Basically just carrots cut into long thin strips. I used about 3 medium sized carrots. To make it easier I used my mandoline rather than cutting the strips one by one.



Julienned Cucumbers. About 2 cucumbers worth is what I have here.



My Romaine Lettuce and Cilantro soaking in some cold water to keep it crispy and green. Some people don't like Cilantro, but I think it gives a nice fresh taste to things. Leave it out if you don't like it, or mix in your favorite herb. Green onion works well too. Feel free to experiment, it's not like I made this from a recipe.





Fish paste. People who aren't Asian might not know what this is, but basically it's cooked? fish that's been ground and... pastified. This is also good for making fish balls for soup, but maybe next time (or with leftovers?). The one I had in the restaurant was shrimp paste in a tofu pouch or coating. That was pretty good, but I decided to try it out with fish paste to see how it'd go. It was tasty, but the shrimp version had a stronger flavor. I used saran wrap and made thin patties with it, then pan fried it. After it cooled I cut them into strips.



Sauce. The same type of sauce you'd typically get when you order fried egg rolls in a Vietnamese restaurant. Feel free to use the mix and ratio that Wikipedia gives. I remember a Vietnamese friend telling me basically what was in it a long time ago and just mixed everything to taste. Some fish sauce, more water than sauce, juice of 1 lemon, sugar until I felt it was right, and garlic chili hot sauce. At first I thought the sauce was too salty and spicy, so some more water and more sugar made it just right for me. Make sure to taste things as you go along. It's never too late to add another ingredient here or there to make it taste just how you want it to.





Putting it all together is the easy part. I guess I could've been fancy and made it "deconstructed" on the plate like how they do on Iron Chef, but I already had them in separate bowls so I might as well have it all ready to eat! Overall they came out pretty nicely and it tasted great. Maybe not so fulling, but it's ok, I had ox tail soup with rice afterwards =) If you try any of these things out send me some pix or let me know!