Tofu Lettuce Wraps

After a wonderful weekend filled with cookie baking, wine and Hot Toddy drinking in the mountains of Tahoe, I felt inspired to prepared myself something relatively healthy for dinner upon my arrival back to San Francisco. I also did not feel like going to the store to purchase any ingredients so - no surprise here - I made do with what I had on hand and actually made something quite delicious!

The following recipe is a tweak on one that I had come across online - I'll write it as a 2 entree or 4 appetizer servings recipe, though I did about half for myself.

Tofu Lettuce Wraps

1 head fresh butter lettuce- about 6 decent size leaves (butter or iceberg would be best, I also had some romaine that I used since I didn't have much butter lettuce left on hand)
2 tsp. vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 thumb-size piece galangal (or ginger), grated
1 thai chili, de-seeded and finely minced
2 shallots, sliced finely
1 package firm tofu, drained and crumbled
2 carrots, cut into thin strips
1/2 cup snow peas, trimmed and cut into thin strips
4-5 shiitake mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp. lime juice
2 Tbsp. regular soy sauce
2 Tbsp. fish sauce
1 cup fresh basil, roughly chopped if leaves are large
1 block rice noodles (dried)
4 tsp. rice vinegar
1/2 cup fresh dry roasted peanuts, roughly chopped
five spice powder

Preparation:

Drizzle oil into a large frying pan (wok would be best) over medium-high heat. Add garlic, galangal (or ginger), chili, and shallots. Stir-fry one minute, or until fragrant.

Add tofu, carrot, shiitake mushrooms, spring onions and snow peas. As you stir-fry, add the lime juice, soy sauce, and fish sauce. Stir-fry about 3-5 minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in the basil leaves.

Meanwhile, cook rice noodles in boiling water for about 5 minutes until cooked through - drain and set in a bowl. Add rice vinegar and mix.

Separate and clean lettuce leaves. Top each leaf with layer of rice noodles. Add generous portion of the tofu filling. Top with a sprinkling of peanuts and a pinch of five spice powder. Then wrap up and eat!

The filling was just amazing. After about two or three bites, I ended up eating this with a fork since I filled the lettuce leaves quite full. The filling was spilling out with each bite so I decided it would just be easier to consider this a salad. Either way works - just use a little less filling if you want to use your hands.

I think I got about 4 or 5 lettuce leaves out of my half portion, so it was a significant amount of food - I contemplated leaving the last little bit for leftovers the next day but before I knew it, it was gone!