Friday, February 1, 2008

Friday Night Bites--Celebrate the Chinese New Year!


Happy Chinese New Year! Celebrate the Year of the Rat (yikes!) with some very healthy, light, low-carb Chinese food. I altered a Cooking Light recipe to come up with this recipe below. For adults, serve it in lettuce cups. For kids, you can wrap in warm tortillas and call it a Chinese Burrito. Fusion Cuisine is where it's at so your kids will be food forward for sure.

Chinese New Year Dinner Wraps

1 t canola oil
1
t sesame oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
8 ounces cremini or "baby bella" mushrooms, minced
4 ounces shiitake mushroom, minced
1 medium onion, chopped fine
1 pound ground meat (either 92% lean beef, turkey or chicken)
2 c shredded napa cabbage
1 c shredded carrots
1/4 t salt
1/4 t cayenne pepper
1 can diced water chestnuts, drained
3T hoisin sauce
3 T low-sodium soy sauce
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro (optional)
Boston lettuce leaves
Tortillas

Heat oils in a large nonstick skillet or wok over medium heat. Add garlic, mushrooms and onions. Cook until the onions begin to carmelize a bit and then add meat. Cook until the meat is completely cooked, stirring occasionally. Add cabbage, carrots, salt, red pepper, and water chestnuts. Cook until the cabbage and carrots are very soft and there is no remaining liquid in the bottom of the pan, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat, and hoison and soy sauce. Stir in cilantro if you are using it. Spoon about 1/4 c of the mixture into a lettuce leaf or tortilla. Serve immediately so the lettuce doesn't get too wilty.

For those of you who like things kicked-up, you may want to add some Thai Chili-Garlic sauce or extra hoisin sauce in each wrap. I kept the recipe fairly mild to appeal to our boys.

Happy New Year!

PS--to SM--I haven't forgotten about getting a good stir-fry recipe for you!

2 comments:

Slacker Mama said...

Luckily you posted that PS...I was totally going to heckle you for posting a Chinese recipe that wasn't stir-fry...even though it sounds super yummy!

NH Yocal said...

Sounds delicious. I am ready to celebrate!