Asian Chicken Lettuce Wraps

This week has been something else...I finally finished my annotated bibliography and turned it in after hours and hours of hard brain frying work, so naturally what do I want to do for the rest of my week? Look at food blogs and cook up a storm!  Wednesday night there was suppose to be a huge snow storm, my roommate and I desperately wanted a snow day on Thursday....so what did we do? We acted like we both didn't have to work the next day (ie staying up late watching episodes of many things and yes drinking a fair amount of wine).  Needless to say the next day was not a snow day and I felt a little under the weather if you know what I mean.  My brain function was not at its prime and I was grumpy from little sleep, so what do I do when I'm drained and unmotivated to do anything? Spend endless hours gawking at food blogs.  I knew I had chicken I needed to use up but I wanted to make something different (here is my branching out and being creative thing again) and I seriously started becoming frustrated when it seemed as if people only made roasted chicken, drumsticks, seasoned chicken breasts, Parmesan chicken, chicken skewers, or some sort of stuffed chicken.....these were the main recipes for pages upon pages of chicken meals.  I was ready to give up on chicken until I found this recipe and its very tasty.  I made this meal last night for my wonderful friend Turner (who also has an awesome blog) and I so that we could make it through putting together a 40 minute discussion for our class that we have all weekend.  So here it is.



Adapted from This Week for Dinner
Serves 2

The Ingredients
1 large chicken breast, diced bite size
5 shiitake mushrooms, chopped
1 (8 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and chopped
1/2 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon crushed ginger
1/8 cup hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons sriracha hot sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sesame oil
 4 romaine heart lettuce leaves
olive oil

The Process
1.  Heat up olive oil over medium-high heat in wok (or skillet), when hot add chicken and onions.  Cook for about 5 minutes or until chicken is almost cooked through.

2.  Then add garlic, water chestnuts, mushrooms, sesame oil, sriracha, rice vinegar, hoisin, ginger, and soy sauce.  Stir and reduce heat to medium heat and cook for about 3 more minutes or until ingredients are semi-soft.

3.  Put chicken mixture romaine lettuce leaves, roll, and eat.

I also served brown jasmine rice with soy sauce and nori komi furikake.  This is also a very healthy meal with protein and veggies.