Thai Lettuce Wraps with Mango Chutney

We had some lettuce this week from the farm so naturally my first thought was to make Thai lettuce wraps. I was first introduced to the concept of Thai lettuce wraps by my friend Annie when we went to a quirky little restaurant in Grand Rapids called The Winchester. They were amazing and I started thinking that I could possibly make these at home. I had them again at P.F. Chang's and was unimpressed. The overall flavor wasn't as good and they used iceberg lettuce instead of romaine, which in my opinion dumbs down the dish. After the P.F. Chang's experience, I tried them at home with good results, but I thought I could do better. My first attempt at the sauce was a little too salty because I went overboard on the soy sauce (I had basically just thrown anything that seemed Thai-like into the pot -- turned out good but not great). My roommate Kristin insists they were still excellent, but I wanted to try again. 

So, this week's lettuce wraps were round 2 for me with some necessary improvements from my earlier recipe. But, I'm going to start by describing the mango chutney I made to go with it. This was a first for me so I got some guidance from a Google search, which led me to this recipe from the Food Network, and went from there. What I actually ended up doing was based on the recipe with my own tweaks and alterations.

First, I peeled and chopped 4 mangoes while my lovely assistants Beth and Kristin chopped 1 red bell pepper and about 1/3 of a medium-sized red onion. I put a little olive oil in a saucepan (enough to lightly cover the bottom) and toasted some red pepper flakes (add more or less depending on how hot you want the chutney). Then I added my onions and peppers with a shake of ground ginger. I'm not a huge fan of ginger so I toned that way down from the Food Network recipe. I let that cook (thank you Beth for stirring) while I mixed up about 2 cups of pineapple juice, 3/4 cup of cider vinegar, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 1 Tablespoon of yellow curry powder in a separate bowl. (I actually measured it out. Can you believe it?). I poured the liquid mixture into the saucepan and let it simmer for about 30 minutes on low heat. I added a handful of raisins when it was about done and let it simmer for about 5 more minutes. Then I cooled it down in an ice bath and voila, it was done!

I was actually making the chutney at the same time that I was making the Thai lettuce wraps and the timing was a little off so it might be a good idea to make the chutney in advance since it takes longer. The Thai lettuce wraps were made with ground turkey that was browned (although turkey doesn't get brown so much as gray) and drained. Then, I started mixing the sauce ingredients right into the pan with the meat (why dirty another bowl, right?). This part of the recipe was completely made up but with changes from my previous attempt. I started with equal parts soy sauce (low sodium) and oyster sauce (available in the international section of the grocery store). I used about 1/4 cup of each. I added a Tablespoon of hot Chinese mustard (also in the international section) and a few good shakes each of curry powder and cumin. Then, I poured in about a cup of vegetable broth (homemade by my roommate Kristin...maybe that would be a good guest blog appearance for later...) and let it all cook together until the liquid was pretty much cooked off. 

While all this was going on, Kristin had been faithfully chopping up our garnishes of thinly sliced carrots, water chestnuts, and spring onion (I know it's a red onion in the picture...it just looked nicer and we used it in the chutney). We used our lettuce from the farm piled with the Thai turkey mixture, carrots, water chestnuts, onion, and mango chutney. Our lettuce leaves from the farm were pretty small to hold all that and we didn't have enough for all of the people that were over, so we supplemented with some romaine lettuce. Both lettuce types were great. It's a messy meal and tends to spill out while eating it, but definitely worth it. It usually works best to leave enough leaf available to fold over (not like the picture below). 

These were extra difficult to eat because they're piled so high