Barbecued Chinese Chicken Lettuce Wraps

"The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through one nice green leaf, and after that he felt much better."

We did it!!! This is the LAST of the very healthy caterpillar recipes and we saved a good one for last! This is a recipe we had while staying with one of the best cooks ever in California! We begged her for the recipe and had to make it ourselves. There are some slight alterations I would make. First of all I would use butter lettuce since I'm not a huge fan of iceberg. I think next time I will either leave out the orange zest or at the very least cut back A LOT! I also used just plain old mushrooms rather than shitake, added a lot of water chestnuts since they are fantastic and ate it with the home made peanut sauce from this recipe. You really can't screw this up though. It's good and it's healthy. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Source: www.foodnetwork.com (discovered by Nancy Costa of Santa Rosa, CA)

Serves: 6

Ingredients

• 2 cups shitake mushrooms fresh shiitake mushrooms
• 1 ¹⁄₃ to 1 ¹⁄₂ pounds thin cut chicken breast or chicken tenders
• 2 tablespoons light colored oil such as vegetable oil or peanut oil
• Coarse salt and coarse black pepper
• 3 cloves garlic chopped
• 1 inch ginger root finely chopped or grated, optional
• 1 orange zested
• ¹⁄₂ red bell pepper diced small
• 1 small sliced water chestnuts 6 to 8 ounces, sliced water chestnuts, drained and chopped
• 3 scallions chopped
• 3 tablespoons hoisin Chinese barbecue sauce, available on Asian foods aisle of market
• ¹⁄₂ large head iceberg lettuce core removed, head quartered
• Wedges of navel orange -- platter garnish

Directions

1. Remove tough stems from mushrooms and brush with damp towel to clean, Slice mushrooms. Chop chicken into small pieces.
2. Preheat a large skillet or wok to high.
3. Add oil to hot pan. Add chicken to the pan and sear meat by stir frying a minute or 2. Add mushrooms and cook another minute or two. Add salt and pepper to season, then garlic and ginger. Cook a minute more. Grate zest into pan, add bell pepper bits, chopped water chestnuts and scallions. Cook another minute, continuing to stir fry mixture. Add hoisin Chinese barbecue sauce and toss to coat the mixture evenly. Transfer the hot chopped barbecued chicken to serving platter and pile the quartered wedges of crisp iceberg lettuce along side. Add wedged oranges to platter to garnish. To eat, pile spoonfuls into lettuce leaves, wrapping lettuce around fillings and squeeze an orange wedge over.

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 182

Fat: 8

Carbohydrate: 10

Protein: 13