Gilled Pork and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

This was somewhat inspired by a restaurant in Toronto, Spice Route. The girls and I had dinner there last Saturday. I have to say, this place is beautiful, stunning really. The food; however, left us underwhelmed. Everything was ok, but nothing was great. Certainly not what you would expect from the place. The menu was misleading, the food itself just good to mediocre and not always well-balanced flavours. The service was quite good for the most part although even then, when we really needed the waiter's attention, it took some time.

So why use any of that as inspiration? Well, they had some good concepts. And it is really just a take on something I do anyway. Meet the lettuce wrap. Now, I have never done lettuce wraps, but I figure you are mostly just replacing rice paper wraps with lettuce and filling it with whatever you like as per spring rolls.

The pork was grilled simply with crushed chilies, kosher salt and pepper. I made a peanut sauce, which tends to vary depending on what I feel like. Today, I used: organic peanut butter, sesame oil, splash of tamari, minced lemongrass, garlic (microplaned), lime juice and zest, cayenne pepper, chili flakes, rice vinegar, bit'o cumin and I think that's it. Veggies were just julienned carrots and red pepper. I really should have had rice or rice vermicelli too, but it was too hot to heat anything indoors. A very nice summer meal IMO.