Years ago, Phil and I were in an antiques store in town looking for a good bargain. Antiques store pricing is often flexible, so when Phil picked an item, he decided to ask the proprietor for a discount. She was on the phone, and as he approached the counter, we heard her say loudly and emphatically into the receiver, “And I said, ‘No! That is my price!’”
If you know Phil, you know that he isn’t easily dissuaded from seeking a bargain, but he knows when he’s beaten. He put the item back on the shelf and we sheepishly slunk out of the store. We found the line so striking that we used it at every conceivable opportunity for the next twenty years. Our tone may fall anywhere between condescension and petulance, but it usually means, “You’re not calling the shots, Buddy. I am.”
Enter Ben. As is often the case, he misheard our ridiculous mocking, and turned price into rice. Now the line makes no sense at all, but whenever we make a dish with rice, there’s a fifty-fifty chance that one of us will dredge up the staccato line, “No! That is my rice!”
Rice should be about the easiest thing on the planet to produce, but we wanted sticky rice for this week’s recipe. Have you ever googled recipes for sticky rice? For a dish with two ingredients, rice and water, it sure does seem to be a complicated process! By the time you rinse it, soak it, cover it with a cloth, and set up a Netflix account for it so it has something to do during the lengthy preparation process, you may just as well order take out.
We made it the day before because we wanted to eat it cold for this dish, and I had read that we could make it in the rice cooker. Our rice steamer, which is even older than our antiques store line, has no specifications for sticky rice in the manual. I guess the good folks at Black and Decker could not conceive of a time beyond the Clinton administration when ordinary citizens may wish to make sticky rice. The enigmatic online recipe gave proportions of rice to water, but recommended that one cooks it until it is done. I take it that modern rice cookers have sensors for timing, but we aren’t so lucky. I won’t even tell you what we did because I am certain it was not the right thing to do at all. We ended up with something that was pretty good, but by trying to circumvent the lengthy process, I caused myself just as much hassle as if I had followed the proper instructions. I know that if the fussy, glutinous little grains could speak, they would declare, “No! That is my rice!”
We love the taste and the notion of lettuce wraps because individuals make delicious little satchels of Asian sauce, meat, and anything else that strikes their fancy, but the problem for us is that even using the proper lettuce (like butter lettuce) they always fall apart on us and sauce drips down our chins and our forearms until it looks like we’re shooting a horror film. But darn it, we aren’t quitters around here, so we devised a new shape for our lettuce wraps, in hopes that we could get more of the tasty stuff in our mouths. Introducing….
Ben has always called romaine lettuce hearts “big stem” lettuce to distinguish it from tender greens, which he calls “basil salad.” He was delighted to have his beloved big stems do the job in lettuce longboats. We used our adaptation of Christopher Kimball’s Sweet Soy-Braised Pork found in the recipe index or below, and the results were great!
Big Stem Lettuce Longboats
Sweet Soy-Braised Pork: https://bensdaywednesday.com/sweet-soy-braised-pork/
sticky rice
whole romaine lettuce heart leaves
mango
cucumber
cilantro
lime
salt
sesame seeds
Prepare the sweet soy-braised pork according to directions. Smaller pieces would be best here, but we were operating with pre-cut cubes from the freezer.
Figure out how to make sticky rice, make it, and chill it. (You could just use regular rice instead if you don’t have a bee in your bonnet.)
Chop mango, cucumber, and cilantro. Squeeze lime juice on mango mixture and add salt to taste.
To serve, diners assemble their own big stem lettuce longboats by starting with a lettuce leaf held like a sailing vessel. Next dab on some sticky rice, followed by pork, and then the mango mixture. Top with sesame seeds. You may want to fold the edges of the lettuce up over the toppings so you can contain them.
