Recipe 1: Hoisin Chicken Lettuce Cups

Let me just say right off the bat that this recipe was a great one to kick off the whole book with. It was super tasty and also very very easy to make! I can only hope that all the recipes in Jamie's book are just as yummy and simple.

This recipe featured fresh lettuce leaves acting as cups for sprouts, chicken, and mango, topped with hoisin sauce mixed with mango juice and pulp.

The Shopping Experience

The hoisin sauce, mango, lettuce, and chicken breasts were all extremely easy to track down in my regular grocery store (IGA). The sprouting cress was, unfortunately, another story. After having no luck in the fresh veg section of my first choice grocer, I dragged my boyfriend along for a short drive to Safeway, Whole Foods, and Urban Fare in hopes to find the elusive sprouting cress. Once we checked all of these locations, it looked like the only options for any kind of sprout would be alfalfa sprouts or something sold as a "Garlic Blend" which was alfalfa and garlic sprouts; oddly enough, both of these types of sprouts were sold at every grocery store we went to. I settled for the latter in hopes that the garlic would add a nice note to the finished dish. Although, I was a bit disappointed since my sprout mix didn't look exactly like Jamie's sprouting cress.

But with the search for the final ingredient finally finished, we were ready to go home and start cooking!

The Cooking Experience

In an earlier chapter of the cookbook, Jamie mentions the use of a grill pan. I do not currently own a grill pan and actually considered buying one during a recent trip to IKEA. I ultimately decided not to just because I didn't want to spend the money at the time and also figured that whatever can be cooked on a grill pan can be cooked in a regular pan. I know that may be wrong for certain foods but in this recipe, everything worked out fine after cooking the chicken in a regular pan with the same seasonings of salt, pepper, and olive oil.

The instructions in this recipe were nice and easy to follow with no confusion. I heavily dislike when recipes include complex terminology that requires on-the-job Google-ing; luckily, none of that was necessary for this straightforward recipe. 

In case anyone is wanting to recreate the recipe's sauce by adding some mango pulp and juice to hoisin (highly recommend), a tip I learned while cooking was that although the recipe said to “scrunch the stone [of the mango] over a bowl to extract any pulp and juice”, I realized it was surprisingly hard to get all the juice just by pushing the mango against a bowl's edge. I ended up just squeezing the mango over the bowl with my hands, which was way faster, and I think ended up getting out more juice that I otherwise would have.

I don't know about you but I cringed at the idea of having to pound chicken breasts with my bare hands that is described in this recipe. Another tip I'd love to pass along to any fellow cooking novices is to lay a sheet of plastic wrap over the chicken breasts and pound it with a nice barrier between you and the chicken instead. 

The Eating Experience

As I mentioned earlier, this recipe was super tasty. It's filling and tastes so healthy and fresh. Using romaine lettuce hearts meant that the lettuce cups were light, crisps, and lightly sweet which complimented the mango very nicely. The portion size was perfect for me as a whole meal but my boyfriend still felt a little bit peckish afterwards and felt the need to eat a couple of cookies after dinner. But then again, maybe he just wanted an excuse to eat cookies.

Although I don't have anything to really compare it to, my substitution of alfalfa and garlic sprouts worked very nicely and actually did add a subtle garlicky flavour. Since the sprouts were meant to serve more as a garnish to the lettuce cups, I definitely don't think using actual sprouting cress or even substituting pea shoots in the future would make too much a difference.

My one little nitpicky critique would be that the romaine lettuce felt sometimes too small for the pieces of chicken and mango I wanted to load into them. That said, that could very well just be my own gluttony's fault for wanting to fully load all of my bites. In the future, I may try out this recipe with iceberg or green leaf lettuce instead so I can have the option of indulging in stuffing my face with larger wraps.

Final Thoughts

All in all, I would say my first taste of the Jamie Oliver cookbook was a grand success! The food was very good (which is really what you want from a cookbook at the end of the day, right?) with unique flavours that complimented each other, the ingredients were easy enough to find with a perfectly suitable substitution, and the steps were simple to follow. My boyfriend and I were in complete agreement to cook it again sometime. Since we had to buy a new bottle of hoisin sauce for this recipe, we might as well make sure we actually use it! 

Total estimated cook time: 17 min
Total actual cook time: 30 min (including time taken to double check instructions)