Sticky Pork Tortilla Cups with Butter Lettuce

Sticky Pork Tortilla Cups with Butter Lettuce.

Makes 8 · Ready in 30 minutes

This started life as san choy bau, the Cantonese dish most of us know as lettuce wraps, and it ended up somewhere more useful. The cup here is a flour tortilla pressed into a muffin pan and baked until it crisps, which means it holds its shape, it holds a hot filling, and you can build the whole thing an hour before anyone arrives instead of assembling at the table while your guests watch.

The butter lettuce goes in first, roughly chopped, sitting underneath the pork. It keeps the base of the cup from going soft and it gives you something cool and green against a filling that is sweet, salty and warm.

Ingredients

• 8 small flour tortillas (6-inch)
• About 4 cups roughly chopped butter lettuce
• 1 lb ground pork, ground chicken, or firm tofu
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 tsp freshly grated ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 2 scallions, sliced
• 2 tbsp toasted peanuts, crushed
• Cooking spray

Method

1. Heat the oven to 350°F. Spray the tortillas lightly with cooking spray, then press one down into each of eight cups of a standard muffin pan, using the base of a small glass.
2. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes until golden, then leave them in the pan to cool, which is when they crisp properly.
3. While the cups cool, brown the ground pork hard in a hot skillet with the garlic and ginger.
4. Add the soy sauce, sesame oil and hoisin, and keep cooking until the sauce turns sticky and coats the meat.
5. Put a small handful of chopped butter lettuce in the bottom of each cup, spoon the hot pork over the top, and finish with the scallions and crushed peanuts.

Lettuce first, always. It's doing a job down there, keeping the wet stuff off the tortilla, and it's the only cold thing in the cup. Fill them right before you serve and they'll still crunch.

Why it works

You get three textures in one bite, which is more than most party food manages. The tortilla is crisp and slightly chewy at the edge, the butter lettuce is cool and soft, and the pork is sticky and rich enough to need something cutting through it. The peanuts and scallions do that cutting right at the end.

Making these for a crowd

Bake the cups up to a day ahead and keep them in an airtight container once they are completely cool, which takes the only fiddly part out of the day itself. The pork can be cooked a few hours ahead and warmed through, and everything else is assembly. Put the peanuts in a small bowl on the side rather than on top if there are kids around or you do not know the room, because a peanut on a plate is a choice and a peanut in a cup is a surprise. The recipe doubles without any trouble as long as you have two muffin pans, or you bake the cups in two batches while the pork sits.

Make it yours

Ground chicken works just as well as pork. For a vegetarian version, crumble firm tofu and brown it hard so it takes on color, or use finely chopped mushrooms, which soak up the sauce beautifully. Corn tortillas make the cups gluten free, though you will need to check your hoisin and soy as well. Wonton wrappers pressed into a mini muffin pan give you a one-bite version, and a squeeze of lime at the table sharpens the whole thing up.

Rough cut, no core, no waste

Butter lettuce is usually sold as a head, which means a core to cut around and a handful of outer leaves nobody eats. Ours comes as loose leaves instead, so there is nothing to trim and nothing to throw out. It grows indoors with nothing sprayed on it and it is never washed, so it goes into the pack clean and dry and you can chop it straight out of the bag.