Spicy Beef Lettuce Cups with Peanut Noodle Salad

My friend Bobby from FlavCity has SO many recipes.  I got his keto cookbook last year and I made a few dishes right off the bat.

But like most things in life, it got put to the side and I recently rediscovered it.

I made his Spicy Beef Lettuce Cups – I followed his recipe exactly for the beef filling (sans onions!) and made a different noodle salad on top using hearts of palm pasta.  You can find his recipe here.

I had forgotten that he wrote this inscription in my copy 😀

Here is the lineup for my “pasta” salad:

If you are a condiment whore like me, you probably already have most of the ingredients.  Although I was out of rice vinegar and stocked up on that – I puffy heart that vinegar.  Also I used PB Fit in this recipe because that’s what I had on hand.

I’ve learned some things about this hearts of palm pasta since I’ve been using it.  It comes in a plastic bag that is pantry shelf stable, and I find that if I drain it for a bit, then pan “fry” it over low heat without anything in the pan, it evaporates all the moisture from the hearts of palm.  I like that texture much better.

That being said, this is not going to taste like bucatini pasta from an Italian restaurant.  Its hearts of palm in the shape of pasta, so it tastes like hearts of palm, which is like the tofu of vegetables – not much flavor until you mix something with them.  Here is how it looks after its dried out.

I made the noodle salad the day before I put this dinner together and it had WAY more flavor marinating overnight.  The veggies were all still crunchy which was a nice texture balance with the beef.

Klassy as ever!  Ha!

Here is what I thought of my dinner:

Guess what?!  I am doing a live with Mariano’s tomorrow night!  The event is free, you just need to register to get the zoom link – I hope you’ll join me!