Mushroom and Water Chestnut Salad (Vegan Lettuce Wraps)
Paying homage to the popular Chinese san choy bow, this is a delicious vegan salad recipe with crunchy water chestnuts mixed with mushrooms, fresh snow peas and cut chillies, served over crisp baby gem lettuce cups. Share these tasty vegan lettuce wraps with family and friends today.
Wash baby oyster mushrooms. Then slice the larger baby oyster mushrooms in half and leave smaller ones whole.
Slice firm tofu into 1cm cubes.
Add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil to large fry pan and heat over medium heat.
Add sliced baby oyster mushrooms and firm tofu cubes and pan fry for 2-3 minutes until golden brown. Remove baby oyster mushrooms and tofu from heat. Set aside for assembly.
Wash, top and tail snow peas. Then slice each snow pea on a diagonal to create thin strips.
Drain sliced water chestnuts from the can and then further slice water chestnuts into thin strips.
Wash and finely slice 2 sprigs of scallion (spring onion).
Finely chop chilli into small rounds.
Wash and pull apart baby gem lettuce leaves. Set aside for assembly.
Salad Dressing
In a small bowl, mix kecap manis, soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil and rice wine vinegar together.
Stir well until the sugar has dissolved.
Assembly
Place the pan-fried baby oyster mushrooms and tofu in a large mixing bowl.
Add kecap manis dressing and mix together well.
Add sliced water chestnuts, snow peas and half of the scallion (spring onion) to the mushroom mix.
Mix together.
On a large platter, place the baby gem lettuce leaves a row. These will act as a salad cups.
Add mushroom mixture on top.
Drizzle some of the leftover dressing from the mushroom mixture on top.
Sprinkle sesame seeds, chopped chilli and the remainder of the scallion (spring onion) on top of the salad cups.
Serve.
Notes
If you can’t find baby king oyster mushrooms, you can substitute for white button mushrooms, cremini mushrooms, king oyster mushrooms or shemeji. Just make sure you cut them into 1cm pieces.
You find water chestnuts in the Asian aisle in most large supermarkets or Asian grocers. They come whole or sliced. Either one is fine.
Kecap manis can be bought in large supermarkets or Asian grocer. If you can’t find it, I would use brown sugar instead of white sugar in the dressing for that slightly more caramel flavour.
Baby gem lettuce are preferred, but iceberg lettuce will work as well for salad cups.