Thai Night- LemonWood and Cabbage Wraps

First of all, Brad did a very good job shopping for all the crazy stuff this night called for. He even enlisted the help of a Thai lady at the Asian store who helped him get all the right curries and the tamarind. He also bought the prettiest head of lettuce I had seen in a long time. Which turned out to be cabbage. Which didn't register with either of us until everyone else pointed it out. However, they are much sturdier in lettuce wraps than lettuce ever is, so there were no complaints.
So...this dinner party was crazy nutso.
The appetizer was marinated shrimp with lime juice. The lime juice was supposed to "cook" the shrimp. Like Peruvian "cerviche"- the fish version. It took about 15 minutes of that before I realized I was sauteeing those shrimp. Gray shrimp meat is not appetizing. In fact, it's about disgusting. So the appetizer was that shrimp mixed with ground pork, strips of cooked egg, and lemon grass. Which has the texture more of bamboo than grass. It went in the food processor pretty quickly once I realized how hard that stuff actually is. It was surrounded by "lettuce" leaves, celery leaves, and cucumber slices. It sounds weird as can be, but was very good. And it had a cool dipping sauce which is also complicated and involves citrus leaves, tamarind, and shrimp juice.
Out next recipe was Red Beef Curry, which also calls for citrus leaves. Luckily, citrus grows great here in December on Orange street, one block south so I sent Brad to steal a handful off our neighbors' tree. Actually, I told him to knock and ask. He didn't. Whatever. That turned out to be our main meal, served over rice.
We also had Siamese fried chicken- a lot like killer good chicken nugggets- which was easy and very tasty.
And we had banana splits for dessert. We were going to have fried bananas, but we ran out of oil.
This week we really didn't know ANY of the people who came over, and they were all totally fun. We laughed a lot- the guys especially were hilarious- so we had a very good time.
The food required so many burners that our kitchen looked like a tornado hit it! Oh well! It was great!
(The cute little ornament place holders on the table we got from Crate & Barrel. We are using them exactly twice, but they are so much fun.!)