Recipe Geek: Spicy Turkey in Lettuce Cups

Recipe Geek is a new feature in which I pick random recipes which I haven't made before and test them and report on the results. The recipes will generally be taken from magazines, the newspaper, or the internet. I'll include a link to the recipe but won't cut and paste the whole thing into here.
This week's entry/entree, Spicy Chicken in Lettuce Cups, appeared in the Whole Foods magazine. I picked it because I like chicken in lettuce cups but have never made it at home. Also, I had some ground turkey in the freezer.
I prepared it more or less according to the recipe. I used ground turkey instead of chicken, and left out the green onions - I had some chives I was going to use instead but they had gone bad. Other than that I didn't make any substitutions.
It was pretty straightforward - much less problematic than meatballs. Ginger, red bell pepper and garlic were chopped up and briefly sauteed, then the turkey was added and broken up while it was cooking. When the turkey was done, the remaining soy sauce/broth/cornstarch mixture was added, followed by cilantro, sesame oil and a smidgen of red pepper flakes. I didn't have the proper type of lettuce so i just ate it on a bed of mixed baby lettuce.
Anyway, it was pretty good but not quite as tasty as some of the restaurant versions, which are a lot sweeter and richer and probably contain MSG. You could probably add a little bit of plum sauce to mimic the taste of the restaurant versions. The green onions would've added some zip too, but since I'm not a huge onion fan I didn't miss them very much.
It's pretty healthy, easy, and tasty, so it's a keeper. Plus, it's a lot cheaper than going to P.F. Chang's!
OK, it's time for me to go swim now. Stay tuned for the next installment of Recipe Geek.

Missy's Macadamia Nut Cookies

A few weeks ago, Missy was rapidly approaching the old biddy milestone of her 40th birthday. She dropped hints that some Mexican wedding cookies would be a good gift. Mexican wedding cookies are buttery nut cookies which I make every year at Christmas. I use walnuts but they also taste good with pecans. They're also known as Russian tea cakes or snowballs. Over the years, I've tweaked the recipe slightly by using a bit of rice flour in place of regular white flour. By lowering the gluten content slightly,the cookies are more buttery and have less of a raw flour taste. They also spread a bit more while baking.
Missy loves macadamia nuts and I wanted to do something special for her birthday, so I tweaked the recipe some more. I'm still partial to the walnut ones, but the macadamia nut ones got raves from Missy and also were a hit as a valentine's day present.
As an added bonus, you can mix in the nuts with your hands. Since the dough doesn't contain any eggs, you can even lick out the bowl when you're done.
One of my cats is obsessed with butterfat. She goes ballistic whenenever I make these. I have to chase her out of the kitchen. The last time I made them, I caught her sitting on the counter next to the cookies with a guilty look on her face.

Missy's Macadamia Nut Cookies
1 cup (two sticks) butter
3/4 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup rice flour*
1 1/2 cups finely chopped macadamia nuts
1 cup powdered sugar for rolling the cookies in

Preheat oven to 350F and lightly grease two cookie sheets. Cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla until fluffy and well blended. Stir in flour and rice flour and blend well. Add nuts and mix. You can do this with your hands if you want. Shape the dough into walnut sized balls and bake 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. After the cookies have cooled, roll them in powdered sugar and store in an airtight container.

*if you don't have rice flour, just use a total of 2 cups flour.