Ants in a tree... Sort of

A while ago I went to a Chinese restaurant and the little boy of a family friend ordered ants in a tree, I found this quite interesting so I ordered the same to find out what it was. It was quite yummy and I recently found myself with so much ground beef and not enough recipe ideas for it all. I randomly thought of that ants in a tree recipe and thought I would try to recreate it as best I could with the limited ingredients I have.




Ingredients
Lettuce leaves
1 pound lean ground beef
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 large onion
1 garlic clove
1 small chili
4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese 5 spice
1 tablespoon vinegar

Method
Heat a skillet with oil and cook the ground beef until it starts to brown. Transfer to a plate and set aside. Then cook the onion and the garlic until they are beginning to brown. Don't burn the garlic. Then add the spice, chili, soy sauce and vinegar. Cook for a further minute then add the ground beef back in. Mix all the ingredients around until the ground beef is coated in the flavour. Prepare your plates with washed lettuce leaves and put the mince on top. You can add deep fried vermicelli pasta to the dish as well to add a bit of a crisp (I didn't have any). When you're eating, wrap the ground beef in the lettuce leaves and enjoy.

Baby friendly version
Take out the chili and any other flavours your child won't like. If your kido isn't fond of the lettuce then you can take that out too. To add some veg cook in peas and corn. To keep it as a wrap style meal you can make it in tortillas and put the lettuce in there.