Asian-Style Minced Chicken Sausage with Roasted Rice Powder and Lettuce Leaves

I first tasted this delight of Asian cooking in 1971, at The Mandarin, Cecilia Chiang’s celebrated fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. It was made with squab, rather than the more standard chicken. At the time, it was an anomaly, and an eye-opener to me about a rich and varied pan-Asian fare that I was just beginning to encounter. Since then, culinary relatives of that Chinese classic have become looked-for menu choices in the Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese restaurants that pepper American neighborhoods. The Southeast Asian versions, called laab, laap, larb, or larp, depending on who’s doing the translating, are basically refreshing sausage salads, sometimes made with pork, suitable for an appetizer or a meal, depending on how you want to serve them. They’re a cinch to make at home. Ground chicken works fine if you are not inclined to mince the meat with a chef’s knife. The advantage of the latter is that the sausage has a more defined texture. The roasted rice powder is an almost-secret treasure of Southeast Asian cuisine. It keeps its fragrance and savor for weeks, waiting in the cupboard for when you would like a dash of something different, subtle and nutty, on top of almost anything.