October 2011 Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Moo Shu

The October Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I figure this is my chance to redeem myself after the appam incident.  I will follow the directions!  My moo shu will be delicious and photograph beautifully!

HAHAHAHA.  Ahem.  To be fair, they were delicious – but it’s really damn hard to take beautiful pictures of flat dough.  I salute you, the makers of tortilla commercials.

Thin Pancakes:

Makes 24-30 pancakes
Preparation time: about 10 minutes plus 30 minutes’ standing time
Cooking time: 45-50 minutes

Ingredients
4 cups (960 ml) (560 gm) (19¾ oz) all purpose flour
About 1½ cup (300ml) (10 fl oz) boiling water
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vegetable oil
Dry flour for dusting

Directions:

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Gently pour in the water, stirring as you pour, then stir in the oil. Knead the mixture into a soft but firm dough. If your dough is dry, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, to reach the right consistency. Cover with a damp towel and let stand for about 30 minutes.

Lightly dust the surface of a worktop with dry flour. Knead the dough for 6-8 minutes or until smooth, then divide into 3 equal portions. Roll out each portion into a long sausage and cut each sausage into 8-10 pieces. Keep the dough that you are not actively working with covered with a lightly damp dish cloth to keep it from drying out.

Roll each piece into a ball, then, using the palm of your hand, press each piece into a flat pancake. Dust the worktop with more dry flour. Flatten each pancake into a 6 to 8 inch (15 cm to 20 cm) circle with a rolling pin, rolling gently on both sides.

Place an un-greased frying pan over high heat. Once the pan is hot, lower the heat to low and place the pancakes, one at a time, in the pan. Remove when little light-brown spots appear on the underside.

Cover with a damp cloth until ready to serve.

For the stir-fry, I combined some leftover honey-soy braised pork, napa cabbage, red cabbage, two eggs, onion, garlic & ginger along with hoisin, chili-garlic paste, soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice vinegar.

Oh, and quick soapbox on the eggs – we had one farm egg left from our last co-op delivery, and used that with one grocery-store egg.  Here’s a photo – the grocery store egg is on the right:

Buy farm eggs, people.

For the sauce, I had every intention of using the hoisin recipe that was provide by our lovely hosts.  But I forgot to make it and then I was really hungry.  Here’s the recipe anyway!

Hoisin Sauce

Ingredients
4 tablespoons (60 ml) soy sauce
2 tablespoons (30 ml) peanut butter OR black bean paste
1 tablespoon (15 ml) honey OR molasses
2 teaspoons (10 ml) white vinegar
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) garlic powder
2 teaspoons (10 ml) sesame seed oil
20 drops (¼ teaspoon) Chinese style hot sauce (optional, depending on how hot you want your hoisin sauce)
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) black pepper

Directions:
Simply mix all of the ingredients together by hand using a sturdy spoon.
At first it does not appear like it will mix, but keep at it just a bit longer and your sauce will come together.

The final plated moo shu + stirfry:

They were really tasty!  We ate them like little tacos – adorable and delicious.  Thanks Shelley and Ruth for a great challenge!