Daring Kitchen Challenge: Moo Shu Pork

So, I finally became a member of The Daring Kitchen and this month participated in my first daring cooks challenges. Every month a member posts a cooking challenge which everyone makes and then simultaneously posts to their blogs.  Kinda cool to think there are other folks all over the world doing the same thing you are.

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 kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce. Moo Shu is a Chinese meat and cabbage stir fry topped with hoisin sauces and wrapped in a thin toritlla-like pancake.  The boys—who are quite fond of tortillas, crepes, and anything else you can wrap food in—thought it was both fun and delicious.


This dish is simple to make which was a nice way to start my participation as a daring cook. There are three basic components: the stirfry, the pancakes, and the sauce.  If you buy the pancakes and sauce, this makes quick weekday meal for the family. It has a real homestyle feel to it—Chinese comfort food.


For the stirfry, I marinated narrow strips of pork loin in a Char Siu marinade from Eileen Yin Fei-Lo's cookbook, The Dim Sum Dumpling Book (a fun little cookbook I bought years ago. BTW, her pork bun recipe is amazing). With a hint of Five Spice, it really imparts a wonderful flavor which I was looking for because sometimes Moo Shu can be a little bland. Ethan, whose taste for meat is inconsistent at best, seemed liked he could have eaten a whole bowl of just pork. I found him standing over the wok picking out pieces of meat and had to shoo him away. They have already put an order in for a repeat meal.


In addition to the requisite ingredients of meat, napa cabbage, scallions, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots, I also included sliced onion (the boys are really into sauteed onion lately), a little carrot and green beans to give it a little color, and grated ginger and garlic to boost the flavor.


I used the recipe provided in the challenge for the pancakes. It is from The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung.  A cool trick Shelley included was how to make the pancakes really thin by rolling two pieces of dough together with a little oil in between. After you cook them, you can peel the two pieces apart. It totally worked.


For the sauce I just used Lee Kum Kee bottled hoisin.

Moo Shu Pork
This makes enough to feed 6-8 people

Pancakes
This recipe made about 30 six inch pancakes. We really only needed about half to two-thirds of that for the amount of stirfry I made. I will try freezing the rest.

4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 tsp. canola oil

Mix flour, water and oil until incorporated. Add a little more water or flour, if needed. The dough should be firm. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes.

Divide the dough into three parts, keeping the parts you are not working with covered with a damp cloth or cellophane. Roll each into a 10" log then cut into 10 pieces. Form each piece into a ball. Take two balls and flatten them slightly. Brush a little oil (I used a combo of canola and toasted sesame oils) on one side of one disc, then press the two pieces together and roll out to a 6-8" circle on a lightly floured surface.

Cook on a dry griddle over med-high heat until blistered, but not browned, on both sides. Let it cool a little then peel the two pieces apart.

Click here for a video demonstration of the double rolling method.

Pork
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lbs pork loin, cut into thin strips (I used boneless chops)
3 Tbs. soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbs. honey
1 1/2 Tbs. whiskey
3 1/2 Tbs. hoisin sauce
Pepper
1/2 tsp. Five Spice powder

Mix marinade ingredients thoroughly. Cover and marinate meat in the refrigerator for 4 hours or more.

Stirfry
Peanut or canola oil
6 eggs, beaten
1 medium onion, sliced
1 1/2 tsp. grated ginger root
2 cloves garlic, minced
12 oz. cremini mushrooms, sliced
5-6 cups shredded napa cabbage
one carrot, shredded
1 small can bamboo shoots, sliced lengthwise into matchsticks
1 cup green beans, cut thinly on a diagonal
2 Tbs. soy sauce
1 1/2 Tbs. rice wine
1/2 tsp. toasted sesame oil
6 scallions, sliced

Hoisin Sauce

Heat a wok or large skillet. Add a little oil. When hot, add the eggs and scramble. Remove them from pan and set aside. Add a little more oil and stir fry the veggies. Cook the veggies (onion through green beans) in batches to reduce the amount of juices that accumulate, adding those items that need longer to cook first. When they are all cooked, set the veggies aside.

Wipe your pan out then reheat it with more oil.  Remove meat from the marinade and add to pan. Stirfry in batches until just cooked through, 2-3 minutes. Stir in the veggies and eggs then add the soy, wine, sesame oil, and scallions. Toss to coat evenly.

To eat, spoon some stirfry onto a pancake, drizzle with a little hoisin sauce, and roll up.