This months Daring Cooks challenge was Moo Shu Pork. I love Moo Shu, I had made it once in the past but did not make the "pancakes" so it sounded like fun to try to make all the parts. The challenge even had a recipe for hoisin sauce so I decided to make that as well.
The recipe came together easily. It is like a lot of Chinese cooking where most of the time is spent preparing and cutting all the ingredients and the actual cooking is a small part of the whole process. The hoisin recipe was very easy - just mix the ingredients. The hoisin was much runnier than most I have seen before but it tasted very good. The ingredients were also much different than a bottled hoisin I had (where the main ingredient was sugar). For the Moo Shu I did use a standard green cabbage since I had just gotten one from our CSA and I also used a mix of white mushrooms and the black mushrooms.
The most interesting part of the recipe for me was the making of the pancakes. They are just flour and water but the technique is the interesting part. I did follow the alternate #2 directions from the recipe. For the technique you form two small 3" pancakes, then you coat one side with oil, press the two pancakes together and roll them to form one 6" pancake. You cook this is a dry pan then you separate the two pancakes. They come right apart where they were oiled and you have two very thin pancakes that are nice and delicate and cooked nicely. I was a little scared of this technique and my first set or two came out a little thick but after I got the hang of it they were not hard and came out very nice.
Thanks to Shelly of C Mom Cook and Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood for this months challenge. I loved it. If you would like to follow along and try out this recipe it can be found in the Daring Cooks Recipe Archive.
