Blog-checking lines: 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.
The first thing I made was the Hoisin sauce. The recipe called for either black bean paste or peanut butter. Since we had peanut butter on hand, I went with that.
After following the recipe, I found it tasted too much like peanut butter. So I started adding a bit more of this, a dash of that, tasting as I went. I finally got it to taste how I wanted, but it had become quite thin. So I threw it in a pot and heated it till it had reduced to a nice thick consistency.
The stir fry itself was rather unremarkable to make. Chop a lot of stuff into matchstick sizes, add one by one to the pan and, stirring constantly, cook until done.
The pancakes seemed easy enough; they only had 2 ingredients - water and flour. And they did work out very well, the first night. The problem we have with most recipes is that they always make too much for just the 2 of us. We each ate 3 pancakes with our meal, but the recipe made 20+. Since you have to cook them just as you eat them so that they don't dry out, I put the extra dough in the fridge to have the next night with our left over Moo Shu Pork. That part didn't work out very well. The dough on the second night was VERY sticky, hard to roll out and needed the addition of a LOT of flour to be able to work with it. That led to flour burning in the frying pan (you dry fry each pancake) and was overall frustrating to work with. They still tasted pretty good though!
It's great to have another relatively simple recipe to add to my repertoire. With each month I'm feeling more and more confident in my cooking and even have found myself cooking on the weekend without the push of a Daring Kitchen challenge.
10 comments:
Loved you're story. You really dared the recipe.
You did an awesome job! Sorry that the pancake dough didn't work out so well the second day. I usually cut the recipe in half, since it comes together relatively quickly. I am glad that the Daring Kitchen is giving you more kitchen confidence, because you are doing a great job!! Thanks for cooking with us this month.
Nice job on the challenge! Sorry to hear your pancakes didn't work out as well on the second night. I halved the pancake recipe and still ended up with too much. I actually just cooked all the pancakes on the first night. The next day I warmed them up briefly in the microwave covered with a damp paper towel and the reheated great.
Wow great job making your own sauce. Good job for this month's challenge!
You did a great job on this challenge!
I know what you mean about the pancakes making too much
I made half the recipe and we still didn't finish them
Great job on the pancakes! We had the same issue really as we're also just two people and three was indeed more then enough. I did bake all of them and figured I could freeze the remaining pancakes and microwave them when needed. Sounds like that was a fairly good option instead of putting the dough in the fridge.
Even though you had some trouble with the pancakes, your whole Moo Shu feast turned out great! The bes part about the DK is taking on a recipe you've never tried, or even much less heard of :)
It's great to discover a new recipe - especially one as tasty as this! Yours looks delicious :-)
I had a bit of challenge with the pancakes too. On the first day. But, we persevered. Good job on the sauce.
I am glad that you enjoyed the moo shu! The pancake recipe can be frustratine, as the quantity it makes is far more than most of us need... but I am sure it is something we can play with to make just the right amount...! I would love to know how you doctored the hoisin sauce, and I am glad you found a way to make it work. Thank you for cooking with us!!
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