The Daring Cooks’ October Challenge: Mmm mmm mmm 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 the pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

I think of all the Daring Cooks' Challenges I have done so far, this has been the tastiest and also had the best effort vs result ratio!

I thought it would be fiddly and time consuming, but it really wasn't - only slightly more time consuming than cooking a normal sort of meal.

I have to admit a certain sense of trepidation to begin with. I asked Mr E to buy some pork loin or fillet when he was at the supermarket, expecting him to come back with some escalopes or chops. Instead, this is what he brought home.

Yep - that's right - bacon! But I decided to go with it, and so moo shu bacon was born, and it was amazing. Seriously tasty! Worth making not just in an accidental way, but actually in an intentional way too. In a way that I'd definitely make again. In fact Mr E rated it as the tastiest dinner ever, and proclaimed it so to the world via Facebook. High praise indeed.

The thing is, I don't actually have a recipe as to how I made it - I just sort of chucked some stuff together.
You can find the complete challenge on the Daring Kitchen website.

And here's a quick run down of what I subbed for what, but without anything as helpful as quantities. Sorry folks - what can I say, sometimes I'm not a very precise cook!

I made the pancakes as is, but a quarter batch, since I was just cooking dinner for the two of us.

A pancake post-dry frying.

For the stir fry, I used cubed cooked bacon (I baked it the day before, wrapped in foil, for an hour and a half or so), tinned bamboo shoots, grated carrot, egg, rice vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce.

Bacon stir fry!

I made hoisin sauce and subbed peanut butter for black bean paste, 1 tsp honey and 1 of molasses, rice wine vinegar for white vinegar, a clove of crushed garlic for garlic powder, and a pinch of chili powder for hot sauce.

Quick and easy hoisin style sauce. Peanut butter probably makes it inauthentic, but it tastes good!

Pancakes, stir fry and sauce - balanced precariously close to the edge of the work top (most likely to hide the clutter from the camera...)

A pancake ready to be rolled.

We still had bacon left, so the next day I used it with more bamboo shoots, carrot broccoli, egg, the leftover hoisin sauce and a sheet of puff pastry to make a big free form Moo Shu Bacon Pie, which gave us another two delicious meals.  I'm not sure where the pie rated in Mr E's all time meal preferences, but I reckon it was at least in the top 50% too.

Looking giant and pie-y. Glazed with beaten egg and hoisin sauce hence the dark colour.

Leftovers in pie = almost as good as the non-leftovers