Meatless Monday with Mu Shu Vegetables with Pancakes

Hello and welcome (back) to the Miratel blog and thank you for joining us for a Meatless Monday vegetarian recipe share. We consider our Meatless Monday pledge as one of our CSR business initiatives as it promotes eliminating meat one day per week to improve the health of the planet. Miratel supports this great program and features one vegetarian recipe per week to make it easier.

On the menu today is a recipe for mu shu vegetables with pancakes that comes by way of the Chef Sarah Moulton’s PBS show Sara’s Weeknight Meals. It’s a few steps but worth every single one of them. We’ll start with making some crêpes.

• Basic Crêpe Ingredients and Directions (makes eight to ten 8-inch crêpes)
  • 5 tablespoons (2 1/2 ounces) unsalted butter
  • 1 cup whole milk
  • 3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/4 teaspoon table salt

1. Melt the butter; set aside 2 tablespoons and combine the remaining 3 tablespoons with the milk, flour, eggs, and salt in a bender; blend until smooth. Transfer to a bowl, cover and set aside at room temperature for 30 minutes.
2. Lightly brush a 10- inch crêpe pan with some of the reserved melted butter and heat over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Reduce the heat to medium.
3. Stir the batter and ladle a scant 1/4 cup of the batter into the pan, tilting and rotating the pan until the batter coats the bottom. Cook 30 to 45 seconds until the surface of the crêpe looks set and the bottom is barely golden. Turn the crêpe and cook for 30 seconds more on the second side.
4. Transfer the crêpes to a cooling rack as they are cooked. Once they are cool, stack them until you are ready to use them. Wrap and freeze any extra crêpes for later use.

Ingredients

• 8 thin pancakes (see recipe above for Basic Crêpes)
  

  Mu Shu Vegetables with Pancakes Recipe image courtesy of saramoulton.com

• 4 medium scallions
• One 3-inch piece fresh ginger
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1/2 pound baby bok shoy or (2 or 3) or napa cabbage (about 1/3 head)
• 1 medium red bell pepper
• 8 oz shitake mushrooms
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 2 large eggs
• Kosher salt
• 2 c bean sprouts
• ½ c unsalted roasted whole cashews
• 2 T sake, rice wine, or dry sherry
• 1 T hoisin sauce, plus more for serving
• 1 T soy sauce (low sodium if you prefer)

Directions

1. Prepare or warm the pancakes and keep warm. Trim and thinly slice the scallions (about 1/2 cup); transfer them to a small bowl. Peel and Microplane-grate the ginger (about 1 tablespoon) and add to the bowl; press the garlic (about 1 tablespoon) into the bowl and stir to combine.
2. Slice the bok choy crosswise into 1/4 inch strips (about 4 1/4 cups); thinly slice the bell pepper (about 1 cup). Clean the shiitakes, trim off and discard the stems, and thinly slice the caps (about 2 2/3 cups).
3. Heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok over high heat until hot. Reduce the heat to medium; add the scallion mixture and cook for 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and bell pepper; cook until the mushrooms are tender, about 4 minutes.
4. While the mushroom mixture is cooking, lightly beat the eggs with a pinch of salt. Stir the bok choy and bean sprouts into the mushroom mixture and cook until they are just softened, about 2 minutes.
5. Heat the remaining 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the eggs, swirling the pan so that they coat the bottom of the pan, and cook until they are just set, like a pancake, turn the egg out onto a cutting g board and coarsely chop. Coarsely chop the cashews.
6. Combine the sake, hoisin sauce, and soy sauce in a small bowl. Stir into the vegetables along with the chopped egg and cashews; cook just until everything is heated through, about 3 minutes. Serve with the pancakes or over rice. Pass additional hoisin sauce.

Keep in mind that crepes can be frozen if you place a piece of wax paper in between them and then put them in a freezer bag (make sure you label them). By making a double batch you’ll be able to quickly enjoy this great meal another night.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to visit the Meatless Monday website and join us in taking the Meatless Monday pledge today. Spread the word at home and at work to promote CSR business initiatives and make your green call centre, office, factory, shop, restaurant or salon even greener.

Enjoy!
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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.