But fear not, ye gluten-eschewing Mu Shu fans: where there’s a will, there’s a way.  And since I happen to think that Mu Shu is a perfect dish to showcase high-fiber, colder weather veggies like cabbage, I decided to find us a way.

Preparing for Mu Shu

You’ll need very few fresh ingredients to make your Mu Shu dish, but a few key specialty pantry items to do so.  This is especially true if you’re making a gluten-free version, and it might take some persistence to track down GF versions of the necessary condiments.

First, you’ll need some dried Chinese mushrooms, particularly “cloud ear” mushrooms (available at most Asian groceries), and three key Chinese condiments: Oyster sauce, Hoisin sauce and soy sauce.  Gluten-free versions of all three of these condiments are available; for specific brand names, see my previous Gluten-Free Guide to Chinese Food.

Then there are the pancakes.  If you can eat gluten, you have a few good options.  The easiest would be to buy store-bought flour tortillas from any supermarket.  The second easiest option would be to buy store-bought Mandarin Pancakes from a local Chinese/Asian grocery if you are lucky enough to live near one (they’re sold frozen).  But if you’re gluten-free, you’ll need to make your own pancakes.  (These will taste better than storebought options anyhow.)  To that end, I offer two relatively quick and easy options:  (1) Make chestnut flour crepes (click here for recipe), or (2) make buckwheat flour crepes as follows:

Combine: 2/3 cup buckwheat flour + 1/3 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour + 2 eggs + 1 1/4 cups milk (or dairy-free milk substitute) + 1 TBSP honey + 1/4 tsp salt.

Spray a small skillet or crepe pan with cooking oil spray, spread it around with a paper towel to cover the whole surface and heat over medium-high flame.

When pan is hot, pour in 1/4 cup of batter while tilting pan at 45 degree angle and and swirl around to spread batter evenly.

Cook about 1 minute on each side or until underside is brown.  Flip.  Cook 15 more seconds and remove from pan.  Repeat.

Recipe will yield about 10 crepes.

These thin crepes will have the right texture to approximate the traditional Mandarin Pancakes, and their slightly sweet, slightly nutty flavors will compliment the dish swimmingly.

Recipe: Vegetable Mu Shu

After shopping around for recipes, I decided to heavily adapt Dorothy Huang‘s recipe for Mu Hsu Pork to be: vegetarian, cabbagey, lower fat and gluten-free.  Depending on what you have on hand, feel free to improvise with the vegetable ingredients; a cup of mung bean sprouts or 1/2 cup julienned carrot, for example, would be terrific additions to the mix; you could add them in to the wok along with the cabbage if desired.  Some mu shu recipes call for a sprinkling of crushed peanuts atop the final product; I imagine this would also taste quite good!

Ingredients:

6 Chinese dried mushrooms (any kind will do; I used shiitake)

1/4 cup dried black cloud ear mushrooms

5 cups shredded green cabbage (about 1/2 of a medium-sized cabbage head)

Seasoning sauce:

1 tsp cornstarch

2 TBSP water

1 TBSP oyster sauce (for GF: use Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Green Label Oyster-Flavored Sauce)

1 TBSP soy sauce, preferably reduced sodium (for GF: use gluten-free Tamari sauce such as San-J or Eden Foods)

Canola oil

2 eggs, beaten

1 TBSP chopped garlic

1/2 TBSP shredded ginger (can substitute 1/2 tsp dry powdered ginger)

2 scallions (green onions), thinly sliced

Mandarin pancakes or gluten-free substitutes (see pancake discussion above in “Preparing for Mu Shu” section)

Hoisin sauce (for GF: use Premier Japan Wheat-Free Hoisin sauce, Y&Y brand Hoisin sauce or Ka Me Hoisin sauce)

Directions:

1. 

   Cloud ear mushrooms, dried and reconstituted. (Photo credit: tastehongkong.com)

   1. Reconstitute and prep all of the dried mushrooms per package directions or as follows: soak them in 4 cups hot water for 20-30 minutes; rinse with cold water.  When soft, cut off and discard stems or any tough/knobby bits as necessary; cut into thin strips and set aside
2. Prepare the pancakes per recipe directions and set aside.  (If you are making crepes from scratch, once you’re finished with them, use the hot pan to make the eggs as described in step #4… it will save you having to wash an extra pan!)
3. Combine seasoning sauce ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
4. Heat 1 tsp canola oil in non-stick skillet over medium-high heat (or use a quick spritz of non-stick cooking spray.)  Pour in the eggs.  Tilt the skillet so whole surface is covered with thin coat of eggs.  Flip eggs over and cook for a few seconds until set.  Transfer to a plate; when cool, shred into thin strips 2″ long and set aside.
5. Heat 1 TBSP canola oil in wok or large skillet.  Add cabbage and stir fry until cabbage is bright green and has softened but still retains a bit of crunch, about 4 minutes.  Transfer to a bowl.
6. Using same wok, heat an additional 1 tsp oil and add garlic, ginger, scallions and mushrooms.  Stir fry for 1 minute until fragrant and well-blended.
7. Add cabbage and seasoning sauce to the wok.  Stir until well blended.
8. Add sliced egg strips to wok.  Stir to combine.  Turn off heat.
9. To serve: spread a little hoisin sauce in the center of pancakes/crepes and add a pile of Mu Shu to the center.  Wrap up and eat!

No related posts.

This year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the Chinese New Year, providing a welcome distraction to those who would rather avoid a world that seems to have vomited up roses and expensive prix-fixe dinners at every corner.  On February 14, celebrate the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Tiger!

In its favor, Chinese cuisine hosts some of the most nutritious, calcium-rich veggies one can eat: Chinese mustard greens (aka Gai Choy: one cup chopped has the same amount of bioavailable calcium as a cup of milk!), bok choy and Chinese broccoli (aka Gai Lan) are among the highlights.  Alas, Chinese can also be among the trickiest cuisines to navigate for those of us who must avoid wheat and gluten.  Wontons and dumplings are wrapped in lovely little wheat-flour dough pockets… Lo mein noodles are made from wheat… fried dishes are battered in flour-based coatings…and the savory sauces and condiments used to prepare most every dish almost always contain wheat or a derivative thereof.

But do not despair.  As Confucius didn’t say but surely meant to: where there’s a will to partake in Chinese food, there’s a way to partake in Chinese food.  As such, I offer you my personal guide to Chinese food for those with rebellious intestines:

Gluten-Free Chinese Food: Eating in

It won’t come as a surprise to hear that cooking at home is the best chance you have at enjoying Chinese food without worry of wheat.

Build your gluten-free condiment pantry

A large (and growing) number of the staple condiments in Chinese cooking are available in GF versions.  After years of label-reading and searching, I am pleased to offer the following list of gluten-free condiments, many of which I stock in my own pantry for when the Chinese cravings hit.  Many of them are available for purchase online, and all of them are MSG-free.

• Soy sauce: Look for (reduced-sodium) wheat-free Tamari sauce by San-J, Eden Foods or Premier Japan.  La Choy soy sauce is gluten-free, too, but I don’t think it tastes very good.
• Dark soy sauce: There is no commercially-available GF version I’m aware of.  You can jerry-rig a passable version by mixing equal parts GF soy sauce (or wheat free Tamari) with molasses, and simmering over low heat until the molasses is dissolved.
• Oyster sauce: Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Green Label Oyster-Flavored Sauce  (note: only the “green label” product is wheat-free and MSG-free.  The red label product contains both wheat and MSG); Ka Me Oyster Sauce
• Hot Bean Sauce: Lan Chi Black Bean Sauce with Chili
• Chili Garlic Sauce: Most brands will be gluten-free, but check labels to be sure.  Some sure bets: Lan Chi Chili Paste with Garlic, and Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic
• Hoisin sauce: Premier Japan’s Wheat-free Hoisin sauce (its also organic, which means no GMO soybeans were used in its production); Y&Y brand Hoisin sauce; Ka Me Hoisin sauce
• Plum Sauce: Lee Kum Kee Gold Label Plum Sauce, Y&Y brand Plum Sauce

All brands of sherry, cooking wine, rice vinegar, chili sauce, sesame oil, chili oil should be naturally gluten-free.

Also, most home-recipes call for naturally-GF cornstarch to thicken soups and sauces, so you should be good to go on that front, too.

Plan a menu

• Our go-to Chinese cookbook is Dorothy Huang’s Chinese Cuisine Made Simple.My husband had the good fortune to take a class with Dorothy at a Whole Foods in NYC last year, and he claims she made the best Chinese Food he’s ever tasted in his life. Her

  

  If you can't find Chinese broccoli (pictured), substitute broccoli raab/rapini or broccolini

  recipes are authentic, simple, incredibly flavorful and way more healthful than anything you’d get at a restaurant.  If you’ve stocked your pantry with the GF staples above, you’ll be able to make a surprising number of her recipes gluten-free.  The cookbook has chapters dedicated to vegetables, tofu dishes and seafood for those of you who aren’t big into meat-eating, but her book, like Chinese cuisine, is chock full of meat dishes as well.
  

• Don’t forget the greens!  In this respect, Martha is a good place to start.  Chinese she is not.  But when it comes to recipes for healthful, Chinese vegetable side dishes, she delivers.  Try her recipes for Broccoli with Oyster Sauce, fiery Stir-Fried Green Beans, or Lily’s Baby Bok Choy with Dipping Sauce. (You’ll need those GF condiments for some of these if you’re making the gluten-free version…).  Beyond Martha, Epicurious offers this simple recipe for sauteed Chinese Broccoli.

• Eat like a local!  Fish dishes are traditional on Chinese New Year, like this recipe for Whole Black Bass with Ginger and Scallions.  (Worry not: wild, U.S. black bass is currently listed as a “good alternative” by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch from a sustainability standpoint.)  The vegetarian dish called Buddha’s Delight is also a common New Year’s offering.  Mandarin oranges are a healthy way to finish off the meal (in season now!).

Make your own Potstickers!

Feeling ambitious?  Glutenfreeda.com offers an online won ton tutorial where you can learn how to make your very own GF Pot Stickers from scratch.  The trick, of course, is that you need a pasta machine to do so (not exactly a staple in GF homes, and even if you do have one, there’s a risk of cross-contamination if it’s been used for wheat-based pasta previously.)  But if you’ve managed to overcome those two obstacles and have an afternoon to spare, I think this would be a worthwhile and terribly fun way to celebrate the Chinese New Year!  If you get really good at it, consider selling them to potsticker-less, lazy folks like me who would pay a pretty penny to partake of an authentic potsticker again someday…

**2011 update: Feel Good Foods markets a frozen Asian Dumpling available in Chicken, Shrimp, Pork and Vegetable varieties.  Click here to find a store near you that sells them.**

Gluten-free Chinese Food: Eating Out

If you’re going to brave the restaurant scene, it’s best to be prepared.  Here are some options:

• In NYC, visit Lilli and Loo or Lili’s 57, two Chinese restaurants with  gluten-free menus.  Nationally, P.F. Chang’s offers a gluten-free menu, as does Pei Wei Asian Diner, though I refuse to vouch for the healthfulness of their offerings or appropriateness of their portion sizes.  P.F. Chang’s also offers gluten-free soy sauce for your table on request.  To find a Chinese restaurant near you that has GF offerings, you can scour one of the various national restaurant registries at this link.

• BYOS.  That’s Bring-Your-Own-Soy sauce.  Mini packets of GF soy sauce are available from a company called Kari Out (you can order them online from glutenfree.com) and from San-J, available at amazon by clicking here.

• Download the free “Gluten Free Restaurant Cards” app onto your iPhone. It explains your dietary restrictions and in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese dialects (and close to 40 other languages), which you can show to your server in hopes that they will help you navigate the menu appropriately.  Still, be very skeptical of saucy and savory stir-fried dishes, because it may not be apparent from the menu card’s translation that even soy sauce is going to be off-limits for you.
  

• If you’re willing to spend a few bucks ($19), Triumph Dining cards offers wallet-sized, cuisine-specific lists of off-limit foods that contain hidden gluten so you can more effectively interrogate your server.  The cards are written in Chinese and can be handed to the server and chef to help ensure your needs are clear.

• For a $7 investment, you can arm yourself with the Chinese Gluten-Free Passport to take with you on your next trip to a Chinese restaurant.  According to the marketer, it identifies the safest soup options, entree choices (chicken, vegetable and seafood) and dessert selections, as well as a list of questions to ask your waiter to determine whether a food is safe for you to eat.

• If good communication is not an option, stick to some of these ordering guidelines to help avoid the most common sources of Chinese restaurant gluten:
  • Among soups, there’s a good chance that Egg Drop soup will be safe (but try to double-check that it’s thickened with cornstarch, not flour.  It should be).  Ditto for Chicken and Corn soup.
  • Steamed seafood and vegetable dishes are usually your safest bet.  (Not terribly exciting, but who needs the kind of excitement than an accidental gluten ingestion entails, really?)
  • White sauce is the most likely to be safe, but again, double-check that they use cornstarch to thicken it rather than wheat flour (they probably will).  Other sauces (e.g., brown, black bean) are not going to be gluten-free.
  • Mei Fun and Chow Fun are rice-noodle pastas, which makes them safe if they’re not cooked with any gluten-containing condiments such as soy sauce.  Fried rice dishes can easily be made safe if you ask the kitchen to prepare them without soy sauce or oyster sauce.  (You can season them yourself with the little GF soy sauce packets you brought along…)
  • Avoid imitation (“vegetarian”) meat and seafood ingredients (including imitation crab or surimi).  These are always made with gluten.
  • Avoid anything deep fried (the batter and the cross-contamination in the fryer are a double-whammy).

Happy Year of the Tiger to you!

Related posts:

1. The Gluten-free Grammys
2. Gluten-Free Jewish Holiday Hits
3. Not your mama’s (Gluten-free) Matzoh Balls