Whip It Up: Revisionist Chicken Egg Roll Pastries

As part of the Whip It Up summer recipe-testing challenge, participants report their experience in making one new recipe each week. And so the report for this week began innocently enough, with a trip to the grocery, a glance at the recipe, and prepping and stir frying the ingredients. After the requisite photos, I grabbed the egg roll wrappers.

The expiration date read <May 10 2008>. Gasp.

With no time to hop back to the grocery, I decided to put the egg roll contents over rice. All was well until the scent of burned rice filled the air ~ neglected to lower the flame to let it simmer. My husband was practically dialing for pizza when, fairly defeated, I grabbed a box of frozen pie crust (used for quiche) and placed the egg roll contents in the pie crust as little puff pastries. Really.

It's been the kind of day when you drop a jar of pickles in the driveway. And your chicken egg rolls turn into chicken pastries.

"Betty Crocker's Chinese Cookbook with recipes by Leeann Chin" (out of print) was the first chinese cookbook we purchased over a decade ago. It contains our three favorite recipes: Hot & Sour Soup, Ma Po Tofu and Tofu Mushroom Stir Fry. The binding is falling apart and the pages are stained with soy sauce; marks of a well-used cookbook.

Revisionist Chicken Egg Roll Pastries

• 10 mushrooms
• 2 skinless chicken breasts
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons five spice powder
• 2 lbs bean sprouts
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup shredded canned bamboo shoots
• 1/2 cup sliced green onions with tops
• 1 pound egg roll skins (preferably un-expired)
• 1 egg, beaten

Instructions

Shred chicken and mix with 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon cornstarch. Rinse sprouts & mushrooms. Drain bamboo shoots. Heat wok, add 3 tablespoons vegetable oil. Stir fry bean sprouts 2 minutes. Mix 2 teaspoons salt and 2 teaspoons five spice powder and add half of this mixture to the sprouts. Remove from walk. Add 3 tablespoons vegetable oil to wok, heat, then add chicken. Stir fry until chicken turns white. Add mushrooms and bamboo shoots, stir fry 2 minutes. Add sprouts, rest of 5 spice powder mixture, green onions, drain any excess liquid and cool. At this point, I did not actually make egg rolls, but here are the instructions. Place egg roll on counter with corner at top (looking like a diamond), place 1/2 cup of mixure below center, fold lowest corner up, then fold left and right corners across. Brush inside of top corner with egg and roll from bottom toward remaining corner to make a roll. Add enough vegetable oil to wok to reach 2" height and heat to 350 degrees fahrenheit. Fry 4-5 egg rolls at a time until golden brown, turning 2-3 times. About 2-3 minutes. Drain on paper towell. Serve with hot mustard or sweet and sour sauce if desired. Makes 18-22 egg rolls.

Substitutions & Adjustments

Skipped all of the salt, but added 3 tablespoons of chicken broth to the stir fry. Skipped the sprouts. Added 1/2 cup canned water chestnuts with the bamboo shoots. Chopped the bamboo shoots and water chestnuts very tiny. After using the last drops of sesame oil, switched canola oil. Added extra fresh garlic and ginger to the oil just before adding the chicken. After the mixture was complete, I placed 1/2 cup on top of an egg roll sized piece of pie shell, added a few drops of low sodium soy sauce and some green onions and folded it into a little envelope. Painted a bit of egg outside after folding. Sprayed baking sheet with olive oil Pan baking spray and placed pastries on the baking sheet. Baked 20 minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit, until slightly golden.  

This was a fairly involved recipe, with lots of slicing, dicing, mixing and clean-up. This is the norm with chinese cooking and absolutely worthwhile on the right evening!  The most amazing part of the endeavor was the scent of five spice powder mixed with ginger and garlic wafting through the kitchen. We were pleasantly surprised with the outcome and plan to try this again with egg roll wrappers.