Vegetarian Hoisin Pancakes – Peking Duck, without the Duck. Quack.

Now one of my favourite recipes is Crispy Peking Duck. Chewy duck, slathered with hoisin sauce; what’s not to like? Well if you’re a vegetarian, basically – the duck. However, as an avid reader of the BBC’s Good Food Magazine, I discovered a vegetarian option.

I mean it’s not crispy, it’s not duck, but its got hoisin sauce in it so it can’t be too far off. What’s the magic ingredient? Mushrooms.

Now the basic format for this creation is a) a mushroom concoction, b) hoisin sauce, c) wraps, d) cucumber and e) spring onion (and e) wine). Here’s a bit of detail:

• Just under a pound of mushrooms (here we used chestnut, shiitake, oyster, shimeji)
• 3/4 tsp Chinese five spice
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 1/2 tsp sugar
• 2 tbsp rice wine
• oil
• bottle of hoisin sauce
• half cucumber, cut into strips
• 5 spring onions, cut into strips
• mini tortillas (or proper Chinese style pancakes if you can find them, or even make them – right, of course you can  on a Monday night)

Dead easy. Heat up some oil in a wok and add the oil, spice, soy, rice wine, sugar and mushrooms:

Cook down until the liquid evaporates:

And that, my culinary friends, is basically that. All you need to do now is heat up some wraps in the microwave. Lay everything out in separate bowls, to maximise the amount of washing up for later:

Prepare your wrap: spread some hoisin sauce on the wrap. Spoon some mushrooms onto the saucy bread thing and then pile on some cucumber and spring onion. Roll and chew. That’s right roll and chew. These things go down faster than Fanny Hill on a Saturday night. Lets take a look (at the pancakes, not Fanny Hill):

Honestly, you’d be hard pressed to notice the difference between these and real crispy peking duck (unless you really like duck in which case you will notice the difference straight away).