| Moo shu pork | |||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 木須肉 | ||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 木须肉 | ||||||||
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| Alternative Chinese name | |||||||||
| Chinese | 木樨肉 | ||||||||
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Moo shu pork ormu shu (Chinese:木須肉), originally spelledmoo shi pork (Chinese:木樨肉) is a dish ofnorthern Chinese origin, originating fromShandong. It invariably contains egg, whose yellow color is reminiscent of blossoms of theosmanthus tree, after which the dish is named.[1]
In its traditional Chinese version, moo shu pork consists of slicedpork tenderloin, cucumber, andscrambled eggs, stir-fried inlard[2][3] together with bite-sized cuttings ofwood ear mushrooms (black fungus). Historically the original dish in Shandong Confucius family cuisine contained bamboo shoots. It was adapted into normal commercial in Shandong province also Beijing cuisine replacing bamboo with rehydrated drieddaylily blossoms. When home-cooked either may be replaced with cucumber. The dish is seasoned with mincedginger andgarlic,scallions,soy sauce, andrice cooking wine (usuallyhuangjiu). The dish is traditionally eaten by itself.
The dish is prepared with julienned pork, cabbage, scrambled egg, carrots, andwood ear mushrooms (black fungus).Hoisin sauce is painted on the inside of a thin flour-and-water pancake, or recently, sometimes, a Mexican tortilla,[4] which is then used to wrap the filling.
In the United States, the dish seems to have appeared in Chinese restaurants inNew York City andWashington, D.C., in approximately 1966, receiving mention in aNew York Times guide to Washington restaurants published that year.[5] One of the first restaurants inManhattan to serve the dish was Pearl's, one of the best known New York City Chinese restaurants to serve non-Cantonese food in the 1960s.[6] A 1967 article inThe New York Times states that another of the first restaurateurs to serve the dish in Manhattan was Emily Kwoh, the owner of the Mandarin House, Mandarin East, and Great Shanghai restaurants.[7]
There are two competing histories regarding how the name of this dish is written and explained.
One story gives the name as木犀肉 (pinyin: mù xī ròu). The last character 肉 (ròu) means "meat" and refers to the pork in the dish. The first part木犀 (mù xī) is the name for thesweet osmanthus, a small ornamental tree that produces bunches of small and fragrant blossoms that may be yellow or white.
Scrambled eggs have an appearance that remind people of the mixed yellow and white flowers, so 木犀 (mù xī) is a poetic way of referring to the scrambled eggs used in preparing this dish. Additionally, at ChineseConfuciandeath anniversary celebrations, the Chinese word for "egg" (蛋; pinyin: dàn) is avoided when referring to dishes containing eggs, as manyChinese curses contain this word. Thus, the worddàn was typically substituted using theeuphemism "sweet osmanthus."[8] By this reasoning, in this version of the dish's name, the first character,木 (mù) is short for木耳 (mù'ěr, meaning "wood ear fungus") and樨 (xī, meaning "sweet osmanthus tree") is short for 桂花 (guíhuā, meaning "sweet osmanthus flower").
The second way of writing the name of this dish that is commonly seen in Chinese restaurants in the United States is木须肉 (pinyin: mù xū ròu). The second character 须 (xū) means "whiskers," and is often given an additional determinative component in writing (to distinguish the meaning of "whiskers" from the other meanings of須) so that it comes to be written as鬚. It is possible that 木須肉 (literally "wood whiskers pork") might have been used on the menus of the first American Chinese restaurants to serve the dish in place of the correct compound 木樨肉 ("sweet osmanthus pork") due to haste or simply because of the limitations of Chinese typewriters. It may also merely have been the result of writing the wrong character with a similar pronunciation.
Two additional explanations of the name have unclear origins and may be examples offolk etymology: there is a neighborhood with a similar name inBeijing calledMuxidi (木樨地), which is home to theMuxidi station (木樨地站). The dish is also occasionally also called苜蓿肉 (mùsù ròu) meaning "alfalfa meat".
