| abstract
| - In its traditional Chinese version, moo shu pork consists of sliced or shredded pork chop meat and scrambled eggs, stir fried in sesame and/or peanut oil together with thinly sliced wood ear mushrooms (black fungus) and day lily buds. Thinly sliced bamboo shoots may also be used. The dish is seasoned with minced ginger and garlic, scallions, soy sauce, and rice cooking wine (usually huangjiu). In the United States, the dish seems to have appeared in Chinese restaurants in New York City and Washington, D.C. in approximately 1966, receiving mention in a New York Times guide to Washington, D.C. restaurants published in that year. One of the first restaurants in Manhattan to serve the dish was Pearl's, one of the best known New York City restaurants to serve non-Cantonese food in the 1960s. A 1967 article in the The 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. At that time, the dish was at first prepared in a traditional manner, but, as wood ears and day lily buds were scarce, a modified recipe was developed. In this modified recipe, which gradually came to predominate in North America, green cabbage is usually the predominant ingredient, along with scrambled eggs, carrots, day lily buds, wood ear mushrooms, scallions, and bean sprouts. Shiitake mushrooms, bok choy, snow pea pods, bell peppers, onions, and celery are sometimes also used, and dry sherry is often substituted for the huangjiu. The vegetables (except the day lily buds and bean sprouts) are generally sliced into long, thin strips before cooking. While these are the typical ingredients, there is some variation in the recipe from chef to chef or restaurant to restaurant. In both the Chinese and Americanized versions, monosodium glutamate, salt, sugar, corn starch, and ground white pepper are also often added. In less authentic North American restaurants, the wood ears and day lily buds (ingredients less familiar to most American customers) are often omitted entirely. Because finely sliced cabbage and carrots make up a large portion of the American-style recipe's ingredients, pre-bagged coleslaw mix is often used to save the time of slicing these vegetables. Although most commonly made with pork, the same basic dish can be prepared by substituting another meat or seafood; generally only a single meat is used. If made with chicken instead of pork, the dish is called moo shu chicken, and the name is similarly altered if prepared with beef or shrimp. If prepared without any meat, it is called moo shu vegetables or moo shu tofu.
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