Classically made with golden slivers of day lily buds, matchsticks of sliced pork, crunchy wood ear mushrooms, winter mushrooms, cucumber, ginger, garlic, scallions, soy sauce and rice wine, mu shu pork is a Northern Chinese dish, thought to have originated in Shandong. The name of the dish 木須肉 literally means "wood whiskers meat (pork)," which may relate to the thin strips of wood ear fungus 木耳 (Mù'ěr) in the dish. Some people believe the name may also be 木犀肉 in reference to the yellow and white flowers of the Sweet Omanthus, which is used to make tea or wine rather than in cooking, as the scrambled eggs commonly found in this dish are thought to resemble these blossoms.

Mu shu pork was introduced to Chinese-American restaurants when I was less than 5 years old. I have always loved rubbing the rich brown sauce on paper thin pancakes that are wrapped around the stir-fry before being consumed like tiny burritos. Because dried wood ears and day lily buds were not readily available, the most typical restaurant version uses scrambled eggs or strips of yellow omelet, green cabbage, carrots, button mushrooms, scallions and sometimes bean sprouts. The dish is healthy, delicious and maintains the colorful strips of yellow amidst shades of green and brown.

The thin, white pancakes were usually the limiting factor, as most restaurants only offered four of these delicate wrappers, usually folded into quarters. Called 薄饼 (báo bǐng) (薄饼), or literally "thin pancakes" these wrappers are also served to wrap a bit of Peking duck, crispy duck skin, and raw scallion for a truly heavenly bite!  With their thin, translucent nature, I had always assumed they would be too hard to make.

When I started seeing other members post their lovely renditions of this recipe, including the hand made pancakes, I gained the confidence to try it.  And it was surprisingly easy! The pancakes are made from a simple hot water dough (flour and boiling water) using brushed on toasted sesame oil to separate the layers. Grace estimated that, with some help for the pancakes, the entire recipe would take under two hours to prepare. Indeed, even taking a 20 min break to watch the videos in the 5 or 6 helpful, step by step posts that she prepared for us, the entire process took 1 h, 29 minutes as we only made half of the pancakes (4 each was more than enough)!

Reading through both recipes, it was clear that the most efficient use of time would be to get the dry mushrooms soaking and the dough resting as soon as possible. 

So I started by placing all the dry ingredients into a bowl.  I did not have any bean thread cellophane noodles (Grace suggests the Lungkow brand in the pink package, which is made in Taiwan for its superior texture) or bamboo shoots handy, so I used some dry day lilies that I had from making hot and sour soup to add the golden color.  While this was soaking in cool water, I spent 20 minutes figuring out how to project her videos onto the TV for my husband to watch.

By the time we were done, the dried ingredients were ready for cutting. I sliced up the scallions, ginger, cabbage and pork, which my husband made the dough. While the dough was resting, he helped measure out the marinade and sauce ingredients, and then we were ready to make the pancakes. 

We made twelve small discs of dough from the half recipe, and found that we only needed to spread sesame oil onto one disc, before sandwiching the oiled side and rolling out the double layer into a thin pancake.  My daughter rolled out the largest, thinnest disc!  Then it was very easy to heat the disc in a clean, dry wok until it started to puff up. Upon flipping it would often deflate before starting to puff a little more on the edges. And with the oil in between, the layers would practically separate on their own when the hot pancake was slapped onto a wooden cutting board. 

We kept them warm under a cloth kitchen towel, and I made the stirfry in the same pan, starting with the slices of ginger, and then adding the mushrooms.  After these were piping hot, I pushed them to the side of the wok and spread out the meat to brown.  

The cabbage was added next, along with the golden needles (dry lily buds) and wood ear slivers.  After pouring the sauce down the sides of the wok, I tossed the entire mixture until the cabbage had wilted. I did have to add one or two spoonfuls of reserved mushroom soaking liquid to keep it from getting too dry, although I was aiming for a relatively dry mixture to wrap in pancakes.

After turning off the heat and garnishing with scallions, we wrapped the stir-fry in the pancakes with a bit of Lee Kum Kee hoisin sauce, diluted with one or two spoonfuls of water until it spreads easily.   Delicious!!

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