Lychee pork, or lizhi rou (;

Eastern Min Eastern Min or Min Dong (, Foochow Romanized: ) is a branch of the Min group of the Chinese languages of China. The prestige form and most commonly cited representative form is the Fuzhou dialect, the speech of the capital of Fujian. Geogra ...

: liĕk-chiĕ-nṳ̆k), is a dish in Fujianese cuisine that consists of small pieces of deep-fried pork and sliced water chestnuts served in a sweet and sour sauce. Its bright red colour is derived from

red yeast rice Red yeast rice or red rice ''koji'' is a bright reddish purple fermented rice, which acquires its color from being cultivated with the mold '' Monascus purpureus''. Red yeast rice is what is referred to as a '' kōji'' in Japanese, meaning "gr ...

. In lower-end restaurants, the sauce is commonly made with ketchup, soy sauce, and

rice vinegar Rice vinegar is a vinegar made from rice wine in East Asia (China, Japan and Korea), as well as in Vietnam in Southeast Asia. It is used as a seasoning, dressing, and dipping in many dishes, including sushi, jiaozi, and banchans. Some of its varia ...

History

Lychee pork is commonly associated with the cuisines of

Fuzhou Fuzhou is the capital of Fujian, China. The city lies between the Min River (Fujian), Min River estuary to the south and the city of Ningde to the north. Together, Fuzhou and Ningde make up the Eastern Min, Mindong linguistic and cultural regi ...

and

Putian Putian ( zh, s= , Putian dialect: ''Pó-chéng''), also known as Puyang (莆阳) and Puxian (莆仙), historically known as Hinghwa/Hinghua ( zh, s=兴化, t=興化), is a prefecture-level city in Fujian Province, People's Republic of China. I ...

. Its creation can be traced back to the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

, and the dish is considered to be a prominent strand of Min cuisine. Despite its name, it does not contain the

lychee Lychee ( , ; ''Litchi chinensis''; ) is a monotypic taxon and the sole member in the genus ''Litchi'' in the soapberry family, Sapindaceae. There are three distinct subspecies of lychee. The most common is the Indochinese lychee found in So ...

fruit. Its name is instead derived from the appearance of the dish, in which the red and curled fried pieces of pork resemble the skin of lychee. The origin of the dish is attributed to a legend involving Mei, a royal consort of the Xuanzong Emperor of the Jiang clan. The consort, who came from Putian, was said to be frequently homesick, due to the distance of the imperial court from her hometown. Lychees from Putian were said to cure her despondency but were rarely available due to the difficulty of transporting the fruit. It is believed that the chef employed by Mei, Jiang (), devised a recipe to cook meat so that it resembled lychees. Mei was later killed in the

Anshi Rebellion The An Lushan rebellion was a civil war in China that lasted from 755 to 763, at the approximate midpoint of the Tang dynasty (618–907). It began as a commandery rebellion attempting to overthrow and replace the Tang government with the rogue ...

, and the chef was believed to have escaped and fled back to Fujian, bringing the dish with him.

References

{{Fujian topics Fujian cuisine Chinese pork dishes

History

See also

References