Vegetarian’s dishes came in vogue as early as the Song Dynasty, and made much head way during the Ming and Qing dynasties, which saw the rise of monastic, imperial, and secular schools of vegetarian cuisine. Green vegetables, fruit, mushrooms, and bean curd are major ingredients, and only vegetable oils are allowed in a vegetarian’s kitchen. The dishes are at once refreshing, nutritious, easy to digest, and effective for preventing cancer. Extensive choices of materials, and long years of practice, have enabled this peculiar school of Chinese cuisine to come up with a series of highly treasured dished. Many of the dishes are cunningly prepared so that they are easily mistaken for real meat in shape and flavour – these dishes are thereby nicknamed vegetarian’s chicken, vegetarian’s braised pork in soy sauce and spices, vegetarian’s pork joint, and vegetarian’s assorted delicacies. Other major dishes include mushrooms cooked with wheat gluten, hot-and-sour vegetable filets, vegetarian’s ‘fish’ which is flavoured with tender Chinese toon sprouts, and dried ‘meat’ strips. |
