A Dinner For A Vegetarian Friend

Vegetarian Dinner

Right before I left for my Europe holiday, I managed to squeeze out some time and had some friends over for dinner. I cooked some Japanese-style vegetarian dishes for a good friend of mine who recently turned Vegetarian or actually Pescetarian (she eats fish occasionally).

 The dinner was actually inspired by one very unsatisfactory vegetarian meal we had or rather I had with her about two month ago. We went to this relatively new vegetarian restaurant in Katong area and I left rather disappointed. I have to admit that I rarely dine at vegetarian restaurants, and certainly not familiar with the vegetarian scene in Singapore but I was least expecting the big surprise I got from the menu.

First, most of the food on the menu has at least one ingredient in the dish that has been deep-fried (thought vegetarian food is meant to be healthy) and their main course of about 6-8 choices were shockingly made up of one ingredient which is deep-fried monkey-head mushroom cooked in different sauces. I know they might have food cost lurking in their heads, but what’s with monkey-head mushroom on every main course? If this is all I could eat as a vegetarian, I don’t think I’ll ever become one.

That dinner was supposedly my treat to her. Maybe she did enjoy it but I was short of embarrassment with the far less than pleasing dinner. So I decided to recompense with a home-cooked Japanese meal.  As I was drawing up the menu, I was surprised that I actually couldn’t decide on what to cook. There were just too many choices. I mean, there are such great varieties of  Japanese ingredient, from vegetables, to mushrooms, seaweeds, beans and tofu, and by appying the different cooking methods (grillig, deep-frying, simmering, pickling, etc & etc), you get endless possibility with vegetarian cooking. If you have tried one of those Shojin Kaiseki in Kyoto or Tokyo, you know what I’m talking about. (Well, if only Shojin Kaiseki is all what vegetarian food is, I would have no second thought about going on vegetarian diet.)

Mizuna & Daikon Salad

I finally decided on a few of my favorite simple Japanese vegetble recipes:

• Mizuna & Daikon Salad with Marinated Konbu and Black Vinegar Dressing
• Shira-ae (Five-Color Salad tossed with Tofu Dressing)
• Gobo Kinpira (Sautéed Carrot & Burdock)
• Grilled Miso-marinated Cod with Pickled Pumpkin
• Chawanmushi with Nameko mushroom
• Yasai Tempura Moriawase with Curry Salt & Green Tea Salt
• Miso Soup with Abura-age, Leek & Enoki Mushroom
• Home-made Black Sesame Ice-cream Cone

Kaiseki, it was not but I hope she enjoyed this much better than the  previous overly greasy dinner we had.