Buddhist cuisine is an Asian cuisine that is followed by monks and many believers from areas historically influenced by Mahayana Buddhism. It is vegetarian or vegan, and it is based on the Dharmic concept of ahimsa (non-violence). Vegetarianism is common in other Dharmic faiths such as Hinduism, Jainism and Sikhism, as well as East Asian religions like Taoism. While monks, nuns and a minority of believers are vegetarian year-round, many believers follow the Buddhist vegetarian diet for celebrations.
Vietnamese cuisine encompasses the foods and beverages of Vietnam. Meals feature a combination of five fundamental tastes : sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and spicy. The distinctive nature of each dish reflects one or more elements, which are also based around a five-pronged philosophy.
Vegetarian cuisine is based on food that meets vegetarian standards by not including meat and animal tissue products.
Seitan is a food made from gluten, the main protein of wheat. It is also known as miànjīn, fu, milgogi, wheat meat, gluten meat, vital wheat gluten or simply gluten. It is made by washing wheat flour dough with water until most of the starch granules have been removed, leaving behind the sticky, insoluble gluten as an elastic mass, which is then cooked and eaten.
A meat alternative or meat substitute, is a food product made from vegetarian or vegan ingredients, eaten as a replacement for meat. Meat alternatives typically approximate qualities of specific types of meat, such as mouthfeel, flavor, appearance, or chemical characteristics. Plant- and fungus-based substitutes are frequently made with soy, but may also be made from wheat gluten as in seitan, pea protein as in the Beyond Burger, or mycoprotein as in Quorn.
Indonesian cuisine is a collection of various regional culinary traditions that formed the archipelagic nation of Indonesia. There are a wide variety of recipes and cuisines in part because Indonesia is composed of approximately 6,000 populated islands of the total 17,508 in the world's largest archipelago, with more than 1,300 ethnic groups.
Soy milk, also known as soya milk or soymilk, is a plant-based drink produced by soaking and grinding soybeans, boiling the mixture, and filtering out remaining particulates. It is a stable emulsion of oil, water, and protein. Its original form is an intermediate product of the manufacture of tofu. Originating in China, it became a common beverage in Europe and North America in the latter half of the 20th century, especially as production techniques were developed to give it a taste and consistency more closely resembling that of dairy milk. Soy milk may be used as a substitute for dairy milk by individuals who are vegan or lactose intolerant.
Anthony Stephen Fauci is an American physician-scientist and immunologist who served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, and the chief medical advisor to the president from 2021 to 2022. Fauci was one of the world's most frequently cited scientists across all scientific journals from 1983 to 2002. In 2008, President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, for his work on the AIDS relief program PEPFAR.
Zhajiangmian, commonly translated as "noodles served with fried bean sauce", is a dish of Chinese origin consisting of thick wheat noodles topped with zhajiang, a soybean-based sauce. Variations may include toppings of vegetables, beans, meat, tofu, or egg. In the Western press, it is occasionally dubbed "Beijing bolognaise" due to its superficial similarity and ubiquitous nature.
Douhua is a Chinese sweet or savoury snack made with silken tofu. It is also referred to as doufuhua, tofu pudding, soybean pudding or, particularly in northern China, tofu brains.
Fermented tofu is a Chinese condiment consisting of a form of processed, preserved tofu used in East Asian cuisine. The ingredients typically are soybeans, salt, rice wine and sesame oil or vinegar. In mainland China the product is often freshly distributed. In overseas Chinese communities living in Southeast Asia, commercially packaged versions are often sold in jars containing blocks 2- to 4-cm square by 1 to 2 cm thick soaked in brine with select flavorings.
Tofu is a food prepared by coagulating soy milk and then pressing the resulting curds into solid white blocks of varying softness: silken, soft, firm, extra firm. Tofu is also known as bean curd in English. Beyond these broad textural categories, there are many varieties of tofu. It has a subtle flavor, so it can be used in savory and sweet dishes. It is often seasoned or marinated to suit the dish and its flavors, and due to its spongy texture, it absorbs flavors well. It is a traditional component of East Asian and Southeast Asian cuisines, and has been consumed in China for over 2,000 years. In modern Western cooking, it is most often treated as a meat substitute.
Batagor is a Sundanese dish from Indonesia, and popular in Southeast Asia, consisting of fried fish dumplings, usually served with peanut sauce. It is traditionally made from minced tenggiri, although other types of seafood such as tuna, mackerel, and prawn may also be used. The fish paste is subsequently stuffed into wonton skins or filled into tofu, and then deep fried in palm oil.
Tarla Dalal was an Indian food writer, chef, cookbook author and host of cooking shows. Her first cook book, The Pleasures of Vegetarian Cooking, was published in 1974. Since then, she wrote over 100 books and sold more than 10 million copies. She also ran the largest Indian food web site, and published a bi-monthly magazine, Cooking & More. Her cooking shows included The Tarla Dalal Show and Cook It Up With Tarla Dalal. Her recipes were published in about 25 magazines and tried in an estimated 120 million Indian homes.
Manchurian is a class of Indian Chinese dish made by roughly chopping and deep-frying ingredients such as chicken, cauliflower (gobi), prawns, fish, mutton, and paneer, and then sautéeing them in a sauce flavored with soy sauce. Manchurian is the result of the adaptation of Chinese cooking and seasoning techniques to suit Indian tastes. It has become a staple of Indian Chinese cuisine.
Mapo tofu is a popular Chinese dish from Sichuan province. It consists of tofu set in a spicy sauce, typically a thin, oily, and bright red suspension, based on douban, and douchi, along with minced meat, traditionally beef. Variations exist with other ingredients such as water chestnuts, onions, other vegetables, or wood ear fungus. One account indicates that the dish existed as early as 1254, in a suburb of Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan. Other accounts indicate it originated at a Chengdu restaurant in the 1860s.
Harry Willis Miller was an American physician, thyroid surgeon and Seventh-day Adventist missionary. Miller was a vegetarian and pioneer in the development of soy milk.
William Roy Shurtleff also known as Bill Shurtleff is an American researcher and writer about soy foods. Shurtleff and his former wife Akiko Aoyagi have written and published consumer-oriented cookbooks, handbooks for small- and large-scale commercial production, histories, and bibliographies of various soy foods. These books introduced soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, and miso on a wide scale to non-Asian Westerners, and are largely responsible for the establishment of non-Asian soy food manufacturers in the West beginning in the late 1970s. In 1980, Lorna Sass wrote in The New York Times, "The two people most responsible for catapulting tofu from the wok into the frying pan are William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi.” In 1995, Suzanne Hamlin wrote in The New York Times, “At the turn of the century there were two tofu suppliers in the United States. Today there are more than 200 tofu manufacturers...and tofu can be found in nearly every supermarket."
Akiko Aoyagi is an American cookbook author and artist. She is best known as the recipe developer, illustrator, and co-author of the soy-based cookbook series The Book of Tofu (1975), The Book of Miso (1976), and The Book of Tempeh (1979), that had a strong impact on the natural foods movement within the American counterculture.
