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Vietnam Travel  > Travel Special Features  > Vietnamese specialities  > Vegetarian Banquet

Vegetarian Banquet

It takes so small effort to make spring rolls, pork pies, and dried pig skin out of vegetables. How to make veggies look and taste like meat? And how to make them imitate fish skin and scale? A skilled chef must have the know-how to imitate common food while still maintaining the food's purity. Pounded green peas can make up pork piece, while trimmed carrots aspire to carp scales. Even such sophisticated courses as duck stewed in lotus seeds and sticky rice, or fried chicken can be made out of French beans and peas. The modern food processing industry also supports the art of vegetarian eating: one can enjoy a wide variety of vegetarian take-away products like dumplings and pork pies, imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Flavoring is a prerequisite in making vegetarian delicacies. Taste a piece of vegetarian fish and you'll ask you if it isn't made of genuine fish. A mixture of mushroom, fennel, and soy-sauce can bring the authentic taste of carp. Pounded peanut combined with mushroom can mimic the flavor of chicken steamed with mushrooms. Some may wonder why vegetarian dishes try to imitate meat. The question is logical. However, can vegetarian meals composed of only boiled vegetables and fried soy curds that our grandparents used to eat with monks in the past build up an art of eating at a fine level? Enjoying fried soy curds in the quiet space of a restaurant, might you wonder why it is not served on a raw wood table, in the Buddhist incense-filled air? With the development of health science and food processing, the more sophisticated vegetarian cooking becomes.

Just like going to the pagoda, everyone experiences his or her own sensation when eating vegetarian food. We all meet at one point: restfulness. Leaving noisy streets and buffer crowds behind to relish dishes made of vegetables only, our minds become filtered. This must explain why vegetarian restaurants are appealing even to those arriving in cars and motorbikes, unadorned with the plain brown robes of monks.