#mock meat

Next stop, the noodle stall to get the Minced Pork Noodle Soup 🍜 (肉脞汤面) with Bee Tai Bak (米筛目/老鼠粉) that mum requested. Bee Tai Bak are short strands of noodles made from a combination of water, glutinous rice flour, rice flour and sometimes corn starch to reduce breakage while cooking. Once mixed, it is pushed through a noodle press and into boiling water. The ingredients for both the dry and soup versions are the same. You get minced pork, pork slices, meat ball, braised mushroom 🍄‍🟫 and pig’s liver.

I bought my Vegetarian Rice (斋饭) at the next stall. I love the plain knotted bean curd skin that had not been fried. Here, it is stewed with black fungus. The other two dishes are also my favourites, starting with the curry mock mutton & potato 🥔 and the sticky sweet mock pork ribs with sugarcane for the bone.

Chinese Buddhist / Temple Cuisine (寺院菜, 素斋) is the vegetarian culinary tradition developed within Chinese Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist communities. It is shaped by Buddhist precepts against killing (ahimsa) as well as Chinese philosophical ideas of balance, purity, and harmony between humans and nature.

Temple cuisine centers on grains, tofu, mushrooms, vegetables, wild herbs, nuts, fermented products, and seasonal produce.

Many monastic traditions avoid the “Five Pungent Spices” (五辛: garlic, onion, chives, leeks, and shallots), believed to stimulate desire and disrupt meditation. Cooking methods emphasize steaming, braising, light stir-frying, and stewing, often with subtle seasoning to preserve the natural flavor of ingredients.

A distinctive feature is mock meat (仿荤菜), created from wheat gluten (e.g. mianjin 面筋), tofu (e.g. dougan 豆干), bean curd skin (e.g. su ya 素鸭), and mushrooms to imitate the textures of meat, poultry, and seafood. These dishes developed partly for ritual and banquet purposes, allowing elite patrons and pilgrims to observe vegetarianism without abandoning familiar culinary forms. Famous examples include vegetarian “duck,” “fish,” “chicken”, “eel”, “pork”, “goose”, etc.

Many dishes associated with Chinese vegetarian cooking—such as mock duck, vegetarian soup, and elaborate banquet-style Buddhist feasts—originated in monastery kitchens and were later adopted by secular restaurants. Historically, temple cuisine influenced regional culinary traditions, especially in Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong.

Meat alternative

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