🍜 Vegetarian food in Asia

Asia is the only region of the world where vegetarianism is a doctrine before it is a preference. India has more vegetarians than every other country combined, and its cooking never needed to invent a meat substitute: lentil dal tadka, rice-and-pulse khichdi and the fermented southern dosa are complete meals by construction. Nepal turned it into a daily rhythm with dal bhat, served twice a day, and kwati, a stew of nine sprouted pulses cooked for Janai Purnima.

Buddhism produced the other great tradition. The shojin cooking of Japanese temples revolves around tofu — yudofu poached in a kombu broth, spinach goma-ae — and it raises the one genuine difficulty of the region: dashi contains dried bonito, and it has to be rebuilt from kombu and shiitake. Every recipe on the site that leans on a dashi, a fish sauce or a shrimp paste says so and gives the swap. Chinese Buddha's delight comes out of the same monastic world.

Soy supplies the rest. Fermented into miso and doenjang it delivers the umami meat would otherwise provide, as in Korean doenjang jjigae; pressed into tofu it becomes the everyday protein; fermented whole in Java it becomes tempeh, whose firm bite and nutty taste have no Western equivalent. And from Kerala to Indonesia, coconut milk stands in for cream: Thai green curry, Malaysian laksa, Sri Lankan kiribath for feast days.