Vegetarian chicken

[Alex_Hart]

On 3/6/2018 at 5:44 PM, imron said:

Meat sauce.  Gives it that real meat flavor. 

Wouldn't surprise me in the least! The tofu guy almost always responds to "how do I cook this?" with a meat dish, like 素鸡 in 红烧肉.

[imron]

I've done a lot of ordering of meals in China for groups that included a vegetarian or two, and I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a cook say they added 'just a little bit of ground meat for flavor' in a dish explicitly requested to be vegetarian.

[HuayangAcademy]

6 hours ago, imron said:

'just a little bit of ground meat for flavor'

Always happens, I don't think China fully understands vegetarianism in the west, 

Often Chinese hosts will point at a plate of bai cai and say this is for the vegetarian, I've met quite a few angry vegetarians in China 

[Shelley]

Slightly off topic but do you think China is as non understanding of allergies? I always felt there some people (anywhere in the world) who just don't take allergies seriously.

 

For some reason, I have no  facts to back this up, but I feel allergies are also not fully understood or their seriousness appreciated in China.

[Alex_Hart]

On 3/9/2018 at 8:44 AM, imron said:

I've done a lot of ordering of meals in China for groups that included a vegetarian or two, and I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a cook say they added 'just a little bit of ground meat for flavor' in a dish explicitly requested to be vegetarian.

 

On 3/9/2018 at 3:20 PM, HuayangAcademy said:

Often Chinese hosts will point at a plate of bai cai and say this is for the vegetarian, I've met quite a few angry vegetarians in China 

I get this all the time. I was just invited to a dinner for 元宵节 by someone who knows I am a vegetarian. I said I didn't want to bother them by forcing them to cook vegetarian and they said no no not at all, come! We'll have lots of vegetarian dishes. There was one 皮蛋 with cilantro and some 白菜. 

 

Another common thing is someone tells me they prepared vegetarian food for me. Great. It's almost always the first dish or two to come out, awesome. Then the other 15 hungry diners devour the small plate of 番茄炒蛋 in 2 minutes and I spend the next hour staring at all the meat dishes streaming out of the kitchen. I've learned to fill up on food before going to parties, and I usually stuff some fruit or nuts into my girlfriend's bag to keep me going. I've also grown used to asking for some soy sauce and just pouring it over three bowls of rice. 

 

This is depressing and the opposite of America, but I've found Chinese older people to be far more willing to cook vegetarian dishes when they know I am coming. Whenever it's young people cooking (usually my girlfriend's friends), they do one of the above. Young people will also proudly place a bowl of baicai and some fanqie chaodan in front of me as if they've climbed the Everest of hardship to make the two dishes (which prompts me to say 不好意思，谢谢，太好了), but older people will say 不好意思 ten times when they've prepared five vegetarian dishes, including tofu, etc. In the US, it was usually older people who would give me a bowl of plain boiled pasta. I've wondered if this is because older Chinese seem to eat a lot more veg - all the grannies and grandpas walk out of the 农贸市场 with bulging bags of tofu and veg. A large proportion of the youngsters seem to think that anything that isn't a meat dish isn't even a dish. 面子？ Just a money thing? I'm not sure. \endrant

On 3/9/2018 at 6:56 PM, Shelley said:

Slightly off topic but do you think China is as non understanding of allergies? I always felt there some people (anywhere in the world) who just don't take allergies seriously.

 

I have no allergies so have no evidence one way or another, but I would say restaurants in China shouldn't necessarily be trusted. As @imronsaid, I've often gotten ground meat for flavor or can taste the pork fat, even after I've made it very clear that I don't eat any meat. I know a friend in Sichuan went crazy because she'd always request no peanuts, but find peanuts in her dishes (sprinkled on top). Homes are a different story. 

 

Although I do wonder about the prevalence of allergies here. I've never met someone who said they couldn't eat peanuts or something. On the other hand, they might just know better than to eat outside of their own homes.

[imron]

1 hour ago, Alex_Hart said:

Great. It's almost always the first dish or two to come out, awesome. Then the other 15 hungry diners devour the small plate of 番茄炒蛋 in 2 minutes and I spend the next hour staring at all the meat dishes streaming out of the kitchen

We used to request the veggie dishes come out last for just this reason!

 

1 hour ago, Alex_Hart said:

I've never met someone who said they couldn't eat peanuts or something.

Survival of the fittest :-/

[Alex_Hart]

12 hours ago, imron said:

Survival of the fittest :-/

That was in my head, but I didn't want to say it out loud (or type it).

 

Example: My girlfriend has been allergic to shellfish for her entire life. Whenever she eats it, she develops a large rash across much of her body. Her family served it weekly growing up. She didn't realize there was even such a thing as a shellfish allergy until she was an adult. Luckily it's a comparatively mild allergy 

 

12 hours ago, imron said:

We used to request the veggie dishes come out last for just this reason!

 

Smart!