Culinary Fundamentals Shojin Ryori Written by Fujii Sotetsu (Zen Buddhist priest) Photos by Omori Tadashi

The basic meal for Zen monks is very simple — rice, soup and a side dish. Favored guests at the temple are treated to something more special. Here is a type of full-course shojin ryori meal available at some Zen temples. From the left: Second, main course, and final course. Main course: Starting clockwise from the top left, (1) cooked squash, carrots and shimeji mushrooms served with a small eggplant that has been fried and then simmered; (2) spinach and tofu with dressing; (3) vinegared dish with lily bulb, cucumber, Japanese ginger and Daitokuji wheat gluten; (4) miso soup with broiled eggplant, nameko mushrooms and oka-hijiki; (5) pickles; (6) rice garnished with fresh boiled soybeans. Nagura Kazuhiro, chef at the Tokyo Grand Hotel, prepared this feast. In the 13th century, Zen Zen try to eat all of the food monks from China prepared during the day, and popularized a form of throw nothing edible away. vegetarian cuisine in Japan This “recycling” is easy if known as shojin ryori. The one minimizes seasoning, practice of preparing letting the natural flavor of delicious meals with the ingredients define the seasonable vegetables and taste. wild plants from the The Zen aversion to waste mountains, served with extends to dishware, too. seaweed, fresh soybean curd When Japanese people eat (or dehydrated forms), and deep-fried tempura, they use seeds (such as walnuts, pine extra dishes for the dipping nuts and peanuts) is a sauce. Followers of Zen, on tradition that is still alive at the other hand, feel that Zen temples today. Stemming sauces are extravagant to from the Buddhist precept prepare and tend to drip and that it is wrong to kill make a mess anyway, so we animals, including fish, shojin forgo using dipping sauces ryori is completely altogether. In fact, sauces are vegetarian. Buddhism unnecessary with a little salt prescribes partaking of a in the batter, or if one simple diet every day and simmers vegetables in miso- abstaining from drinking flavored water before deep- alcohol or eating meat. Such frying them. a lifestyle, together with People ask me if I can physical training, clears the maintain a balanced diet mind of confusion and leads while eating only vegetables; to understanding. the answer, of course, is yes. I Even in preparing shojin have been following Buddhist ryori batter, we do not use training and eating only unfertilized eggs as a binder; vegetarian meals for more we use yam instead, which than 50 years, yet have never works quite well. Shojin ryori even caught a cold in all that cooks also make sure not to time. Life at a Zen temple is waste any of the ingredients. strict and demands much We even sauté the greens and physical labor, but I can take peelings of carrots and daikon it in stride because I have the radish, then simmer them in a power of seasonal vegetables little water, or we add them to on my side. Of course, shojin soup. If there are any ryori is part of the Buddhist byproducts remaining after temple regimen, yet it is also this, we mix them with my way of maintaining a leftover rice to make porridge sound mind and body. for the evening. Followers of