I was going to grill for friends on Saturday, but it rained all day. Before I knew about the rain, though, I tried to think of a good vegetarian dish for the vegetarian friends.
I recalled that in All Men Are Brothers (AKA Water Margin), they’re always having vegetarian feasts. (As well as meat feasts in which the book states about how many catties of flesh were consumed.) So, I looked through the books, and I found that there’s rarely many specifics about what’s in those feasts.
In the prologue, there’s a feast at a Taoist monastery. The description is “there was prepared a great vegetable feast and wine was poured forth.”
Other times, the book states something like “there were 50 vegetable dishes” without talking about what the dishes were. This is the most specific it gets as far as I can tell:
Then Tai Chung sat down and he saw a serving man come and ask him, "Most Noble, how many measures of wine shall I pour for you?
And what meats will you have to send it down, pork or cow's flesh or sheep's flesh?"
Tai Chung replied, "I do not wish much wine.
Make me a mouthful of rice and bring it to me."
Again the serving man said, "I sell wine here and I sell rice. I have bread too, and bean ver-micelli."
Tai Chung said, "I will eat no meat. What vegetable soups have you?"
The serving man replied, "Fine bean curd stewed with pepper and with sesame oil-how is that?"
Tai Chung said, "Best of all-best of all!" The serving man was not long gone and he stewed a bowl of bean curd and he brought also two saucers of vegetables.
But again, what vegetables and how were they prepared? I suppose not many readers were looking for cooking inspiration, so that’s fair.
Also, I’m not sure any grilling happens at all in the book, now that I think about it.