For vegetarians, going to Chinese restaurants is often a dicey endeavor. In China, if you ask for meatless dishes at a restaurant, you'll often hear something along the lines of, "Hmm. Well, we have plenty of chicken dishes. Or beef. Or fish." (In Chinese, the word for "meat" is the same as the word for "pork".) Even here in the US, often "vegetarian" dishes in Chinese restaurants would contain pork or chicken stock or fish sauce.
The thing is, Chinese food doesn't have to contain tons of meat. There are plenty of dishes that are based on using fresh vegetables and tofu, and many of them can be made entirely meatless.
A while back, I started teaching Chinese vegetarian cooking classes at ICE and the Brooklyn Brainery to help vegetarians navigate the tricky landscape of Chinese cuisine. One of the dishes we've done in class is vegetarian mapo tofu, and over the years I've refined it to make it even better.
Now, traditionally, Sichuan mapo tofu contains plenty of ground pork for flavoring, but there is a lesser-known vegetarian version called mala tofu. (Mala refers to the numbing spiciness that comes from Sichuan pepper...numbing in a very good, highly addictive way.) It's often made by just leaving out the pork, which makes the flavor rather flat, in my opinion. What you need to do is to get creative with shiitake mushrooms.
For the best vegetarian mapo tofu, I soak shiitake mushrooms in room temperature or warm water, then mince the caps. Then I stir-fry the minced mushrooms with a slightly larger dose of fermented black beans until both are crispy and fragrant. And the water that the mushrooms were soaked in, so full of umami goodness? It gets mixed into the sauce to add some oomph.
Then one summer we decided to try adding a third service, dinner. Two meals we had down logistically to run lean and mean staffing and prep wise, but a third meal threw a huge wrench in the operations. But we all put our heads together, everyone pushed and worked hard to make everything come together. 
Adjudged as BEST VEGETARIAN COOKBOOK IN THE WORLD 2006 by the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, this book features traditional Andhra recipes as taught by an illustrious Indian Grandmother. She is Mrs. Subhadra Rau Parigi, fondly known as Pedatha, the eldest offspring of India's former President Bharat Ratna Dr. V.V.Giri. A passionate cook, Pedatha s recipes are much sought after by friends and relatives. Her cooking has remained unchanged in the face of changing times, still retaining the traditional flavours and an old world charm. Intrigued by her passion which has not diminished with age, the authors Jigyasa Giri and Pratibha Jain take the initiative to record this culinary legacy for posterity. They say that after indulging in another soul-satisfying meal at Pedatha s home, we re-crowned her the world s best cook. She smiled indulgently and simply said that anyone can cook these dishes, they are so easy to make. On an impulse, the authors switched on their laptop, and keyed in the recipes. This book is more than a record of some of these traditional, time-tested recipes. Rendered in stunning aesthetics, the book also gives a peek into the simple presentation of traditional Andhra vegetarian food, as well as the affection and joy which was shared in bridging the gap between the spoken and the written word. The authors conclude that their heartfelt desire was to show Pedatha how a seemingly ordinary skill of hers is in truth a rare genius...and thus came about this book at the greatest speed possible. SALIENT FEATURES OF THIS BOOK: 1) 96 pages, hardbound with dust jacket, 170 GSM premium art paper, four-colour 2) A picture with every recipe 3) A photo glossary 4) Section pages designed with photographs of Pedatha and a write-up 5) A simple transliteration scheme for pronunciation of Telugu terms 6) Interesting variations in many recipes 7)Special tips by Pedatha throughout the book
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