Shojin ryori: how to cook Japanese vegetarian dishes

Ahead of a Guardian event at Birmingham’s Warehouse Cafe, chef Sachiko Saeki explains the Buddhist cuisine and how to use it at home

Shojin ryori is the Japanese term for Buddhist vegetarian cooking and is one of the daily activities for some practising Buddhist monks. I became interested in it after chefing at Warehouse Cafe, a vegetarian restaurant in Birmingham. This job prompted me to find out more about vegetarian from my own culture, and so in 2011 I visited Koya-san, a famous group of Zen temples in Wakayama prefecture.

Generally shojin is very simple cooking. Eating seasonally, gentle seasoning and reducing waste as much as you can. Some ingredients are typical such as soy, tofu, kuzu (mountain starch). A shojin meal often consists of a soup and three dishes. This is termed ichi ju san sai. If you’d like to try it at home, cook boiled rice and soup, then add three vegetable dishes. These can be steamed vegetables, tofu and pickles.

Some recipes, though perhaps light and beautiful in appearance, require physical strength and stamina to produce.