Interview with Huang Yan-mei, the Volunteer Chef of DDM Yunlai Monastery

From running a steakhouse to cooking at a monastery as a chef, Huang Yan-mei (黃燕梅) has had an inextricable connection with the culinary arts. In order to plan menus for the monastery and get her children to embrace vegetarian food, she has been creative in incorporating exotic cuisines to create irresistible vegetarian dishes.

Original Chinese text / Qiu Huimin (邱惠敏)

Every Tuesday and Friday, you can find Huang and her team busy in the kitchen of Yunlai Monastery of Dharma Drum Mountain (DDM), preparing vegan meals for everyone in the monastery. It's a scene that she probably couldn't have imagined 30 years ago. "Thirty years ago, I rented my mother-in-law's house to run a steakhouse, cooking the steaks for customers myself. I never thought I'd be a vegetarian now, not to mention preparing vegetarian meals for people!" Recalling the changes along the way, Huang beamed with joy.

Huang's connection with DDM began as she ended her pool parlor business. Because she had more free time then, she took her friend, a volunteer, to Zhai Ming Monastery. "Every time I picked up my friend, she looked so happy, which made me truly curious about what she was doing there," said Huang. As a result, from simply taking her friend while travelling to and from Zhai Ming Monastery, she started to join her friend as a volunteer at the monastery. It was after volunteering in the kitchen of the monastery in 2010 that she was introduced to vegetarian cuisine. The following year, Huang took refuge in the Three Jewels. However, the vegetarian diet she had adopted consisted mainly of plant ingredients picked out from non-vegetarian dishes, since she had to prepare three meals for her non-vegetarian family. She did not adopt a completely vegan diet until 2016. 


The Big Changes after Going Vegan

"The biggest change after becoming a vegan is that my body has become less burdened and my temper has improved," said Huang. Huang indicated that she could feel the obvious change in her body, which was not as burdened as before. Moreover, her mind has become clearer and more refreshed. In fact, even the attitude she adopts when approaching people and events has become more open-minded. Huang candidly shared how the combination of Buddhist teachings and a vegan diet have helped her minimize the friction between her and her daughter-in-law. For example, her daughter-in-law keeps six cats, whose fur can be a major hygiene issue in the house. Huang reminded herself not to intervene or complain about it, because, after all, everyone has their own lifestyle, and she doesn't find it wise to maintain that "everyone must follow my way." However, Huang still expresses herself and tries her best to get her ideas across. In the end, both sides respect each other's boundaries and needs by reducing the cats' activities at least in the common space of their home.

Huang says that, after becoming a vegan, she gradually changed her habitual patterns and became more restrained. It turned out that after closing her steakhouse, circumstances lead Huang to open a pool parlor, where she often had to deal with both the gangs and the police. In so doing, she got into some bad habits. After learning Buddhist teachings, Huang often volunteers at the Dharma centers and joins Buddhist group practice. This made her realize the importance of maintaining the purity of physical, verbal, and mental actions. As a result, Huang gradually drifted away from people she used to hang out with. "If I still lived a life of indulgence with my old friends, it would be easy for me to become foul-mouthed again, never mind maintaining a vegan diet," said Huang.

Since Huang is the person preparing meals for her family, her change has also influenced their diet.

In order to accommodate the eating patterns of her family members and avoid backlashes from them, Huang usually prepares one non-vegetarian dish; as for the rest, including the main course, sides, and soups, she would try her best to make them vegetarian. Gradually, her sons grew accustomed to this eating pattern, which imperceptibly led her family to consume less meat. The change in her cooking style also changed her family's stereotype of vegetarian cuisine as being greasy and heavily processed.


An unexpected role transition to becoming a chef

Becoming a chef was an unexpected transition for Huang. At that time, she was a volunteer at the kitchen of Zhai Ming Monastery, and the chef occasionally took leave. As the vice team leader of the culinary team of the Taoyuan Branch of DDM Fellowship, Huang often had to coordinate the manpower. Most of the volunteers felt that it was a great responsibility to take charge of the monastery's meals, so they were hesitant about taking up the task. Having experience in running a restaurant, Huang thought to herself, "I only need to adapt non-vegetarian food into vegetarian ones, which wouldn't be too difficult, would it?" So she boldly took on the role of chef.

"In the beginning, I still prepared the meal with the concept of cooking non-vegetarian food, thinking that the only difference is the ingredients. However, you can season non-vegetarian food with the five pungent spices (which are prohibited in Buddhist vegetarianism), whereas for Buddhist vegetarian dishes, you can only use ginger or fungus to enrich its flavors. It's a culinary challenge." Being recognized for her efforts in enriching the flavors of vegetarian cuisine, Huang later became one of the chefs at DDM World Center for Buddhist Education. This posed a big challenge for her to go from planning meals for 20 to 30 people to hundreds or even thousands of people. Luckily, thanks to her good relationship with people, Huang has been able to fulfill each task by organizing a team in which everyone trusts and complements one another. 

As a proponent of "whole foods," namely, food made with natural ingredients in its original form without being refined and heavily processed, Huang cooks ingredients as they are, without excessive seasonings. "The seasoning I use the most is salt. I might add a little sugar at most, or other seasonings like pepper or chili powder to enhance the flavor and color." That's why people who have tried her dishes are surprised at how refreshing and tasty vegetarian cuisine can be.


Children as the driving force of her creativity in cuisine

Huang prefers preparing food at home over eating out. In addition, most of her family members eating at home are young, whom she hopes will not oppose vegetarian diets. As a result, she often creates dishes that cater to their tastes by making reference to recipes or cooking shows.

Huang has noticed that the cooking techniques are the key factors that determine whether a vegetarian restaurant would be popular among young people or not. In addition to replacing meat with vegetarian ingredients, the texture and flavor of the food served at restaurants favored by the young is comparable to non-vegetarian cuisine. That's why she keeps trying to turn popular non-vegetarian dishes into vegetarian ones. When her children can't even tell her adapted vegetarian dishes from their non-vegetarian counterparts, it always makes her proud and happy!



Related articles:

Growth of Vegetarianism among the Young

Common Questions about Vegetarianism

Interview with Huang Yan-mei, the Volunteer Chef of DDM Yunlai Monastery

Interview with Veggie Deer, Taiwanese YouTuber: Changing Diets, Transforming the World

Interview with Ven. Yan Duan: Plant-based Diet as an Experiment for the Body & Mind



Resource: Issue 478 of Humanity Magazine (June 2023), Dharma Drum Publishing Corporation
Translation: Li Siang-ling
Editing: Keith Brown, James