Vegetarians -- notoriously inclined to mock meat-eaters -- love to eat in restaurants that serve mock meat. Go figure. It's just one of many contradictions that perplex meat-n-'taters types like me. I mean, if it's carnivation you're looking for, why not just avail yourself of the fleshy offerings all around us?

But of course I'm being insensitive, as we meat-eaters so often are. My highly vegged friend Wanda -- who scrunches up her nose at the sight of Bac-os, for crying out loud -- explained it to me: many people drop meat from their diets for health or philosophical reasons, and neither motivation rids them of the purely aesthetic yen for the FLAVOR of seared animal flesh. So, like ex-smokers dragging futilely on unlit butts or recovering alcoholics who toss a couple of olives in their Perrier, many vegetarians seek a guilt-free (if often pleasure-free) taste of the good old, bad old days.

While most mock meat dishes served in American-style health food eateries offer neither canny simulation nor much palate stimulation, there are more tempting solutions to be found in other cultures.

INDIA

Hindus, for example, have spent centuries forging a delicious, flavorful vegetarian cuisine that includes some ersatz animal tissue. While most of the country's vegetarians are located in the south, the southern holy Brahmins are so rigorously opposed to meat that they forbid even the use of strong spices that might hint at its richness. As a result, the country's mock meat dishes are found further north.

Most come from the Kashmiri Brahmins, a rogue bunch who've been teetering between Hinduism and Islam for so long that meat-eating has snuck into the culture. They're famous for mock meat preparations that satisfy hearty appetites. In her superb Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking, author Julie Sahni includes a recipe for the Kashmir Brahmins' famous matar shufta. It's based on khoya, a fudgy paste made from boiled-down milk that's the basis for many Indian sweets. For this dish (an imitation of keema matar, or ground meat and peas), yogurt, coriander, peas and a vast range of spices are added, and the tremendously rich result is quite meaty. Another option, according to Sahni, is to add the matar shufta to zucchini (along with onion, bulgur, and a tomato-coriander sauce) to create a baked zucchini stuffed with mock ground meat and bulgur. You've got to cook these for yourself; they're hard to find in Indian restaurants (vegetarian ones almost always present the lighter southern style).

The Indians invented the ubiquitous vegetarian patties, sold in health food places, that were introduced here via Jamaica and Guyana (whose cuisines were influenced by Indian immigrants). Sahni's fried patties (sabzi kababs) are direct from the Mogul source, and contain lots of yellow split peas, bread crumbs, onion, and either lotus root or mushrooms. They're not terribly meaty, but are far more satisfying than, say, alfalfa sprouts and blue-green algae.

There is another Indian alternative for otherwise hyperstrict vegetarians: Brahmins from Calcutta are permitted, during a yearly religious festival, to eat meat that's been ceremonially blessed by The Goddess (and thus transformed from unholy flesh to a sacred offering). In ecstatic trance they ingest raw, still-warm goat meat. Home fries are strictly optional with this meta-mock meat.