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Fusion Cuisine
New Asia Cuisine Scene - Issue 17 May/Jun 99
On a recent trip to India - downtown Mumbai, to be specific - I had a lengthy, somewhat indepth 'discussion' with my good friend, top class chef, Peter Drescher, on what Fusion Cuisine represents in these days of gastronomic change and innovation. Read on to discover the fruits of our discussions, our interpretation of Fusion Cuisine.…..
Fusion Cuisine is a unique approach to fine cuisine, as the traditional European cuisines are enhanced by the various Asian cuisines and embrace the wealth of Asian spices and seasonings. Cuisines in Asia, more than those in Europe, lend themselves to experimentation, inviting one to take an idea from one culture and blend it with an idea from another. And this concept is what it called "Fusion Cuisine". Basically, it's traditional European cooking skills challenging Asian cooking techniques and embracing and absorbing the warmth and wealth of Asian spices and seasonings.
These days cuisine combinations throughout the world are mind-boggling. Until quite recently, many of us who cook did not explore the diversity of seasonings, spices and foods brought to the rest of the world by different groups of Asian immigrants such as the Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asians. Many of our dishes have remained characteristically European, heavy on meat and mildly spiced. Food preferences are so deeply rooted culturally and psychologically, the reluctance to experiment with new tastes and flavours is perhaps understandable.
Today, however, that reluctance is being rapidly overcome. The change became noticeable about 20 years ago with the emergence of the nouvelle cuisine, drawing upon foods and techniques once regarded as foreign or exotic. Developing at the same time, there was a growing trend which was called in the early 1980's "East meets West Cuisine'. It is a cooking style which emphasises the blending of foods, spices, flavourings and techniques formerly isolated from each other within Asian or European kitchens. Its popular acceptance is no doubt related to the increase in merging all styles - Gucci shops in Hong Kong and Chinese restaurants in Paris. The introduction and ready acceptance of Asian influences began in California and has now spread throughout the world. This is due in large part perhaps to the historical immigration of Asians to Europe, America and Australia. Many of these recent arrivals have opened restaurants and food stores specialising in Asian cuisines and featured foods and ingredients totally unlike the dishes formerly offered in many cheap Oriental restaurants. In the process, they have educated and delighted the Western palate.
Coverage of the new cuisines and food combinations in cookbooks, magazines, newspapers and television programs has enhanced our understanding of and familiarity with them, and the spread of this new awareness. Specialty shops and supermarkets, responding to consumer demand, now stock foods and ingredients whose names were once found only in dictionaries. Today such terms as stir-fried, pak choi, bean curd, tofu, soya sauce, wok, sushi, fresh coriander, curry and fresh ginger are as familiar as apple pie.
Fusion cuisine should be good, honest cooking that is simple, quick, healthy and easy at the same time. It is basically an unforced, natural blending of ingredients and techniques borrowed from all over Asia blended with the wide experiences of the traditional European Cuisines. Recommended are the freshest of ingredients combined with Asian foods and tastes with sense and sensibility. They shouldn't be imitated nor disguised Asian dishes. A recipe is not a rigid formula it is a guide with which a chef or cook can experiment. Cooking is an art, not a science. It is creative, experimental and imaginative. This should become obvious through the recipes of Fusion Cuisine which result in dishes that are both familiar and exotic and at the same time, satisfying.
Fusion Cuisine is unique, it's personal, it's simple and it's a taste intensive cuisine. It's also truly contemporary and cosmopolitan, dazzling taste buds and confronting the norms. It's like fashion - you mix and match. It's like music - you don't always want to hear the same sounds - you may listen to some jazz, you may settle into a track of country or you may muse over a track of blues depending on what you want to hear and your mood. In other words, it is flexible, innovative, open and tests the limits - but fundamentally it is based on a knowledge and understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of one's ingredients. For example, you can spark up a goulash with curry spices, but you wouldn't add soya sauce. You would add ginger to a fish dish but you wouldn't think of introducing it to mint jelly. It's an intensification of European cuisine, an enhancement which doesn't seem to work the other way around - you can hardly Europeanise Asian dishes and techniques so successfully.
Asia is home to some of the world's finest cuisines with strict culinary traditions yet in a modern environment that is constantly changing. It is an environment that appeals to the adventurous chef and encourages culinary development. Ideas for dishes spring up all the time and not just for the sake of novelty but because of one's repertoire, one's horizons. But one has to use common sense when 'fusing' since the success of the creations lies in the successful combining of select ingredients, combinations which make the results better than the traditional versions. One has to learn to highlight the strengths of each cuisine and side-step the weaker parts. It is also not mixing ingredients for the sake of it, for fusion also means you will automatically do it better. The essence of Fusion Cuisine is judgement, it is all important as to what can be fused and what can't. And to know what will and what won't is a matter of practice, experience and dash of spontaneity. Above all, one has to understand the ingredients and fundamentals of the kitchen and needs to be his own worst critic.
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