Fusion Food: The World Is A Big Melting Pot
New Napoleonic World Order
The trend towards fusion food – where dishes of different cultures are blended – should not come as a surprise. Globe-trotters are bringing you a whole new tasting sensation from many strange and wonderful destinations. Fusion food today is now a gastronomic adventure and a delight, despite some dying resistance from a few purists.
To the uninitiated, fusion is simply synthesizing several cuisines in one dish. It’s not that simple, tough.
Even conventional, traditional cooking requires skill, finesse and precision to concoct a simple dish. What’s more in fusion cooking, which requires an intricate tapestry of many time-tested techniques and ingredients.
So, contrary to what we imagined, it is not an indiscriminate blend of ingredients and cooking methods. Chefs and food artists are constantly altering tastes with their cleverly calculated mixture to create original dishes.
Fusing effectively
The taste palates of food connoisseurs and ordinary diners today has evolved to become more sophisticated and demanding than their predecessors’. Expectations of a dining experience now surpass the basic levels of mere taste as diners search for something new, improved, and different. In today’s vast larders, ingredients and flavours abound; textures and forms have more scope than before, and there is generally more room to play. But as many that have tried their hands would point out, less is often more, and one should resist fashioning fusion for fusion’s sake.
How do you do it is as important to what you do. An example of a fusion dish that has been adopted in many menus is braised aubergines and potatoes served with guinea fowl, where aubergines originated from China, potatoes from South America, and the fowl from Africa.
Fusion experiments can, really, be a balancing act fraught with danger as in the case of leftovers where the danger could come in the form of using something past its prime. There is also a danger when stepping into a new, unfamiliar terrain that has few landmarks. But while experimenting could result in a less-than-successful product, it can also produce a bold, successful union, particularly in the hands of an experienced chef or food designer.
Should it really be called a Napoleon?
A very telling aspect of fusion foods is the naming of a creation where history and traditions play an important part. There is a strong tendency to refer to the past dishes and to base the appellations and description of the newly-created dish on them and this is often done in a way which allows the guests a preview of what they will be eating.
For example, combine fresh oysters, spinach, lemon beurre blanc and flying fish roe in a puff pastry, and the menu could well read “Napoleon of oysters and spinach with lemon beurre blanc.” While some purists might be offended by the use of Napoleon to describe a dish other than the original – a rich dessert made with layers of crisp puff pastry cream topped with chocolate – others may find it sufficiently informative in deciding to order this oyster-and-spinach combination. The naming or description should add to the anticipated pleasure of the gastronomic experience.
For lovers of fusion food, then, the world is no more than one big melting pot.
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