Psychologists
would agree that mentally healthy people have good “boundaries.” Unlike the tangible perimeters of the
physical realm, psychological boundaries are the lines that demarcate your
emotional world from others. They also
signify the limits of certain interpersonal behaviors. You could probably stroll into a co-worker’s
office who you’re friendly with, take a seat uninvited and blurt out
obscenities about your ex. But you couldn’t
do that with impunity in your boss’s office.
There’s a boundary there. And if
you can do that with your boss, then the two of you have blurred that boundary.
In all walks of life people occasionally
cross boundaries. Sometimes this is a
good thing but most of the time it’s not.
Boundaries are there for a reason.
It is the intuitive and prudent individual who knows when it is
fortuitous to breach certain boundaries and when it isn’t.
Boundaries certainly exist in the culinary
arena. There are the interpersonal
boundaries between the customer and restaurant staff or the staff and the head
chef. But on a larger scale, there are
boundaries between different cuisines and/or techniques. It is here that a brave few have ventured
into the murky waters of culinary synthesis, otherwise known as “fusion”
cuisine. Even fewer have done so
successfully.
Fusion cuisine began in the 1970’s,
spearheaded by such culinary icons as Wolfgang Puck. Puck laid the groundwork for one of the most
commonly fused pairings: European and
Asian cuisine. Traditionally trained in
Europe but equally well versed in Asian cooking, Puck’s launching ground was
the apropos California, situated midway between Europe and Asia. Over the ensuing decades “east meets west”
eateries began emerging throughout the country, most notably in urban areas
where the cultural melting pot was more amenable to culinary integration.
Eurasian cuisine blends ingredients and/or
techniques from the two cultures. For
example, a spinach salad (Mediterranean) may be paired with tempura battered
scallops, (Japanese). Chinese pot
stickers could be filled with traditional European ingredients. Risotto may be infused with wasabi. Poached tofu is an example of the
intermingling of technique and ingredient.
Here the French method of poaching is combined with an Asian
victual. A less discrepant form of
fusion cuisine is when two types of Asian cooking are combined such as Thai and
Vietnamese or Thai and Malaysian. Here
the orchestration of ingredients and techniques is less challenging. Proponents of fusion cooking espouse the
bounty of creative opportunities and new taste sensations that it affords.
Dissidents of fusion cuisine call it
“confusion” cuisine. The point being,
that all too often chefs combine ingredients that have no business being
together. The result is a gustatory
nightmare. Consider this excerpt from a
recently published review of a new restaurant in New York City: “Sometimes the dishes get a little out of
hand. Black sea bass is overwhelmed by
Asian spices and chop-suey style mussels.”
Other than a lack of culinary dexterity,
“confusion” cuisine occurs when chefs try too hard to develop something
innovative. Let’s face it; all the
classics have been done to death.
Nowadays a crucial means for a chef to make his mark on the culinary
world is to go where no chef has gone before.
Unfortunately, sometimes that’s into a black hole.
Determining
which ingredients can commingle propitiously is a daunting task. There’s a tremendous degree of subjectivity,
namely the great variability of human taste.
While I would find ginger crusted lamb in miso broth to be abhorrent, another
person may proclaim it to be extraordinary.
The trick of course, is uncovering those elusive and unheard of
combinations that naturally resonate with most palates despite the few
inevitable dissenters. Talented chefs
can sometimes find the best of both worlds.
Merging ingredients/techniques from two
dissimilar cuisines into a single dish is not the only road toward culinary
enmeshment. There’s a French/Thai
restaurant near where I live that serves both classic French and Thai dishes
that are culturally in tact. The
“fusion” is the mix of both types of cooking on the menu. Thus you could order steak au poivre with
haricot vert (black peppercorn encrusted steak with French green beans), or pad
Thai, the classic noodle dish of Thailand.
The
antithesis to fusion cuisine is to create dishes, indeed entire meals, from
ingredients indigenous to a specific culinary region. The theorem is that foods, (and wines for
that matter), grown together in the same microclimate, share a natural affinity
for one another. Undoubtedly there is
merit to this position from a biochemical standpoint alone. Proponents of this “terroir” driven school of
thought recoil at the idea of crossing culinary boundaries. Chefs who are true to their cultural roots believe
that fusion cooking diminishes the integrity of both cuisines. More scathing criticisms attack it as an
attempt to obfuscate a lack of culinary talent and/or an attempt to jump on the
latest food craze at the expense of culinary propriety.
If you’ve never tried fusion cooking I
strongly recommend you do your homework before you do. Seek out a place with a good reputation. Whether you condone fusion cuisine or not,
the fact of the matter is that it can be a culinary minefield. You may not mind your worlds colliding but
you don’t want them blowing up in your face.
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