A Melting Pot for Flavors

Prepared Foods, March, 2000 by Linda Milo Ohr

Flavor nuances from diverse ethnic cuisines blend to create foods with culinary distinction.

Jasmine tea souffle with lemongrass ice cream. Duck, mango and caramelized onion wrap. Jerk pork loin with chorizo fried rice. Like countless other recent examples, these dishes marry flavors and culinary techniques of cultures throughout the world, including Jamaica, Thailand and Mexico.

Consumers are exposed to this cornucopia of "fusion flavors" predominantly in restaurants. At the same time, widely popular cooking shows on television are introducing home chefs to flavor fusion concepts that can be applied in their own kitchens. The dishes listed above, for example, come from a cooking show on the Food Network's "East Meets West" with Ming Thai.

"Fusion cuisine is taking ingredients or techniques from more than one cuisine and creating new dishes with the results," says John Matchuk, director of a flavor house's culinary creation center. He cites California cuisine, which blends local California ingredients with the cooking techniques of the Pacific Rim or Europe, as one example.

Consultant and author Elisabeth Rozin draws a distinct difference between the fusion cuisine of today and what she calls "crossroads cuisine."

"A crossroads cuisine develops gradually when several distinct culinary traditions merge to form a unique style of cooking," says Rozin. "Through trade, migration, war, or any form of cross-cultural contact, culinary elements have integrated particularly in areas vulnerable to outside cultural influence." Foods from Burma, Malaysia and the Philippines, for example, show the influences of the traditions of China, India and Southeast Asia.

"Today, fusion is really a restaurant, chef-driven phenomenon," observes Rozin. "It happens in the public as a statement of aesthetics. We are no longer dealing with food for nourishment, but for the novelty and excitement that people are willing to pay for."

Several of these culinary fusion blends, which predominantly originate at the foodservice level, offer consumers a new twist on traditional comfort foods, a new type of ethnic cuisine with a hint of familiarity, or simply a myriad of flavor combinations that excite the tastebuds.

The Asian Influence

Offering "modern American cuisine with Asian influence," Fusebox brings fusion cuisine to trendy eaters in Atlanta. The restaurant's East meets West menu includes unique dishes such as miso scallion chicken with mango salad and black bean, and steamed Irish salmon with vegetables, miso and sesame. The restaurant's flavorful desserts include sake creme brulee and ginger ice cream with fried rice noodles and kumquats.

Asian fusion flavor profiles vary considerably depending on the cuisines that are blended.

"If you're talking about Japanese flavors, these include ingredients like wasabi, crab, bonito, ginger, nori. Chinese cuisine includes oyster sauce, soy flavors, five spice, chilies and sesame," says Matchuk. The use of hot chili peppers predominates in Korea, while Vietnam utilizes garlic, gingerroot, galangal, lemongrass, sugar and a fish sauce called nuoc main. Thai cuisine uses a similar fish sauce called nam bla in addition to burned garlic, kaffir lime and assorted chilies.

Blends with Asian cuisine work well for several reasons. Most dishes are light and rely heavily on vegetables, an added bonus for consumers who are trying to eat healthier. In addition, Chinese restaurants have become so commonplace that consumers are more willing to try other types of Asian cuisine. Cbristiaan Avonda, corporate executive chef for an ingredient supplier, also notes that Asian cuisines blend well because they're applicable to both sweet and savory types.

At the Poultry Show this past January; Avonda showcased Pacific Rim Barbecue, a version of Asian-American fusion. To make the dish, Avonda vacuum tumbled a chicken breast in a light coconut marinade and then smothered it in a topically applied rub that combined traditional smoke barbecue flavor with the flavors of Japanese mirin (sweet sake), peanut and sesame.

"Pacific Rim is a good example of fusion that consumers will accept," explains Avonda. "The base is a smoky Midwest barbecue that the average consumer identifies with. We give it a value-added twist with the coconut marinade. The resulting blend of flavors provides a pleasurable eating experience that entices yet satisfies within the taster's comfort zone."

Going one step beyond Asian-American fusion, Fantastic Foods, Petaluma, Calif., offers a different type of East-meets-West cuisine: Thailand meets Morocco. Its Royal Thai Couscous blends couscous with lemongrass and traditional Thai spices. Some of the spices include basil, garlic and galangal root, says Larry Thai, vice president of marketing. "We try to look for synergies between classic flavor profiles and textures of different cultures," he says.

Merging with Mediterranean

Mediterranean fusion can draw from Italian, Spanish, French Provencal and North African cuisines, as well as from the Middle Eastern cuisines of Lebanon, Israel, Syria and Turkey. With bold flavors in style, consumers are open to the robust flavors that the Mediterranean offers. Tomatoes, onions, olive oil, bay laurel, garlic and savory herbs constitute many of the Mediterranean's core flavors, says Matchuk.