Issue No. 2 | August 2011

This Month's Kitchen

Maybe it’s me giving into the human desire to categorize, but I’ve been toying a lot with naming what it is I do in the kitchen. If I were to label my style, what would it be? Much of it has arisen from chats I’ve had lately with the amazing Tim Ma (Wow, Tim! 2 for 2 with the newsletter mentions!) and collaborations on several recipes. I’ve long been a total polyglot in the kitchen, blending ingredients and techniques from across the globe into a single pot. As Tim is the owner of a restaurant creating “American” food with “Asian, Latin American, French flavors and techniques,” I asked his thoughts on the concept of “fusion” and why it’s a four-letter word to many modern chefs. He offered this insight about his own cooking, “I hate the word fusion, but its the only way to describe what I do.  I call it American, because that’s what it is - America is the melting pot of cuisine, and classic american is non-fusion American cuisine.  Make sense?  Our food is what makes new american NEW.  I’m in a particularly snarky mood.”

I hope he doesn’t mind - I had to leave that last part in, because talking about fusion makes me a little snarky as well. I don’t think there’s a clear cut definition of what is the purest form of a recipe indicative of a culture, and what can be referred to as a blend of cultures. Our entire food culture is like a living being - evolving and changing with each and every iteration of simple ingredients molded into a completed dish. I think there is something inherently wrong with hating on a tuna poke taco for being “fusion” when in actuality, our end game in the kitchen is perfectly marrying flavors to create a tasty bite. The more I analyze my own recipes, this larger and truer point reveals itself - that all we cook is influenced by everything we know and experience.  And being a better cook means trying as many things as possible and seeing how they work together with the infinite permutations available to us.

This month, I find myself creating recipes for crazy amalgamations of flavors that could easily be called fusion. Like a Mexican Chocolate Pot de Creme with Horchata Whipped Cream and Plantain Chips, for one. Or even my Pulled Boar Panini with Lemon Aioli and Miner’s Lettuce. And with fusion talk abounding, I think I need to let go of this need to label and just cook what’s good. If I haven’t said it enough, I highly encourage you to do the same. The moment you decide to be fearless in the kitchen is ultimately when you are freed to create goodness without all of the pretension and ego attached to cooking. Let’s be fearless together, okay?