fusion food

[m brown]

K.I.S.S.
(keep it simple stupid!)
let the food speak for itsself.

[cape chef]

hamburgers and French fries
belgiun waffles with canadian bacon
French toast with vermont maple syrup
Just relax, enjoy,We all eat (fusion) food almost everyday! we all might have different views on what is really fusion.But guess what? we are all the benifactors of this "con" fused world.

[shroomgirl]

Nick~ what are you using to bind your couscous with to make the roulade...
couscous as the roll, nuts and honey as the filling? Having a hard time visualizing this one, more info pls.

[Nick.Shu]

heheh, this one took some experimenting.

The trick is to cook the cous cous with a weakish sauce anglais (milk, cream, sugar, about half the egg yolk (the starch from the cous cous will help bind) vanilla bean or essence) into something like a semolina breakfast porridge (but slightly drier).

Meanwhile, make up some roasted nuts (pistachio nuts, macadamia nuts, whatever) into a ground mixture with warmed honey like the lebanese dessert baklava.

Spread the cous cous mixture onto a tea towel or plastic wrap like a swiss roll or roulade, spread the baklava filling on to the cous cous, roll, chill.

The important thing is to make the cous cous mixture a little more wetter with the weak anglais than you would for a normal cous cous. It looks good with poached fresh figs or something like that.

[shroomgirl]

Wooooo Too Cool Thank you Nick! So many variations of that to play off of.
( I don't add honey to my nuts in baklava...I layer sugar nuts zest cinnamon then bake and pour a warm infused simple syrup with lemon and orange peel and honey ove the warm baklava....I guess just a thick honey/nut combo will work for a filling.

[Nick.Shu]

the easiest way to make "fusion" work is to take a concept or flavours that work and take a very hard look at it.

With the cous cous dessert, first i looked at middle eastern flavors, then textures, then the concept of "what if i used a cous cous instead of a sponge for a roulade".

All things being progressive, using middle eastern flavors with a european concept, and some experimentation, you do find that some things work. even though some say dont follow the rules and others say please do follow the rules, i thought that meeting both on the middle line may provide some inspiration and creativeness.

Remember that invention is 99% perspiration and 1 % inspiration. But if you dont try, nothing new will occur.

I like to believe that cuisine is almost darwinian to the point that it evolves - cuisine is living.

With the addition of imagination, it becomes a creature beyond description, yet within our control, with our understanding.

But enough of me waxing lyrical.

[cookM]

Well said. Now, on to eating!

[Nick.Shu]

oops, beer fuelled arrogance. Soz

[Nick.Shu]

ergg, every thing is blury including the sydney olympics openning ceremony

haahahahaha, you guys are killing me.
-listening to all of you trying to define and critique the idea of fusion cuisine... If you all just think for a second, it is quite obvious that the cuisines of the world are all considered, "FUISION CUISINE". For example, if the Chinese never found pepper, where would the French be??? If the Chinese never made noodles, what would the Italians be eating??? or tomato sauce for that matter, which was invented by the Chinese!!! What about curry powder? Did curry powder really originate from India???I doubt that's even a "real" Indian spice!
So having said that, I can't understand why there is such a vast amount of unnecessary fuss over fusion cuisine, a cuisine that has existed for many thousands of years! Without fusion, many of the world's cuisines wouldn't have the ingredients that they have now. We have been mixing different cultural flavors since the birth of cuisine. Without fusion, we limit ourselves-our cuisine would never be able to evolve. There is more to food than "the traditional french techniques". As for me, I've never viewed myself as a slave towards the traditions of food and classical techniques; instead I believe that food should be prepared anyway and everyway in order to achieve harmony, purity, respect, and tranquility.

[cookM]

Hmmm...that's what I said in my very first post. I appreciate "fusion" (read in my first post re: Vietnamese cuisine). I just don't like it when people put stuff together just to put it together!