Ingredients and Technique

When someone talks about regional cooking, there are two main aspects: the ingredients and the techniques that are used to cook them. As an example, look at risotto. A purist would make this with a specific type of rice and cook it in a particular manner. But you can separate these. You can take risotto rice and cook it in the same way that most people cook regular white rice and end up with a slightly different tasting dish. Or you can take regular white rice and cook it in the manner that you cook risotto and have a dish that is creamier than if you had boiled or steamed the rice.

One of the current fashions of cooking is called fusion. Take Asian ingredients and prepare them using Continental cooking techniques. Or vice versa. Or combine two different cultural styles. This is nothing new. Whenever an ethnic group moves to a new area, they are forced to change their traditional recipes because their regional ingredients are not available. The further they move, the more extreme the changes. But they retain the techniques with which they grew up. Fusion.

As an example, take a recent immigrant from China to your typical American Chinese restaurant. Your friend will probably wonder how this can be called Chinese food. Over many generations, we have had Chinese immigrants. They arrived and adapted their cooking to reflect the new environment. They also opened restaurants, so they adapted further to meet their new clients' tastes. There is nothing wrong with Americanized Chinese cooking, but your friend is right in that it is not what they are cooking back home.