Fusion Confusion

If the purists see this post, I'll be "ashes to ashes" before you can say "Gobi Manchurian". I tossed together (and then ate it all up) a glorious stir fry - a technicolour mix of...hold your breath... :

• Udon noodles
• Onion, garlic, carrot, capsicum
• Hoisin sauce
• Sriracha chilly sauce
• Teriyaki sauce
• Spice blend of kafir lime leaves, lemon grass, birds eye chillies

Is it any wonder that high priests of cooking will burst a vessel....or, more likely, sprout 2-3 ulcers on reading this list? All of this in one dish?!!, they'll ask.

Now I know, that this ingredients list reads like the Impossible Trinity of Far Eastern cuisnine - Thai, Japanese and Chinese cuisines cannot co-exist in one dish.

But they did, and oh so deliciously!

The fat strands of Japanese Udon noodles were the perfect robust carriers for the onslaught of the triad of sauces - Chinese Hoisin, Japanese Teriyaki and Thai Sriracha. Throw in the Chinese stiry frying technique of wok hei and you had more international harmony than the General Assembly of the United Nations. :)

Which brings us to the much-debated debate - the battle for supremacy between taste and authenticity. Rubishing Indian Chinese cuisine (sneered at as 'Sino Ludhianwi' by Vir Sanghvi) just because it is a made-up cuisine, a 'bastardisation' of Chinese cooking by Indian no-chefs is one such example. What if the world misses out on a fabulous new taste sensation just because the purists turned their noses at it?

Also, which cuisine has strictly retained its original form for generations? Cooking is not so much a rigidly preserved art form or an immutable scientific

formula. Cooking, like language, is a continuously evolving, ever-adapting means to satisfy one of man's primal needs - cooking fulfills the need for physical nourishment, while language is the solution to the urge to reach out to fellow human beings . If a child is lactose intolerant or if a husband is allergic to chilli - does not the woman of the house modify the ages-old recipes handed down to her without a second thought? It is this fluid adaptiveness of cooking (and
language) which will keep both of them bright and alive while stuck-in-mud art forms will get mummified and remain as relics in museums.

In short, judging a dish or a new style of cooking without tasting it or giving it a fair trial is amoral, IMHO. If you genuinely hate it and thinks the flavours don't marry well, say it by all means. But don't judge without hearing (err...tasting) both sides of the case.