On the topic of fusion cuisine, I think the best stuff comes from natural mixes of cultures. Alina, the Brazilian-Japanese crossover sounds 1. really interesting, and 2. really logical, because there’s a fairly sizable Brazilian population throughout Japan, so it’d make sense that certain kinds of hybrid foods would arise from that…like Indo-Chinese food, for example. And you have stuff like cheese dosas, and some people I know make sandwiches out of/stuff puff pastries with pav bhaji and other curries.

(However, I draw the line at things like this lovely little place in Atlanta called Chico and Chang’s, which exists (existed?) mainly to capitalize on the demand for both cuisines among local college students, and offered one really dubious crossover “Chinese burrito”. I also wasn’t really fond of the “Indian pizza” at Zante Pizza in San Francisco, which serves up both kinds of foods separately and in crossover dishes.)

On another note: Over here in Boston, all of our Desi restaurants SUCKS. They add sugar and cream to everything – including sambaar, which shouldn’t have cream in it. Moreover, they use vinegar instead of tamarind for many recipes.

Oh yes – Alina, we have a few Pashtun-owned restaurants. “Madina Market” owned by a Pakistani, and very close to it is “Ariana” owned by an Afghani. “Madina Market” is where you want to go to for a stomach upset. Just don’t tell Iqbal, the owner, that I said that. “Ariana” is good food, but I can tell that the owner there, Najib, sources his products from an Italian food provider.

I wish that these Indian proprietors were less money-minded, and more focused on creating great, respectable foods like the French/Italian.

Blasphemy! No but really, the examples you gave sound kinda gross but you should try fusion food, it’s awesome. Went to a Brazilian-Japanese place for a friend’s birthday recently and it was amazing!

I wish they had more Desi street food around here, like instead of a hot dog stand on every NYC corner I want to see stands selling those spicy potato patties like they have in Peshawar and Karachi. Or those little cups of spicy chickpeas they sell in like every shopping mall there.

I love the idea of fusion food. The reason I started eating meat/chicken/fish was because of the cultural and linguistic parallels I started finding when I started learning other languages like Farsi and Chinese (and consequently their countries). Ive found food to be a very good medium of bringing people together.

I personally love cooking, I’m not good at it but I really got into combining flavors when a friend of mine started making these videos on global food cultures, for little kids she used to teach in Texas.

I think the best dish I ever made, at least to my own tastebuds, was last Christmas for a party at my friend’s house. His family are Polish immigrants, so I wanted to make Pierogies. I ended up making a Colcannon (Irish Mashed potatoes) stuffing for the pierogie, pan frying them to get a crispy exterior like Samosas and I served them with a Mughalai sauce and a Rarebit sauce (the latter sauce stolen from Alton Brown). It was a lot of different cultures that ended up in one dish, that made me love cooking just that much more.

I would love to see what flavors/spices/foods have SMers combined… in serious endeavors, not munchie fests or midnight-raids!

Your TCBY alternative!

Never had it frozen and never heard of anyone having it frozen, but it could work…doi (or dahi for y’all non bengalis) is one of those hit and miss dishes in my opinion. You either make it right or get it all wrong. In fact, i think that applies to all sweets – the texture is key and it has to be right otherwise the entire dish is ruined.

I hate the idea of fusion food though. I mean I’ll have a dosa with my mom’s curries and i’ll have vadeh with ketchup or something, but I won’t mix and match leftover curry with hamburger bread or make biryani out of general thao chicken (extreme example, but some people have funky palates)…some marriages are simply not meant to last.

My fingers still smell like fish, but it was worth it! and I agree, south Indian food is sooo spicy and delicious, and sadly there’s not enough of it here because most Amreekans can’t handle it. I remember at barbeques growing up, my parents would make sure to prepare spicy and non-spicy food; one for the family, one for the neighbors…haha it’s all good though.