Confusion of Fusion is what I would like to name an area or culiary style that some would like to dabble in, while others have gained much success in and many more have tried to immitate.
I have lived in Hawai"i for about half of my life. I moved there in the mid 90"s and adopted the culture and lifestyle. I am originally from Brooklyn, New York. Let me tell you that culture shock was was given to me as well as shared from me.
I knew that things would be different, but also I would be able to understand some familiar things because my parents came from an island culture, Puerto Rico to be exact. The language in Hawai'i obviously was foreign to me, but also the cooking.
I learned to eat poi, a kind of pureed potato. I first ate poke, which is cubed pieces of raw fish; mostly Ahi or Tuna, and opihi. Opihi are like snails. I had no problem eating haupia, a coconut pudding, or kalua pig, which is smoked pork. To my surprise I learned that Japanese food is not necessarily only the Benihana type of cooking.
There are many pacific cultures represented in the 50th state like Korean, Filipino, Chinese, Tongan, Samoan, Tahitian and many more. I became fascinated with Japanese cooking. To be honest, local style Japanese and traditional Japanese food are not the same. the adapted version in Hawai'i gets it's foundation from the elders who first migrated to work in the plantation fields way back when the turn of the centruy was in the late 1800's.
Local style food is not to be mistaken for Hawaiian style. Local style food is a mesh of the different nationalities combined during the early plantation days. One group would share their food with another group and eventually the varied cooking ingredients wound up being interchanged or fused together. I thought of how strange it must have been in those days to hunger for foods from home and not being able to find the ingredients needed to cook one's soul food, as it were.
The fact that many people came from the same neighborhood, just a different address, made swapping out of food cumbersome but not impossible. There, short and sweet; began what is known as Local style food. One can get a box lunch, which was once a meal sold in boxes to go; anywhere, on any island. Think of bento boxes at a traditional Japanese restaurant, little partitions carved into a box for different items of food. Now, when that same concept is adjusted to a paper box for take out meals, you have box lunches. A fusion of one culture with another. Most of us think of styrofoam containers.
There are a few internationally respected chefs who have adapted this blending of different cultures. Thanks to the television celebrity chef craze that's going on now, some know of Morimoto, some know of the Rubino brothers in Canada. There are other's like Alan Wong and Roy Yamaguchi, both from Hawai'i , whose style of cooking is fusion. Roy Yamaguchi graduated from the C. I. A. while wong graduated from Kapiolani Community College's Culinary Art program.
I have been fortunate to fuse my Puerto Rican Background with the culture of Hawai'i. In the process, that has affected the way I cook food. I can not help but mixing Asian ingredients with western cooking techniques. I even throw in Carribean accents once in a while. I find that out after I have finished my plating and I share photos.
I will get into the whole confusing cooking style with an ingredient later. Let me know if it is something that would be appealing to your palate. All comments are welcome. A hui hou.
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