Is it fate or luck that causes us to pick up a cookbook from a favored store or site? This book opened me up to the vast treasure of the modern cooking of Vietnam when I came across it and bought my copy. Maybe, in part it was because of the face of the author, Nicole Routhier who inspired a ‘trusted friend’ countenance to me. I had just moved from Key West to Boca Raton. The move was due to a job in what became a very busy restaurant. Working with my young, energetic team we developed a recipe inspired mightily by Ms. Routhier. (We had not met and become friends yet.) It was her Summer Spring Rolls. And Lord Almighty did they become the monster hit appetizer for us!
My open nature to trying cuisines from other cultures is primarily due to our mother I think. She worked in the restaurant business too. ‘Front of the House’. She was a full on people person making friends with many, many of her co-workers. She instilled a cultural curiosity like no other.
We are living in an age of communication that even McLuhan could have barely begun to describe. We have so far to go to avoid the eternal mistakes of acculturation that mankind has repeatedly fallen prey to as we now can “explore” the valleys and mountains of peoples and flavors, barely known to us before. From the comfort of our homes, offices and schools we can turn on “the electricity” and learn of a Thai chef using galangal, a Vietnamese chef rolling spring rolls, an African using roots for a stew and in all probability, because of the amazing ethnic diversion that comprises America, as well as many other countries, we can find the products to make these foods or a very close cousin of them in our own homes within hours or days of having seen the images for the first time. While it’s true that Columbus brought chilies back to the Old World as well as tomatoes, corn, chocolate, potatoes and more, it was a matter of only one or two generations before those ingredients became indispensable integers in the cuisines of countries that had never known them before.
New World Cuisine is the child of those generations. I cook out of respect for the traditions and qualities of the generations before my time and because of my enchantment over the unions that begat mine.