Asian Fusion

Pin It Now! I've had many incarnations of fusion cuisine and most are yummy, but I've never had good or even decent Asian fusion.  Maybe it's the Americanization aspect of most Asian fusion restaurants, but it always seems out of balance, the chef never incorporating the good parts of each Asian food well.  Great ideas, but usually poorly executed.

But a few days ago I decided to do my own version of Asian fusion.  Instead of melding ingredients and cooking styles from multiple Asian cultures, I simply served 2 dishes together.  The pairing rather enhanced each dish rather than try to create something new and mediocre.

For this meal I had Thai Papaya Salad and Chinese Sticky Rice.  They actually compliment each other quite well.  Though Thai people actually do eat sticky rice with their papaya salad, its usually plain steamed.  Chinese sticky rice on the other hand has all sorts of yummy ingredients like dried scallops, shrimp, and shitake mushrooms steamed with the rice to form an aromatic dish ready to eat all on its own. 

But the 2 dishes together it was magic, spicy and refreshingly cold papaya salad was the perfect counter point to the more meaty warm and gooey sticky rice.  A great dinner finished off with some lemonade that's not too sweet!  Cheers!