Sorry Wolfgang - We Beat You To It
To discerning gourmets, the term Fusion Cuisine is synonymous with Wolfgang Puck - credited as he is with introducing the style of hybridizing new recipes out of vastly different national dishes. But Wolfgang wasn't the first - not by several centuries.
No.
To find the first truly fusion cuisine, one has to trip back three centuries, to an unlikely little bay on the shores of the crisp South Atlantic, at the foot of a magnificent mountain and brooding continent. Africa.
The European palate had only just begun to educate itself with spices out of the stodgy peasant fare of 16th Century serfdom when the land trade routes through the Middle East became all but impassable. Only one other option existed - a sea passage into the violent southern oceans. Sea miles in those times were counted much as we count fuel efficiencies today - but rather than miles-per gallon, we'd find deaths-per-leg. It was a treacherous undertaking - water went rancid in a barrel after just weeks; so that navies sailed on a rum ration - no doubt a factor in ship wreck statistics.
Up to half a crew's complement could be expected to die per expedition from malnutrition and scurvy; and even the hardened hearts at Lloyds, The British "John Company" and it's Dutch VOC equivalent were tiring of the inconvenient losses.
The wily Dutch were the first to cotton on that halfway re-victualing station midway along the trade route would slash the costs; so, in 1652, a disgraced petty administrator was given the choice of jail or heading up an expedition to set up VOC company gardens on the shores of Table Bay down near the tip of Africa.
As if to emphasize the urgency for the expedition's success, the mission cost 130 lives en route - this statistic hints at what a round trip to the Spice Islands, four times longer, might cost. His first task was the planting of European cereals, fruit and vegetables; and obtaining livestock from the indigenous Khoi people.
Africa immediately offered some variation in its intrinsic flavours, herbs, meats and bounty of seafoods.
It wasn't long before the British thought it a rather good idea the Dutch had had, and set about ousting them... but the stodgy Germanic tastes were already entrenched. Where the British might not be known during those times for particular inventiveness in their food contributions, religious excesses in France expelled a clutch of its citizenry south too - and the Cape inherited an air of sophistication and delicacy to its emerging dishes.
Of course, all along, every seafaring nation - especially the Mediterraneans with their fiery Portuguese and garlic pickled Greek flavours were infusing.
Let's recap - we have every worthwhile European dish using the freshest and most succulent African raw materials - and... Of course!! A passing spice trade that availed local chefs of a pick of eastern flavours. And who were these chefs?
Strangely, due to a quirk of preference, the Dutch had not elected to not participate in the dreadful black African slave trade that was exporting misery to the Americas; instead, they had penchant for the delicate and gentle Malaysian slaves of their Java colonies. The physical build of the Javanese were not up to the task of heavy labour, but their fine cooking traditions were most welcome in the colonial kitchens.
And let us not forget the arrival of the indentured indian labourers in the 1800's - whose perpetuating culture delivers curries heated in hell's furnace. The curries have, of course, lent an aspect to South African food that is unforgettable. The result? History's first truly fusion dishes - enshrined not just in one or another restaurant's offer, but centuries of time-tested and celebrated in millions of daily servings to an entire culture. The food of South Africa is incomparable. All the sights and sounds of this unique bit of paradise aside, It's worth the trip, just to try it.
