Product Description

Elisabeth Rozin's --dubbed by the "one of the most thought-provoking cookbooks . . . in recent memory"--focused on the unique "flavor principles" of cultures around the world. In , she showed us the elemental culinary concepts that have threaded them together throughout time. Now, in , Elisabeth Rozin explores how separate ethnic cuisines merge to form exciting new traditions.

"Crossroads cooking"--very different from self-conscious "fusion" or a "melting pot" that blurs the identity of its ingredients--is the happenstance meeting and mating of traditions, thereby creating cuisines both diverse and distinct. takes us across all five continents, through the history--and onto the tables--of dramatic crossroads from Singapore, Israel, and the Balkans to Franco-German Alsace, Creole New Orleans, the Philippines, and the Caribbean. Thailand has absorbed both India's robust spices and China's delicate textures and refashioned them with Malaysian coconut, lemongrass, and fish sauce in its own image. In South Africa, Dutch food went native in an unlikely alliance with Malaysian, Indian, and African. The flavorful food of Turkey or Afghanistan is a multi-ethnic legacy of Silk Road conquerors, merchants, and pilgrims.