Experts' Viewpoints: More Than Just The Success of Asian Cuisine (1/3)

SUVIR SARAN：Co-Executive Chef of Dévi Author of Indian Home Cooking "In the kitchen, I found the answers to all my curiosities," says New Delhi-born chef Suvir Saran. At age 32, Saran has already become a re-spected food authority, poised to make great contributions to the development of Indian food in the United States. In September 2004, Saran opened the 75-seat restaurant Dévi, a tribute in name to the mother goddess and in flavor to the best of regional Indian cooking using fresh, seasonal ingredients. Saran's first cookbook Indian Home Cooking: A Fresh Introduction to Indian Food, with More Than 150 Recipes (Clarkson Potter), with veteran food writer Stephanie Lyness, was published in September 2004. Sa-ran has been featured in such publications as Food & Wine, Travel & Leisure, InStyle, Metropolitan Home, Parade, Newsweek, US News & World Report, USA Today, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Out, Genre, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Bloomberg Radio, MPR's The Splendid Table, among others.? He is a contributing authority to Food Arts, as well as a contributor and founder of the Indian Forum on Egullet.com. America Awakes to Asian Flavors What I see here is the American need to not be kept in the dark about flavor and taste. We had little exposure to a world away from ours. America prided itself in being all encompassing, even if only to its own self. But today, we have lived, we have traveled and we have seen, and at the very least, the internet has brought the world into our homes, and now, we want what tickles our minds and our brains to find its way onto our plates. We were the land that brought tomatoes, potatoes, corn and chilies to the world at large. Yet, our own people, and in great numbers, have lived the majority of their lifetime, eating canned versions of even these staples for the most part. Even in rural areas, sales show that canned and frozen corn, tomatoes and potatoes sell in much greater numbers. Shocking, but true. We have denied ourselves for some reason unknown to me the foreigner, the real taste behind these wondrous veggies and fruits. It has taken a coming of age of immigrants from around the world to bring back the fresh simple flavors of their lands, and even native American ingredients back into the kitchens of this country. Asian ingredients, many of them have umami, which enhances the overall enjoyment of dishes. There are those, which alter taste in ways profoundly different from anything people in the West have known. There is a mastery that Asians have over their ingredients which has never been familiar to us in the West just yet. Centuries and millennia of working with spices, grains, nuts and all kinds of vegetation have given them a very adept way with these healthful ingredients that makes the resulting dish in no way compromised in flavor or lacking for meat or proteins as we know them. I suggest something much further than just the success of Asian dishes; I see a revolution happening in American cuisine itself. A change that will come out succinctly, not just through mere fusion in the very tastes one enjoys in classic American dishes. These changes to old classics will happen through the techniques and ingredients that celebrate Asian cuisine getting infused into the very body of American cookery. Regional Indian Cuisine: The New Star on the Restaurant Menu