NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

May 27, 1999

Prairie Fare: Fuse This

It's called fusion cuisine and it's trendy. Fusion is a cooking style that blends techniques and ingredients from various cultures. An example might be incorporating Asian vegetables into a Mediterranean pasta dish.

I guess I don't understand all the fuss about fusion. It seems we Americans have been mixing up our culinary heritages for decades, if not for centuries. And the tradition continues.

A case in point: One of the winning recipes from the recent North Dakota High School Beef Challenge was Hamburger Loaf, concocted by Nikki Fiedler of Belfield. My take on Nikki's recipe is that it's probably based on a German dish, Kraut Bruschke. But because of the assembly technique she describes, I'm seeing hints of Italian Stromboli too. In other words, Nikki's recipe represents fusion at its prize-winning finest.

At its essence, Hamburger Loaf is bread dough encasing cooked ground beef and sauerkraut. When assembling a Hamburger Loaf, Nikki says to bring the sides of the dough up and over the filling and then pinch the ends together to seal before baking. Similarly, recipes for Kraut Bruschke, also baked, call for sauerkraut and either highly seasoned cooked ground beef or cubed pork. But with Kraut Bruschke, one half of a rich dough gets folded over the half with the filling. At its simplest, Stromboli is pizza dough, rolled up pinwheel style, enclosing cheese and pepperoni. Stromboli is baked too.

The differences among those assembly techniques may seem insignificant, but each produces a distinct texture and look. And that's the goal of fusion cooking: taking a little something from this culture and a little something from that culture to create something delightfully, tastefully new. How else do you think taco pizza could have come into being?

The recipe that follows is a blend of Asian and Latin. Cilantro is used by both Chinese and Mexican cooks, and potatoes originated in South America's Andes Mountains.

Cilantro Potato Salad
Yield: 8 servings

Ingredients:
3 pounds new unpeeled potatoes, scrubbed and quartered
½ cup nonfat yogurt
¼ cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons sour cream
1 teaspoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt and white pepper to taste
pickled jalapeno pepper slices (optional)

Procedure:
Place potatoes in boiling water and cook until pieces are fork tender but firm. Cool potatoes completely. While potatoes are cooling, combine remaining ingredients and adjust seasoning. Mix cooled potatoes with dressing and allow salad to sit overnight in the refrigerator. When serving, garnish salad with pepper slices, if desired. This salad makes a nice accompaniment to grilled chicken breasts or inch-thick sirloin steaks that have been thinly sliced (across the meat's grain) after grilling and wrapped inside warm flour tortillas.

What's Your Take on This, Julie?

It sounds as if cooking is borrowing a term from the music world. The word "fusion" describes the combination of two musically different styles, such as jazz and rock. Combining two very different things—be it music or food—can result in something with wider appeal.

In this case, Cilantro Potato Salad is a tasty and nutritious creation containing about 180 calories and only 3.5 grams of fat per serving, if you use nonfat yogurt. Since potatoes are a good source of vitamin C, a serving also provides about 60 percent of the daily recommendation. Potato skins provide valuable fiber as well as vitamins and minerals. If you add the optional pepper slices, you'll increase the vitamin C content with only a negligible effect on the caloric content.

Salads are often in the spotlight when it comes to consumers' concerns about food safety. Actually, other foods such as roast beef, ham, turkey and even cooked rice are linked with more foodborne illness outbreaks than salads. Commercial mayonnaise is not to blame when it comes to food safety issues, as is commonly believed. In fact, mayonnaise is acidic and does not support the growth of bacteria. The reason behind the headlines about salads and outbreaks of foodborne illness involves the amount of handling that goes into salad preparation and the effect of adding other ingredients, which dilute the protective effect of the acid in mayonnaise.

What should you do to reduce your risk of unsettling a few stomachs at your next backyard barbecue? If you're preparing the salad yourself, be sure to thoroughly wash your hands and use clean utensils. Before beginning the salad preparation, conduct your own brand of musical fusion by singing your favorite melodies for at least 20 seconds while you wash your hands.

Start with pre-chilled ingredients. Wash all produce carefully using plenty of running water but no soap, which may leave residues. If you're planning to use leftover baked potatoes in your potato salad, think twice. If you unwrapped foil-wrapped potatoes, cut them in half and immediately cooled them after yesterday's dinner, they are probably safe to salvage. But if those potatoes remained wrapped—and cooled on your counter top—you may be running a serious risk if you use them. There have been documented cases of botulism linked to improperly cooled, foil-wrapped baked potatoes used in salads.

Refrigerate your salad promptly in a refrigerator that maintains a temperature of 40 F. When you replenish the salad supply, don't place additional salad on top; use a clean dish. For added safety, place your bowl of salad on a bed of ice.

And remember the two-hour rule: Do not allow any perishable food to be at room temperature longer than two hours, or you may be facing the music.

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Sources: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136 and Julie Garden-Robinson (701) 231-7187

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