A samoosa by any other name

I may not be America's next Iron Chef, but I have been known to throw together a smoking lamb curry (according to my boyfriend's Texan family), the best pizza in the world (according to my brother's football buddies), a deliciously cheesy pasta (according to my mom on a break from another diet) and a briyani fit for a Rajah (according to hungry friends).

So, while I may not be too shabby with Indian and Italian cooking, its pretty much hit and miss with the rest of the world's cuisines. To fill in the gaps, I have taken up cooking classes.

The Miette Culinary Studio is the perfect place to learn about the cuisines of the world. Chef Paul, the owner of the Studio specializes in French cuisine. But in addition to teaching you how to make the perfect souffle, he also teaches you how to cook everyday American dishes and some Italian classics too. He uses a number of teachers (chefs) from different geographical backgrounds to teach about the authentic flavors of their regions such as in the Chinese and Indian cooking classes. There are also classes related to special occasions or special diets and these range from preparing dim sum brunches to vegetarian meals, and even some outdoorsy cooking such as barbecue.

In Miette, you get a little bit of everything and lately I noticed that even the everything has become a mishmash of something. Or has the evolution of cooking always been a little bit of this and a little bit of that? Dare I say that the world's different cuisines are more alike than we care to acknowledge.

In a recent cooking class, we did a French take on the famous Indian samoosa. 

The samoosa is a triangular shaped pastry made of flour, salt, water and loads of ghee (clarified butter), stuffed with a savory filling of meat or veggies. Our French version was a kinda lopsided phyllo pastry stuffed with the same spicy, curried filling. This "slight" variation begged the question, is a samoosa, a samoosa because of its shape? And would it still be a samoosa if it were not a perfect triangle? 

The answer is yes.

Our lopsided pastry tasted just like a samoosa although it looked more like a Moroccan pastilla. Now a Moroccan pastilla is a meat pie (traditionally with a pigeon filling, yup the bird) made of phyllo pastry, with a sprinkle of confectionery sugar on the top. It has a subtle combination of savory spices and sweet flavors and it tastes and looks similar to the Greek pies called bourekia, save the sugar. And it is no surprise that the Greek bourekia is a replica of Turkish borek. You guessed it, the Greeks acquired the term bourekia from the Turkish, as they did many of their other culinary delights. Now a borek or bourekia is a "meaty-bread" and if we translate that to mean meat pies, then we really cannot leave the English out of the equation. After all, the English meat pie, from steak and kidney to Cornish hen, is one of England's better contributions to the world's cuisines.

See what I mean? We began our samoosa journey in India, crossed the Mediterranean twice, took a detour into Turkey and ended up in England, and all the while using the same basic ingredients.

But the journey of the Indian samoosa is not a unique one. If you dust off the flour, remove the peels and clear away some of the dish pans, you will see similarities in the foods of different cultures, regions and even countries.

A case in point is my favorite desert, baklava, which tickled my taste buds from the first taste in a tiny bakery off the beaten path in Sultanhamet, Istanbul. The Greeks claim this delectable delight as theirs, the Turks claim the same, the Armenians have a stake, but I have been told that its origin is Middle Eastern, dating back to the Assyrians of the 8th century BC (today around the Syria, Iraq, Lebanon area). For a traditional baklava, some of these cultures use walnuts, others pistachio nuts. Some drench the pastry in honey, others prefer a sugary syrup, but whatever is used, baklava is baklava is baklava; a sweet nutty pastry.

So, what's in a name then?

My everyday household salad consists of finely chopped cucumbers, red onions and tomatoes, dressed with olive oil and sprinkled with lots of coriander (cilantro). In my home this salad is called an Indian salad. But when I prepared it for an American Jewish family, I was informed that the very salad is typically called an Israeli salad. And according to my Israeli friend, in the kibbutz where she grew up, the same salad is called an Arab salad.

For food lovers, it's not the name of the dish that is important, it's the unexpected burst of flavors in every mouthful. It's the satisfaction of knowing that you have eaten well and its the anticipation of the next course.

Similarly, for an aspiring "good enough to eat" cook like myself, where a recipe originates from, does not interest me as much as the exciting fusion of the many ingredients. All I need is to create something delicious, and thanks to Miette I can now do so with a full appreciation of what I am cooking, albeit a mishmash of deliciousness!