Latino flavors spiced with other cuisines

The latest thing in Latino cooking is a little less Latino.

The growing political and cultural clout of American Hispanics has infused the collective American dinner plate with the flavors of the Latino kitchen. And it turns out that culinary cultural exchange goes in both directions.

As Hispanic communities have grown and increasingly rubbed elbows with neighbors, the American Latino kitchen has changed, too, adopting more of the flavors and ingredients of other cuisines, says Daisy Martinez, of Food Network's "Viva Daisy!"

The result is an exciting fusion of Hispanic, Asian, Italian and all-American cooking.

"I've had Southern barbecue pulled pork tacos. I've seen Mexican sushi with jicama and ceviche shrimp," says Ken Rubin, a culinary anthropologist at The International Culinary Schools at The Art Institute of Portland in Oregon. "Cuisines are very fluid.

"In the same way we borrow from Latin foods to create things like the Fiesta Burger, Latin chefs do the same," he says.

While population growth has fueled the change - Latinos make up 15 percent of the U.S. population today and will make up a quarter of it by 2050 - the changing demographics of restaurant kitchens also has played a role.

"The kitchen staff at restaurants has long been Latino," says Martinez. "Now young Latinos are getting classically trained. They're not just line cooks, but executive chefs. So you get the passion of Latin cuisine with the refinement of classical training."

Some Hispanic chefs, such as Jose Garces, an Ecuadorian-American who runs several restaurants in Philadelphia, have built careers out of meshing other cuisines with Hispanic cooking.

Garces recently opened Chifa in Philadelphia, a Peruvian-Chinese spot inspired by Douglas Rodriguez's nuevo Latino movement, which put haute Latino cuisine on the menu, and the molecular gastronomy of Spanish chef Ferran Adria. "We take a traditional cooking style like ceviche and add one culinary technique like the aerated mustard and create something totally different," says Garces. "The use of techniques and applying them to traditional foods is the core of how things have changed."

A public better educated about food also has helped Latino cooks move beyond the conventional.

"It helps Latin kitchens break out of the stereotypes they're put into," Rubin says.

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Recipes</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=289691">Salmon With Tomato, Caper and Olive Sauce</a></li> <li><a href="/story/?id=289692">Peruvian-style Fried Rice - Arroz Chaufa</a></li> </ul> <h2>Story</h2> <ul class="links"> <li><a href="/story/?id=289700">What to drink with Latino foods</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>