That’s What Friends Are For
Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 4:00AM 
In this burgeoning, melting pot of a nation, most of us have cross-cultural buddies who, if prompted, are at least conversant in a foreign cuisine. My friend Graciel, for example, spent only the first four years of her life in the Philippines, but as the granddaughter of an established Filipino restaurateur, her ancestral fare remained salient across the Pacific…lucky us!
Cooking an unfamiliar cuisine is like speaking a new language; the ingredients, a vocabulary of tastes that when strung, tossed or whipped together, create something that is greater than the sum of its parts. And, as with language, the best way to learn is immersion. So, enlist a pal who’s fluent in anything from a single heirloom recipe to an entire gastronomy and dive in.