Imagine a world without beef vindaloo, pizza, paella, tempura, sweet chocolate and even the Christmas turkey or the humble dim sim. Oh, the horror! You are imagining a world without fusion, my friend. Or how about Italian without tomatoes or Indian without chilli? Witness here the importance of the culinary cross-pollination that fusion represents. Favourites in one country often developed somewhere else: chutneys originated in India, ketchup came from Malaysia and marmalades and jam from Greece and the Arab world.

Fusion has been the natural result of everything from exploration, invasion, migration or clever marketing, but occasionally it has also been the result of government edict. In 1872, for example, the Japanese Emperor deemed it important to change the nation’s diet so his people would become a physical match for the hefty Westerners who threatened the country. The ban of eating meat was lifted. That’s why hayashi rice (beef slathered in a red wine jus of French origin) and other dishes such as Naporitan spaghetti, kare (curry) and korokke (mashed potato croquettes) all grace Japanese menus today. Tempura is an even older fusion dish, introduced to Japan via Portugal 300 years earlier.

Fusion is still shaping what we eat in Australia. Bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwiches) is one of many culinary outcomes of France’s rather fraught colonial relationship with Vietnam, spaghetti bolognese and chicken tikka masala all grew up a long way from their spiritual home, and carbonara is thought to be more an invention of American GIs liberating Italy with their packs of eggs, cheese and bacon than any old charcoal burner around Rome.

In recent times fusion has become a dirty word, damned as Frankenstein food, “Lego food” or “more like, con-fusion”. Personally I blame the Californians and the French. Where previously fusion had been a slow process of assimilation – faster only through necessity, like the post-war use of Spam in Korean stews by a hungry population dumpster-diving at the back of US army bases – in the 70s and 80s chefs in France and California started trying to shoe-horn ingredients and techniques from different regions together.

There were some successes but far too many epic fails. I’m looking at you wasabi mash, not to mention Wolfgang Puck’s fusion pizzas at Spago in Beverly Hills, which started the virulent aberration that is“gourmet pizza” topped with everything from chilli con carne and corn chips to tandoori chicken. If only they’d been more like Ichiro Mashita, who invented one of the few lasting Californian fusion greats, the California roll when he subbed in crab and avocado for fatty tuna belly in a maki.

While some might be consciously dodging the name, fusion is now back on the menu in the cool parts of town. American Korean chefs like Roy Choi and David Chang are lauded for making everything from Korean BBQ tacos to gnocchi made from instant ramen. Then, back in its original San Francisco pop-up site, Danny Bowien’s Mission Chinese Food was known for kung pao pastrami, salt cod fried rice, and themed nights that were all about weird and wonderful fusions. Back home in Australia, the Japanese/Italian menu at LuMi and the Asian pastas at Acme in Sydney are proof that, in the right hands, culinary mash-ups can be totally delicious.

This recipe is the perfect example of great fusion. To all intents and purposes it looks Spanish, but the ingredients come from every corner of the world. Saffron from Iran, tomatoes from Mexico, olive oil from a tree that originated in Greece (or so the Greeks claim) and oranges that reached the west from China. Dig further back and our chickens can be traced back to ancient India and sugar back to its origins as a tall grass growing in Papua New Guinea. And that’s just scratching the surface.