I wasn't thinking along the lines of copying anyone else, and, to be sure, that's not what I do in the kitchen, but I am aware that any given meal I prepare falls predominantly into a given style of cuisine. Mostly it's just a matter of the flavor profiles/layers, although sometimes it's techniques and sometimes it's ingredients that push the dish one way or another. For example:
- Noodles in the dish? It's predominantly either Italian or Asian, depending on what it tastes like and what sauce accompanies the noodles.
- Butter sauce ("mother sauce" or derivative) used? It's predominantly French.
- Pork used for seasoning? It's either Italian or Southern, depending on what it tastes like.
Certainly, I see recipes I like and prepare them. I generally prepare each recipe at least twice: once as written and the second (or any subsequent) time with my own take on it. Regardless of how tweak the original recipe, the root character of the dish -- it's Italian-ness, French-ness, etc. -- remains. For example, poached salmon with Venetian sauce that I pare that back to a
veloute is still French, yet if I remove the sauce altogether, it's still French because I poached the fish, but if I poach it and do a pesto or rustic roasted herbed tomato accompaniment, the cooking style is still French, but the flavor profile is Italian. Since I decide cuisine type by flavor more than by technique, I'd declare the dish Italian.
My cooking often enough ends up being a mix of a few things, and most restaurants would just call it American. The thing is that American food, like the very notion of the nation itself, draws from, well, everyone else's food styles, but even so, American dishes still have a principal character, even though they are a hodgepodge of things. The thing is that when someone says "American cuisine," there's no telling what the hell they actually mean other than that the food probably doesn't have "wierd" main ingredients.