Asian Recipes

Geographically and technically, both "Asian" and "Asiatic" indicates a person, place, thing, or idea original to Asia. In common English parlance, however, the term Asian is often used to indicate people from south and east parts of Asia -- typically South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives), East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Mongolia), or Southeast Asia (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam). Although the main use of the term Asian in everyday English is to describe people, in one way or another, when describing objects or concepts from Asia, the term Asian is usually understood to be more loosely defined, albeit perhaps still not fully synchronous with its geographic definition.

In the United Kingdom and certain parts of Anglophone Africa especially East Africa, the term "Asian", though it can be used to refer to the continent of Asia as a whole, is more usually associated specifically with people and cultures whose origin lies in South Asia: that is, modern-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Those of East Asian origin such as the Chinese or Koreans (referred to as oriental in the UK and the Commonwealth) are usually not included in the term. This is reflected in the "ethnic group" section of UK census forms and other government paperwork, which treat "Asian" and "Chinese" as separate (see British Asian). Some Britons carelessly use "India" to refer to the whole of South Asia, while others make a clear distinction between the various countries that form the region. The term Desi, which in the UK and Africa is synonymous with "Asian," is sometimes used to name a South Asian person in a manner that avoids any allusion to the specific state of origin.