Around the World in 80 Dinners - Bill Jamison [18]
Driving between these places, we talk with Nyoman about food. “Do you have any favorite restaurants?” Cheryl asks.
“No, not really. Like most Balinese people, I eat mainly at home. My mother and wife fix food in the morning for our whole family, and everyone helps themselves during the day when they feel hungry.”
“Are there particular dishes you really like?”
“I like all Balinese food, but, I guess, sate and duck are my favorites.”
“We’ve been trying to order bebek betutu,” Bill says, referring to a smoked duck specialty marinated for hours or days in a spice-and-herb paste. “It’s on a lot of restaurant menus, but never actually available that day according to the waiters. Is it good?”
Completely surprising us, Nyoman says, “Come see for yourself at my house. My wife makes a great version.”
“Are you sure she won’t mind?” asks the only wife in the car.
“Not in the least. Would Sunday evening work for you?”
“Absolutely.”
Unlike on all the other stops on our trip, food didn’t figure prominently in our decision to come to Bali. The island seemed ideal for a twentieth-anniversary celebration and second honeymoon because of other factors, notably the culture, way of life, and exotic setting. Local food always attracts us, anywhere we visit, but our minimal experience with Indonesian cuisine in other places tempers our expectations.
On our second day in Ubud, in search of a spot to have lunch, we stop to check out the menu at Bumbu Bali, one of the few restaurants downtown that specializes in Balinese food. Cheryl notices a sign by the front door advertising daily cooking classes. “Maybe that’s what we need to expand our horizons.”
Bill peers through the window and sees a lesson in progress in the otherwise empty dining room. “Tell you what, let’s eat here and eavesdrop on the session. If it sounds worthwhile, we can sign up for the next class.” The young instructor appears knowledgeable and enthusiastic, and the limited space for students ensures full participation, so we register for the following morning.
The teacher, Kutut, who also cooks at the restaurant, gives us some background at the beginning. Except for ceremonial occasions, he says, food and cooking are regarded in Bali more as routine necessities than as something special. “In a family compound, the kitchen—along with the bathroom—is considered an impure area, to be located in one of the least auspicious spots, away from the holiest part of the land facing the mountains. At home, the Balinese usually eat quickly and alone, holding a plate in their left hand and scooping food into their mouth with their right hand. Outside the home, they snack at street-side food stalls, often on heavily sweetened fare.” Much of the description sounds uncomfortably familiar, like maybe we didn’t really leave the United States after all.
A market visit dispels that notion. Kutut takes us and today’s other two students into the depths of the central market complex to a subterranean food area we haven’t discovered yet on our own. He leads us single file through precarious, ceiling-high displays of ingredients—one false step away from burying us—and points out common staples such as chiles, garlic, shallots, shrimp paste, coconut and palm oils, and several kinds of rice. “Rice,” he says, “constitutes the heart of any Balinese meal. Everything served with it functions like a side dish.”
Back at the school, Kutut demonstrates another core element of the cooking, base gede, a basic spice paste used on poultry, fish, vegetables, and soybean products. His version incorporates shallots, garlic, chiles, galangal, lesser galangal, turmeric, coriander seeds, candlenuts, shrimp paste, salt, pepper, and other seasonings of less importance. When he pauses to pass around tastes, Cheryl asks him about a big, domed earthen oven behind his prep table. “Is that used for the famous local roast pig?”
He laughs heartily. “No, it’s a pizza oven we fire up in the high season to tempt