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CHAPTER THREE

Traditional Village Foods: Cooking in the Compound

Human nourishment can be divided into four basic food categories according to source: ocean, air, land and field. The Balinese eat all as they pray to the goddess of rice, Dewi Sri, for the ongoing gift of life-sustaining food for their island. In China, there is a saying that the people will “eat anything with wings except an airplane, and anything with four legs except a table.” China’s cooks routinely prepare whatever is available locally, whether for upscale Imperial-style banquet halls or open-air street markets and stalls: braised bear paw (the more tender left paw is preferred), snake meat stir-fried with civet cat, deep-fried crispy scorpion, pangolin (an endangered species) stew, roast dog meat and free-range field rat kebabs!

The meats and ingredients may differ but the sentiment is much the same in Bali. A high Brahman priest told resident cultural observer Miguel Covarrubias in the 1930s that the Balinese are only prohibited from eating “human flesh, tigers, monkeys, dogs, crocodiles, mice, snakes, frogs, certain poisonous fish, leeches, stinging insects, crows, eagles, owls, and birds with moustaches.” Covarrubias also noted that while the Balinese eat chicken, duck, pork and, more rarely, beef and buffalo, they are fond of “stranger foods” like dragonflies (capung), crickets, flying ants and bee larvae.

Common threads run through all of Balinese cuisine but different regional styles and usable food resources are found in every corner of the island. Traditional Balinese foods include such natural elements as dragonflies, baby bees, coconut tree larvae, grilled young bamboo, young bamboo soup, young tree trunk soup, sweet and sour frog, rice field eels in banana leaf, fried rice field snails, nasi sela (rice mixed with sweet potato), nasi jagung (rice mixed with corn) and rock-hard taop nuts. Such delicacies leave an indelible impression on young Balinese children who crave them in adulthood, especially during prolonged absences from their traditional villages.

In western Bali, in particular, informal village foods continue to thrive. Dragonflies are a favorite delicacy although they are difficult and time-consuming to catch as they are continually on the wing, landing only briefly on rice stalks. Children hunt dragonflies in the fields using long poles called kayu panjang (kayu is wood or tree and panjang long), the ends smeared with sticky sap as a trap. They pull the wings off, pierce the dragonfly bodies live on a stick, roast and eat them. At home, the bodies are grilled or deep-fried in coconut oil with spices and vegetables.

The villagers of Tengkudak in Tabanan regency, near Mt Batukaru, like everything emanating from the rice fields, from grasshoppers to dragonflies, eels and live baby bees. These villagers also have their own “dragonfly with cassava” recipe called Rempeyek (cracker) capung (dragonfly). The dragonflies are captured in the rice fields using a three-tiered device. A long, firm coconut leaf spine is inserted into a bamboo tube handle and sticky sap collected from a jackfruit or frangipani tree is smeared on the tip. The flying prey become irrevocably fixed to the sap of the magical hunting wand when they touch it. Many more practical Balinese sidestep the hard-to-make bamboo handle and substitute a large easy-to-obtain banana leaf spine instead. They attach the coconut leaf spine to the top of the banana leaf spine with sticky sap, thus attaining the desired sky-level height to catch dragonflies on the wing. The banana leaf handle is simply thrown away afterwards. Utilizing only the bodies, not the wings, the requisitioned dragonflies are crushed using a stone mortar (batu base) and pestle, while their co-ingredient, cassava, is scraped with a hand-held traditional parutan (grater). The desiccated dragonflies and grated cassava are mixed with garlic, chili, lesser galangal and seasoning into a soft paste and then fried like a wafer-thin kripik (cracker) until dry, or coaxed into a thick, round fritter. Once the wings are removed, Ubud’s dragonflies get the cordon bleu treatment usually reserved for fish, as pesan capung, grilled dragonfly in a banana leaf roll with spices. Dragonfly soup (kuah capung) is another popular culinary tradition. The wings are removed and the bodies boiled in water with spices and fresh turmeric leaf for added flavor. In northern Bali, Lovina’s dragonflies are simply served grilled with raw sambal matah.

In western Bali, baby bees (nyawan) are often cooked with coarsely grated or shredded coffee leaves (jejeruk nyawan dan don kopi). To produce this dish, bee hives, located in trees or under house roofs, are raided and the honeycomb sheltering live, stingless baby bees is sold in the market or sold by door-to-door street vendors. The entire honeycomb containing still-living bees is boiled whole in hot water for ten minutes, by which time the bees will be well done. The young coffee leaves are boiled separately as they have a bitter taste. The water is discarded and the coffee leaves wrung out and left to dry, after which they are sliced. A sambal sauce is then made of sliced onions, garlic and chili fried in coconut oil. Coconut milk is then boiled for five minutes before the sambal is mixed into it. Lastly, the shredded baby bees, sliced coffee leaves, salt and MSG are mixed together. The natural honeycomb is later eaten separately.

The villagers of western Balinese are also fond of coconut tree larvae, which tastes like milk. They chop down a rotting coconut tree, split open the trunk and look for white larvae (ancruk) inside to be either eaten plain or boiled with chili and salt as a sambal.

Grilled fresh bamboo, called embung (young) tiing (bamboo) tabah (a specific bamboo species) metambus (Balinese for grilled), is another natural food supplement. A short young bamboo tree is harvested and cut down near the bottom of the trunk, up to 30 cm high where the bamboo is tender and sweet. The intact conical tube is then grilled on top of a wood fire until blackened. When done, the outer bamboo bark is removed and the interior is sliced and mixed with coconut oil, grilled chilies and salt to produce a taste resembling gourmet mushrooms. In Lovina, jukut embung (young bamboo soup) is a common village food. The young bamboo stalk is cut, chopped and boiled for 10–15 minutes with bumbu (spices), sambal sauce and salt, and eaten like soup.

Western Balinese also whip up a stupendous Balinese-style sweet-and-sour frog dish called katak bumbu kesuna cekuh (garlic-ginger spice paste), hopping straight from the wet rice fields (sawah) into the frying pan to be fried in oil until crisp. The frogs (katak in Balinese, kodok in Indonesian) are first twisted by the neck until dead and the skin removed and discarded. The frogs are mixed with turmeric, lesser galangal, garlic, chili, brown sugar and tamarind that have been fried together in oil to impart a sweet-sour tinge to the amphibious culinary dish.

Bali’s island-wide rivers, lakes, canals and rice paddies give birth to small eels reconfigured as marinated minced eel in banana leaf and fried rice field eels, commonly served in every warung. Eels (lindung) are plentiful in the flooded, newly planted rice fields. Submerged and hidden during the day in three-foot-deep burrows in the mud, at night they come near the surface to swim and look for food. Local men go to the rice fields to fish by kerosene lantern light, catching them by the hundreds with only a hook attached to a plastic string sweetened with bait from the same muddy fields. Farmers are grateful for the removal of the eels as the creatures’ subterranean digging leads to leakage of the precious irrigation water. Eels are a more rare, seasonal food in drier northern Bali. Here, they are only available and easy to catch in the sawah during the rainy season. River crabs, crayfish, prawns, snakes, legions of busy insects and indigenous local snails are also gathered and reincarnated into a variety of Balinese delicacies.

Succulent golden rice field snails (kakul), a locust-like threat to the rice crop as they can devour the stalks and leaves en masse, constitute an inexpensive and nutritious food resource, as do their common green garden cousins. Rice farmers search for the snails in their paddy fields at night or before weeding the plants during their daily work routine. The snails are subsequently vended live in plastic bags in every tiny village warung in Bali. Living snails can remain intact in plastic for three days. The warung lady takes the unsold snails out of their packages at the end of the day, puts them in water overnight and repackages them in the next morning. The fleshy univalves are made into satay and green papaya soup with vegetables in a dish called gedang (papaya) mekuah (put sauce or broth) misi (with) kakul (snails). Balinese snails also crawl their way into steamed snail with grated coconut and spices, jukut kakul (snails with vegetables), boiled snail curry with spices, grilled snail, fried snail and snail soup with coconut milk. A recipe for snail in coconut milk soup requires 500 g of medium size snails and 100 ml of coconut milk as the basic ingredients. A bouquet of spices (chilies large and small, garlic cloves, shallots, turmeric, greater galangal, ginger and candlenut) is ground and then stir-fried in oil. Snails, salam leaves, lemongrass and salt are added to the pan, briefly simmered in water, and the pièce de résistance—coconut milk—is stirred in until it reaches boiling temperature to produce a classic Balinese kampung specialty.

Another Balinese snail-based delicacy is palem kakul (palem is Dutch for palm tree). The ingredients comprise 200 gm of boiled snail flesh, ¼ grated coconut, 1 tbs palm sugar, various spices (6 cloves shallot, 3 cloves garlic, 2 small chilies, 1 large chili, 1 tsp salt, 1 slice turmeric root, 1 slice galangal, 1 tsp pepper powder, ½ tsp coriander) and banana leaves for the wrappings. Palem can also be made with crab or prawn. To prepare the dish, the snail flesh is first washed, then cut into smaller pieces. Salt is sprinkled on the snails to remove the mucous before they are washed again. The shallots, garlic, chilies, turmeric and galangal are finely ground or pounded. The grated coconut is then mixed with the snail meat, ground spices, salt, pepper, coriander and palm sugar. Tablespoons of this magical batter are then spooned into each banana leaf wrapper, folded and sealed, and the packets steamed for thirty minutes.

True rustic Balinese peasant fare is born not just out of equatorial volcanic abundance but also economic struggle and an agricultural existence which often borders on bare subsistence or real hunger level. In times of mass want or hardship, such as during the communist political upheavals of the 1960s or natural disasters like the 1963 eruption of Gunung Agung, the Balinese give up their beloved steamed white rice for cheaper rice studded with tough yellow corn (nasi jagung) or rice diluted with pieces of peeled and cubed sweet potato (nasi sela) to make it stretch further. (As a poignant legacy of the poverty of “Great Depression,” nasi sela is still sold in the Ubud market.)

A native Balinese tree (pohon taop), which has large, hard, oval leaves, produces an inedible thorny yellow fruit resembling a small jackfruit. The taop tree has attractive leaves four feet long and two inches wide, some entire and some deeply lobed on the same tree. The bright yellow fruit is 7–8 inches long, covered with curved soft spines an inch long. About forty seeds are arranged around a core, and each is surrounded by a soft white aril composed of many fine fibers. The Balinese open the fruit, discard the white-fleshed interior and harvest the nuts, in competition with rummaging local tree squirrels. The extremely hard peanut-like nuts (batun taop) must be smoked over a wood fire or baked before being eaten as a snack. This is a food that the Balinese historically resort to in times of famine. Cashew trees, which grow in very dry soil, are only found in the eastern part of Bali, such as the dry, parched slopes of Gunung Agung, Bali’s most sacred mountain.

Traditional fail-safe Balinese rice field foods continue to be sourced and cooked in house compounds but they are not as popular or as crucial today because so much more food is now available in the villages. As recently as the 1980s, there would only be one warung in each village carrying a very limited range of goods, but now there are many small Balinese-run warung and food is available everywhere. This is a very recent miracle for the Balinese people. In fact, there is comparatively so much food now in Bali that there is no need to cook at home. If the Balinese have money, they can simply go to a warung and buy whatever they want. Tourism-related income has also changed Bali’s food supply, dietary expectations and cooking possibilities. With fewer Balinese solely reliant on hard-scrabble family rice farming, the young generation can aspire to grilled chicken with rice rather than tree larvae and dragonfly soup. Natural calamities, however, have locked some isolated pockets of the rural Balinese into chronic food emergency. The eruption of Mt Agung reduced the quality of the soil and changed the course of the rivers that ran near several mountain villages. Since then, the people have not been able to grow either rice or most kinds of vegetables. Many have to subsist on leaves or what fruit they can grow, as well as ketela (cassava), a root vegetable offering very little nourishment. They also tend a few straggling coffee and cocoa trees and some salak and jackfruit as subsidiary, low-income cash crops.

The Balinese love meat, but pork, beef and chicken are still very expensive food commodities on the island and are mainly reserved for special ritual occasions. The Balinese usually feast on pork during most ceremonial festivities, the preferred “food of the gods.” The Balinese normally consume very little meat in everyday life, usually adding a few tiny morsels of chicken or fish to their rice. Well-born, first caste, high-status Brahman priests (all pedanda are from the top caste) are not allowed to eat meat (cow, bulls or pork) and they also cannot consume food from street sellers or in the market, drink alcohol, or taste consecrated food offerings destined for the gods. (The pedanda are also not allowed to eat the offerings once a temple ceremony finishes, thus ordinary folk always bring the offerings home to eat.) According to I Made Arnila, a lay priest (pemangku) in Lovina, in order to become a high priest, a religious candidate must go through an education process and learn the mantras. As a novitiate, he already has some dietary restrictions: he must meditate and fast (puasa in Bahasa Indonesia) for forty days and forty nights. This meditation and fasting period (no eating and no drinking) takes place right before the ceremony to become a pedanda. Once ordained, a pedanda can “only eat vegetarian food: vegetables (sayur), rice (nasi), and water. It is not possible to eat ikan, telur, sapi, babi, ayam, bebek- no! No Masoko (a popular chicken bouillon flavoring). No coffee, tea or milk—only water.” Dietary rules for pedanda are often subject to modern interpretation and debate. Some Balinese insist that pedanda only eat duck meat or be vegetarian. The pemangku (lay priests) also cannot eat beef (not all are vegetarian, but they are supposed to be). Secular Brahman and Satria caste Balinese are also forbidden to eat beef (beef is never served at a religious ceremony). Wesia (warrior-merchant class aristocrats) and the majority Sudra caste commoners are allowed to eat beef or buffalo but also traditionally choose not to do so.

Numerous animals rummage around or are penned up in the family compound but they are not ordinarily eaten. Cows are more valuable kept alive to plough the rice fields, chickens lay eggs for food and offerings, while pigs are allowed to appreciate in worth, size and girth as future market-bound mercantile investments and ritual food offerings. The Bringkit market in Mengwi district, which operates every Wednesday and Sunday, is Bali’s large central livestock market. Farmers from all over the island travel here to sell their live cattle, pigs, ducks and chickens. Lack of home refrigeration militates against the slaughter of large household animals like cows and pigs by single families or even small family groups. Any animal butchered for food must be small enough for a family to consume in its entirety in one sitting as meat spoils quickly in the heat. Goats are rarely raised domestically because they destroy and overgraze plants and flowers growing around the house. Goat satay is in high demand, however. Saté kambing (goat or lamb) on skewers is normally served with a spicy hot peanut sauce. The Balinese also like to frequent village warung and kaki lima (push cart vendors) for a steaming plate of soto kambing (goat soup) or kambing mekuah (goat or lamb stew in sauce or gravy). Kuah is a sauce, broth or gravy, usually over rice, and mekuah is to do or put, to add the gravy to it. Curries (gulé or gulai) and curried food is popular for quick, convenient meals. Gulé is Balinese for a spicy soup (gulai ayam is chicken curry, gulai kambing is goat or lamb curry). Goats are raised as secondary family home businesses, penned up inside humble tofu factories in Seririt, tethered around drying beachside salt pans in Amed and concealed in bamboo squatter compounds inside Bali Barat National Park.

Balinese food springs out of an intensely religious, intensely poor country and economy. The Balinese are opportunistic eaters. Because they live so close to the hunger line, they take advantage of all possible food sources in their environment and do not waste any part of any animal or creature. They eat what they can find. Traditionally, whenever a village fisherman hauls a turtle out of the water or an egg-laying female is found on the sand, the Balinese will eat it. Other native protein sources include scaled anteater (klesih), large lizards (alu), wild boar, rice paddy birds—from the glatik to the tiny petingan (scaly-breasted Munia)—and porcupines (landak), disguised as a gamey flavored dark meat curry cooked with tamarind. The people of Nusa Lembongan favor large alu (monitor lizards) which run very fast and are difficult to catch; both quick and clever, they climb up the local coconut trees! Once the men catch them, they fry the lizard in oil and mix it with coconut. The oil is kept afterwards to treat wounds. The Balinese also like to hunt, shooting with rifles long-tailed squirrels readily located near their favorite food supply, Bali’s majestic stands of tall coconut trees. Flying foxes (fruit bats) are another indigenous food. The bats are shot or captured with nets. Squirrels and bats, however, do not appear in the traditional markets. Food fondness, satisfaction and loyalty transcend status. When the rich pay premium prices for an expensive meal, they enjoy it. Poor people equally enjoy and crave their humble plate of plump white ketupat rice chunks with tiny sticks of thinly threaded saté kambing.

Dog meat is eaten in most villages throughout Bali. Dogs are privately killed, cooked and consumed at home. If a family wants to eat dog, the husband goes out to the street and selects a stray. He knows which ones belong to neighbors and will avoid these. He hits and kills the dog with a wooden stick, puts it in a plastic bag and carries it home to be cooked. These numerous village dogs often wind up on skewers in small, hidden “RW” (pronounced “airway”) stalls (dog satay warung) in the illicit back lanes of Denpasar. Here, the flesh, which is believed to have medicinal benefit, is discreetly served to homesick ethnic migrants from North Sumatra (Batak), North Sulawesi (Manado) and Timor where black dogs, in particular, are deemed a regional delicacy. Dogs, in fact, are on the chalkboard menu throughout Indonesia. Some Balinese dogs are caught, confined in wooden-slatted crates and exported by overland truck to nearby Java to be eaten. When beaten to death prior to cooking, men consider these dogs to be an aphrodisiac. In traditional Chinese food and medicine cosmology, dog meat is considered a “hot” element, and therefore Chinese martial arts practitioners in Bali will also seek out and eat dog.

Dog meat is not offered or displayed in the traditional Balinese village markets. It is only sold at the specialized dog satay warung. Satay RW food stalls are very popular in Bali, with those in Singaraja and Seririt, right beside the main road, opening at 8 a.m. Some stands now even advertise themselves publicly along the main roads of Sanur, Gianyar, Bangli and Denpasar. Here, RW stands for rawon (a dark-colored black beef soup from Surabaya) or gule (gule is curry or spicy soup in the Balinese language). People will come here every day to eat dog. The main methods of serving and cooking dog are grilled satay with rice and anjing (dog) soup with rice. Dog meat is also spit-roasted (guling) like goat. The preferred part of the dog’s body is the underside. The breast is used for saté anjing. When sizing up the dinner potential of an intended dog victim, the Balinese stand under a nearby ketapang tree and estimate the number of satay sticks that the dog will provide. Small or lean dogs are less of a target.

Many dogs all over Bali fall prey to the meat trade and end up as satay. The RW stalls obtain dog meat by paying people to bring in their own unwanted pets or by capturing stray dogs from the villages. The Balinese are usually paid Rp.50,000–80,000 for selling one dog victim to an RW stall satay seller, although these warung can often find stray dogs and compound pets for as little as Rp.35,000 per animal. Poor families will sell their pets to the dog catcher for as little as Rp.10,000 if the dog has become a nuisance or can no longer be cared for. Some Balinese have turned dog-kidnapping into a major source of income since dogs stolen from neighbors or caught for free on the street represent a 100 percent source of profit. (More affluent Balinese keep imported Rottweilers, Labradors, Dalmatians and other pedigreed breeds as fashionable status symbol house pets but these are too expensive to eat!) RW vendors cannot always obtain the requisite canines. If dog is available, they hang out a buka (open) store sign, if not, a tutup (closed) sign signals customers that the stall is out of supplies.

Dog meat procurers dare not openly steal stray dogs or loose house pets because the owners love them and will kill them if they are caught. More sinister methods have evolved in the form of large-scale persistent rashes of anonymous, nighttime street dog abductions and cullings. Nocturnal dog catchers on motorcycles resort to mass-poisoning beloved pets to obtain saleable meat supplies. Men toss parcels of meat laced with poison to dogs lounging all over the village streets in the early morning hours. They return one to two hours later with a truck to collect the carcasses. Men also catch stray dogs in Denpasar by motor-bike: one man drives while another sits on the back. They prey on dogs sleeping in the street and toss a lasso made of metal attached to a straight bamboo stick around their necks. The meat of the sad, sorry snatched victims is soon sold in Denpasar as hot smoking satay.

Cruelty, karma and cuisine go hand in hand for dogs in Bali. Dogs are disliked, disrespected and eaten in Bali because of a “primitive belief ” that is still in wide circulation: if a human being is bad (a thief, for example), he will come back in his next lifetime as a dog (the dog “made a mistake” as a human). It is considered a terrible reincarnation to be reborn as a dog (they are evil souls): the buta kalas (negative or evil spirits or demons) are believed to be embodied in the local dogs. To make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, Balinese men customarily rub very hot red chilies onto the gums of young puppies from birth to make them angry and train them to be aggressive. Dogs are also very common targets of personal revenge. If your neighbor does not like you, or he thinks you are doing black magic against him, or your dog is noisy, he will poison your dog. He tosses poisoned bakso meat balls into your house yard, which the dog eats and dies. In deep contrast, the Balinese do not kill, cook or eat cucing (cat). If they accidentally run over a cat on the road, they will stop and make a ceremony for the cat. If they hit a cat and there is no ceremony, it will bring bad luck.

Fortunately, the Balinese usually sustain themselves with other food besides dogs. They also feast on ample amounts of steamed white rice, stir-fried leaves and greens (kangkung) and long green beans (kacang panjang), small portions of fish such as teri (anchovy) or pindang (sardines), chicken simmered with spices, tofu (tahu), tempe, edible tubers like ubi (sweet potato) and keladi (taro or calladium), krupuk (crackers), peanuts, super-hot chili sambal and jaja (sweet, sticky rice cakes). Personal nourishment habits follow each generation of Balinese into the afterlife. Many individuals are temporarily buried in the cemetery shortly after death to await an auspicious day and sufficient family funds, sometimes for years, for a mass cremation ceremony. Relatives visit the deceased remains regularly and bring offerings for the grave composed of all his favorite foods as well as mandatory rice, coffee, tea and fruit, enabling his spirit to enjoy a tailored, butler service feast.

The living, however, eat all of their meals by themselves, quickly, privately, alone and undisturbed. Family members carry their food-laden banana leaf “plate” to a corner, turn their back to the others and eat in happy silence. They choose a quiet spot near the kitchen or gravitate towards an unoccupied open-air pavilion in their compound to either stand, balance on a plastic stool, perch on a large green coconut, sit on the floor or squat over the ground. Family dining is not a social custom in Bali. It is not traditional for household members to sit down to eat, talk and socialize over food. Meals are only shared during cooperative ritual food preparation activities, on special festive occasions and at ceremonies. This is partly a result of the way the Balinese prepare their food. Armed with a traditional Asian complement of leaves, roots, herbs and spices, the wife cooks only once a day, in the early morning, and leaves all of the food on the table under upturned bowls or netted covers. Family members help themselves as they please during the day whenever they are hungry. Rice was traditionally eaten cold but modern rice cookers now keep the rice hot and moist during the day. The Balinese also prefer to eat in silence because they believe that talking will kill the spirit of the food. Meals that are prepared by hand are eaten by hand. The children of the gods eat with the fingers of their right hand as the left is used for ablutions and is considered impure. A food-laden banana leaf square or an increasingly popular plastic or ceramic bowl is held in the palm of the left hand. The characteristically small, cut-up pieces of food, portion of white rice and sauce are scooped up with all five fingers together of the right hand. Spoons are only used to service messy dishes. Large banana leaves (daun pisang) are Bali’s natural chinaware. Sourced from a backyard tree or bought at the village market in long rolled-up pieces, they are used once then donated to the pigs for food.

Ceremonial food functions as social currency, social lubrication and social cement on Bali. It is part of the constant give and take of Balinese community life. Village members frequently assemble at the banjar or at the house of a professional offerings worker to make ritual foods and coconut leaf offerings for mass cremations and other family or temple ceremonies. Meals and snacks must be served to sustain and thank them for their work during these preparatory activities which can extend for weeks or months on end, always provided by the village association or the host family. This is the real Balinese food born and bred in ancient ancestral compound and village temple culture—hidden, manufactured and consumed behind high, invisible family compound walls. Workers feast communally on a home-cooked spicy, generous groaning board of steamed rice, fragrant tofu dishes, jackfruit curry, soups, leafy cooked vegetables, marinated tiny fish and throat-stopping sambal. Balinese cuisine thrives on the yin–yang contrast between such ordinary compound food and auspicious temple food. With ongoing economic growth, however, traditional festival foods are increasingly crossing over onto everyday menus.

During family celebrations such as ground touching, tooth filing or wedding ceremonies, women from the local banjar arrive in steady streams at the family compound bearing gifts of essential basic commodities, such as sugar, rice, coffee and bananas. Sugar, coffee and rice (“the traditional gift”) are proffered on all special ceremonial occasions, whether visiting the family of someone who has just died or compensating the balian (traditional healer) for medical-spiritual treatments. Coffee, sweet tea and fresh jaja rice cakes must be made or bought and served to these visiting guests. Before they leave, the family also fills their empty keben with sacred satay sticks, steamed rice and lawar as a parting dowry. Friends and neighbors thank each other with the critical food items of life. The custom on Bali is to bring a gift and return home with a value-added reciprocal assortment of ceremonial haute cuisine.

Bubur Kacang Hijau (Ijo)

(GREEN PEA PORRIDGE)

Although the Balinese make bubur kacang hijau as a common family food, it is considered an expensive dish. The cost of a one pound bag of tiny green peas (Kacang Hijau Finna) for this recipe was Rp.19,723, prohibitive for most Balinese, more so since kacang hijau grows in Bali and is actually a small type of local peanut. Half a coconut cost Rp.2,300, a tube of Balinese palm sugar Rp.5,440 and five bananas from a roadside warung stall (Rp.5,000). The Balinese will make bubur kacang hijau for family members when they come home for Galungan. Bubur kacang hijau is not really a ceremonial food but is cooked for birthdays, anniversaries, to celebrate something or on special occasions for the family. We enjoyed a “special edition”: people also cook and eat it as a snack.

Recipe courtesy of the beautiful young Miss Era. Miss Era created absolute food magic out of one battered, burnt aluminum pot and a small petrol-fueled kompor stove. The joy of cooking began at 3.20 p.m. one hot rainy afternoon at Era’s house in Seririt, northern Bali, May 2011. Era’s sister Sri had to go out on a motorbike and purchase more lengis (petrol) to fire up the small kompor stove for our porridge boiling party. Era first learned to cook by watching her mother prepare food at home as she was growing up in their small, traditional rural village (Tirtasari) near Lovina in northern Bali. She is a natural-born cook and does everything by instinct, personal taste and family experience. Era cooks with love, laughter and kindness, which makes the food doubly sweet, doubly nourishing and doubly appreciated by everyone round her. Address: Kadek Era (Kadek Debisugianto), Desa Patemon, Dusun Kawan, Kecamatan Seririt, Kabupaten, Buleleng Propensi, Bali.

½ coconut

1 lb (500 g) green peas (kacang hijau)

2 pandanus leaves

2 tubes (1½ lb/640 g) brown palm sugar (gula merah bulat)

2 pieces fresh ginger each 1¼ inches (3 cm)

1 tbs sea salt

Cut the coconut into sections, and scrape the brown skin off.

Boil the water (4 x 3 ½ -inch-tall glasses).

Pour three glasses of water into a bowl to clean half of the green peas. Pour away the water.

Bring the water to the boil, put the peas in the pot and stir. Boil for about 40 minutes.

Grate the peeled white coconut pieces using a parutan.

Add two glasses of water to the bowl of grated coconut.

Squeeze the shredded coconut by hand over a plastic sieve to press out the liquid coconut water (santen) into the bowl below. Discard the coconut shreds.

Add 1½ glasses more water to the boiling peas and bring back to a boil.

Test if the peas are done by squeezing a few. Add more water if still hard.

Add one of the brown palm sugar chunks and more water.

Add the remaining palm sugar.

Add the pandan leaves, salt and cut-up pieces of fresh ginger.

Serve the bubur kacang hijau in bowls while still hot.

Kolak Biu (Kolak Pisang)

(BANANAS WITH COCONUT MILK AND BROWN SUGAR)

Kolak pisang (banana kolak) is a very popular Balinese dessert. It is rich, sweet, delicious, nourishing and a heart-warming golden yellow in color. Kolak is fruit (usually banana) cooked with coconut milk and brown sugar. It is normally eaten as an afternoon snack. The Balinese also often refer to kolak biu as “banana mayo.” It is very good for the soul. Era’s sister Sri adds: “For Balinese person it is not real like dessert, but for sure that not for meal every day. We only consume when we together with whole family. It’s same like celebrating togetherness with whole family.” Sri proudly described the desserts in advance: “Those Balinese cake is real with Balinese ingredients.”

Recipe courtesy of the gentle Miss Era, who will always remain an unspoiled local village girl from the small, quiet, bucolic village of Banyuatis in northern Bali. Our sweet banana-boiling escapade continued at 4.40 p.m. on the same hot, rainy afternoon in Era’s small, basic, open-walled house in Seririt, northern Bali. Marvel, her three-year-old son, loved this very special, food party treat.

1 tube palm sugar, 2¼ in (5.5 cm) x 1½ in (3.75 cm)

5 big thick bananas (biu gadang)

4 pandanus leaves

1 fresh whole coconut, grated and squeezed

¾ inch (2 cm) fresh raw ginger

1 tsp salt

Bring three big glasses of water to the boil, then add the palm sugar tube.

Tie the four pandanus leaves in a knot and add to the boiling water.

Slice the five bananas on the diagonal into thick pieces.

Cut the coconut into half and then into quarters (four pieces). Peel, grate and squeeze it to produce cocnut milk.

Cut up the fresh ginger and add to the pot with the salt.

Continue to boil the palm sugar until it turns a golden syrup color.

Then add the coconut milk.

Add the banana slices and simmer until cooked.

Ladle into serving bowls while hot and sprinkle with some of the grated coconut.

Serves 4–6.

Capung Goreng

(FRIED DRAGONFLY)

Dragonflies are a very traditional, popular, age-old rural village food in Bali. Catching dragonflies in the rice fields as a boy is a cherished childhood memory for many Balinese men. In Karangasem Regency, the people also eat Bali balang, a different insect—using the same recipe.

Recipe courtesy of chef I Wayan Sudirna, Tanis Villas, Nusa Lembongan, www.tanisvillas.com, December 2011.

30 dragonflies (5 per portion)

12 red bird’s eye chilies

6 garlic cloves

12 shallots

6 kaffir limes

sea salt

white sugar

coconut oil

Catch the dragonflies in the cassava or corn fields.

Wash the dragonflies and remove the heads.

Fry the dragonflies in coconut oil for three minutes.

To make the sauce, slice the chilies, garlic and shallots. Stir fry together until brown.

Add the dragonflies to the pan and season with salt and kaffir lime juice squeezed into the pan.

Add the white sugar and check for sweetness.

Serve with white rice and vegetables on the side.

Serves 4–6.