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CHAPTER FOUR

Snacking on Bali: Warung, Markets and Banana Leaf Wrappers

As an outside observer in Bali in the 1930s, Miguel Covarrubias was quick to notice that the Balinese were “continually eating at odd hours and in odd places, buying strange looking foods at public eating booths, in the market, at the crossroads, and particularly at temple festivals when the food vendors did a gold rush business in chopped mixtures, peanuts, and bright pink drinks.” Dining out in restaurants is neither a social custom nor a financial possibility in Bali, except for large group family dinners on Galungan or Saraswati Day. The Balinese are renowned snackers, though, and avidly consume small hot and cold snacks, sweets and drinks every day at cheap, convenient neighborhood warung, market stalls and mobile canteens. Snacks makes up one-third of the average daily food intake. Eating large meals is not common in Bali but the people still manage to consume impressive quantities over the course of a day.

Balinese seem to eat around the clock. Wherever villagers gather to chat, watch cockfights, perform obligatory group banjar work responsibilities, attend banjar meetings, wash, pray or celebrate religious occasions, snacks and warung enter the social equation. Children can always be found munching on some type of snack in every housing compound on the island. Warung range from temporary tarpaulin-roofed makeshift bamboo lean-tos to established open-air roadside food stalls. Patched together out of bamboo and oddments of timber, they usually offer a long hard wooden bench in front for customers. Permanent warung have electricity and running water; refrigeration is non-existent. Casual warung operators simply set themselves up at sunset on empty land in a parking lot or outside a closed shopfront to form a busy and popular night market. Men stop here after a morning in the rice fields for snacks, strong sugary Balinese coffee, a kretek cigarette, a triangular banana leaf packet of chewy beef tum and conversation.

The mysterious aromas of Indonesia’s multifaceted ethnic cuisine spill out of streetside market stalls and small homegrown warung all across Bali. The warung is the place to find the real cuisine of everyday Indonesians and Balinese. It is equipped with small glass soda bottles and straws, plastic dispensers with waxy tissue paper, a television set, jars filled with mysterious bland cakes and sweets, and a glass display case holding vegetables, instant noodle packets and unidentifiable tid-bits of tempe, pork or salted fish. With the wide availability of stationary roadside or streetside warung and warung food, many busy locals eat very cheap, quick meals here for the same price as eating at home. Because of the absence of refrigeration, most of the food is fried in oil. Nasi goreng (fried rice) is ubiquitous. The fried rice dishes and their counterpart, fried noodles (bakmi goreng), normally contain tiny off cuts of meat and cooked scrambled egg. Sayur hijau (green vegetables) and sop jagung (corn soup) are standard warung fare. Some also offer fried soybean cake (tempe) or tofu (soybean curd cake) with spicy sauce accompanied by white rice. Specialty warung up the food ante with fried or baked chicken, goat, fish or suckling pig. The majority of the dishes are extremely spicy and loaded with fresh chilies and are accompanied by an even more scorching sambal (chili sauce) on the side.

Old-fashioned village market place stalls are snacking paradise. Cackling, wrinkled grandmas wearing coiled towels on their heads for carrying heavy loads enthusiastically sell small individually home-cooked steamed Balinese rice cakes (jaja) laden with palm sugar syrup. Other sellers in batik sarongs and long-sleeved lace kebaya, raised in these markets with their mothers since childhood, still dispense family recipe black rice pudding, soft bubur porridges and boiling hot, nourishing kolak biu, sunny cooked bananas christened with palm sugar and roasted coconut milk. Every third day is a large rotating market day throughout Bali. Vendors from all over the island introduce diversified home-cooked taste sensations and regional specialties to supplement the regular local markets. Flimsy grass hut kubu-kubu lalang -style food stalls set themselves up at the end of each year in the Puputan Badung Square in Denpasar to sell Balinese foods during an annual entertainment fair. The popular local dishes include seaweed, tipat cantok, serombotan, porridge with urab-uraban vegetables (uraban is a jumble, indicating a salad of mixed rather than just one vegetable), daluman drinks, fresh cakes like laklak and white sticky rice served on a banana leaf wrapper. All of the foods sell out by 11 a.m. even on rainy days!

Bakso sellers are an integral part of the street culture and street life of both Indonesia and Bali. These spoon-tapping, bowl-clanging food peddlers (tukang bakso) nudge brightly painted, rickety mobile carts from compound door to compound door in the late afternoon selling bakso. Their colorful push cart contraptions, colloquially called kaki lima (kaki meaning leg, lima meaning five) consist of two bicycle wheels, a back stand and the two feet of the cook! A popular Balinese favorite, bakso is a clear mild soup usually containing round meatballs or boiled chicken, glass noodles, shredded cabbage, rice cakes, hot chilies and herbs. The soup is served out of a pot kept hot over a burner. Vendors bring their own plates and cutlery, but as there is no running water plates are casually washed in a plastic bucket. Other rotating vendors tempt excited school children to come outside for roast chicken with strong sambal, small bungkus rice packets and individually made and mashed orders of minced, scented secrets encased in brilliant green banana leaves.

Each mobile restaurant seller makes a specific food-associated sound as he walks or pedals along to let customers know exactly which snack is trundling up their village street. The mie ayam (chicken noodle soup) seller hits a wooden stick against a hollow, reverberating bamboo tube (“tek-tek”). The always welcome bakso man pings the side of a soup bowl or tinkles a glass with a spoon. The late afternoon steamed rice cake (kué putu) merchant toots a bicycle horn. Families look forward to his sweet corn skin wrapped traditional jaja. The coconut ice cream cone purveyor rings a small ding-a-ling bell, and the rujak (a spicy, sweet and sour fruit salad) hawker squeezes a diminutive horn. Loyal Balinese patrons rush through their carved split household gates, bowls in hand! Mobile food orchestras produce a cacophony of these characteristic snacking sounds (taps, rings, tinkles, toots, whistles, horns and chimes), the unmistakable and familiar resonating trills heard throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

Traveling trolley cooks also congregate outside Bali’s larger tri-weekly village markets and at events, fairs and temple festivals, usually in vacant lots or at strategic locations, promoting local foods like tofu in sweet sticky peanut sauce, clear pork ball soup and green mung bean porridge in portable plastic bags. Most street cart food sellers are young, unskilled, otherwise unemployed males from East Java and other neighboring islands. Meatball soup hawkers, young coconut traders and grilled fish purveyors are all local male migrants from outside Bali. Because they obtain working capital easily, they can sell everywhere. Kaki lima vendors often live in a compound together with other street hawkers and make their food in the early morning before they set out for a long day of pushcart selling. They typically carry an onboard stove, food supplies, dishes, washing up water and sometimes a dining bench as they take to the road to dish up bowls of noodles, steamed rice coconut treats, tiny satay and nasi goreng (fried rice) or bakmi goreng (fried noodles). Bakmi is a vermicelli-like dish with vegetables, shrimp, shredded meat, etc. Soto (soup) ayam (chicken) hails from Java but it is available everywhere in Bali that the kaki lima men go. It contains cellophane noodles, bean sprouts, scallions, lemon slices, hot chili, egg slices, fried onion bits and sweet soy sauce. Reliable kaki lima vendors also feed the thousands of licensed beach sellers roaming the long sandy stretch from Kuta to Seminyak.

Operating from often nothing more than an old bicycle with a wooden board and plastic crate set atop the seat, stationary beach bicycle warung are brilliantly equipped to portion out precooked nasi bungkus (nasi campur to go) in folded conical brown paper packets for Rp.3,000. Bungkus means wrapped up in paper or leaves, or a wrapped package (nasi bungkus is normally a multi-element rice mixture wrapped in a banana leaf). One determined beach entrepreneur even carries two heavy pink plastic bags all along the pantai filled with packets of folded nasi campur in brown paper parcels. He easily disposes of them to the communal knots of sleeping-squatting, chattering necklace and manicure ladies who appreciate the convenience of his “walking restaurant.” The busy beach baristas also carry peanuts, swirled krupuk sealed in crisp plastic, water in plastic jugs and coffee. They normally stock long hanging strip packets of instant coffee. They snip one off the row with scissors, unravel a plastic cup from a pendulous sleeve and pour in hot water brought from home in ceramic jugs. When they run out of boiling water, they get more from a convenient sister concocting regional specialties at a nearby food stall. Their regular coffee brand attracts customers at Rp.2,000, while special ginseng coffee costs Rp.3,000. A row of permanent beach bars serves ice cold soft drinks and beer to tourists on the white sands across from the Inna Kuta Beach Hotel. Eddy, owner of Eddy’s Bar, delivers service with a delighted smile. He greets returning guests with hugs and utter joy, as lost-long family members.

Roving bygone Bali peanut sellers balance a traditional bamboo pole across the back of their shoulders supporting two large V-shaped bamboo slings with tightly packed fiber nets full of brown unshelled peanuts. This shoulder-borne carrying pole with the two baskets is called a kander in the Malay language.) Different vendors offer fried peanuts. Customers carry away their piping hot snack wrapped in kertas bungkus kacang goreng (special paper used to wrap fried peanuts). A traditional Balinese-style jagung bakar (grilled corn) seller squats low over the ground on a rough-hewn hand-made wooden stool. She arrives at 3 p.m. every day and situates herself at the exact same spot on Kuta Beach, by the side of the footpath near the local warung market. She brings with her an antiquated, collapsible foot-tall easel-style wood base. It supports a small, battered metal tray under a two-rod grill pan filled with glowing charcoal. The seasoned, weather-wrinkled ibu is all set up to do a roaring trade from this primitive contraption well supplied with fresh pale green ears of corn, a spare black plastic bag full of charcoal shavings and a plastic tub of salted butter. She husks yellow cobs of corn and places them on the grill, six at a time, continually fanning the darkening ears with a practiced hand and an old bamboo mat to keep the embers alive. The ears are turned over for three to four minutes and served with a final brush of either salted butter or chili sauce for Rp.5,000 each. Sunset belongs to other two-wheel-and-handle stand corn on the cob cart sellers, usually male migrants from Lombok strung along the water line at lit-up Jimbaran beach. From the sandy southern beaches to busy temple ceremonies, they fan and sell charcoal-grilled browning ears of corn and roasted peanuts by portable kerosene lamplight as the sun descends on the island of the gods.

Warung stalls set up at the local pasar malam or at Denpasar’s bustling night markets serve simple, fresh, genuine local delicacies at minimal prices in minimal comfort (nasi goreng with fried egg is Rp.7,000). Mie goreng (hot, fried flat thin noodles) is an Indonesian and Balinese grazing mainstay, similar to nasi goreng. Popular snacks include sweet, fluorescent ice drinks; sweet and sour rujak; satays; lawar; mie bakso (meat balls and noodles); tahu goreng (deep-fried stuffed beancurd) and salted peanuts. There will always be a market stall selling heavily fried martabak (derived from India), a folded-over egg omelette pancake filled with tidbits of vegetables. Martabak pancakes are made from a sheet of dough with various added fillings (martabak telor is a deep-fried beef, egg and vegetable pancake). Martabak manis is a sweet-stuffed pancake.

A vast choice of vividly colored fried rice crackers (krupuk) sealed in plastic bags dominates the domestic snack market. Krupuk is a generic term for all kinds of baked or deep-fried crackers made from a starch base (various kinds of flour) with seasonings and ground shrimps, fish or other ingredients. Krupuk udang is a prawn cracker, krupuk ikan a fish cracker and krupuk sermiyer a red-colored sago cracker. Krupuk kacang is made with rice powder mixed with peanuts and Balinese spices: a little bit hot, people take it home after a ceremony (almost everything is used first as an offering on Bali) and eat it with rice. Standard un-cooked krupuk (rice flour, water and flavorings) come pre-dried in packages and must be fried before being eaten. Others are cut into slices, dried in the sun and then deep-fried. A very attractive oversized, circular, maze-style rice flour biscuit is swirled by hand instead of sliced into irregular squares or rectangles to produce a lacy white, nest-like cracker. The Sari Rasa brand label on this package of swirling krupuk advertises that the crackers are both gurih (delicious) and renyah (crunchy)! Krupuk are generally synonymous with puffy prawn crackers, while kripik encompass a range of fried unripe cassava, banana and sweet potato crackers. Kripik bayam is an exotic visual garden source of bewilderment: a large, beautiful, multi-edged frilly bayam (amaranth) leaf is fried into a lightly battered leaf-shaped, paper thin organic vegetable fritter reminiscent of tempura. Kripik gendar are ground rice chips, kripik singkong cassava chips and kripik tempe thin slices of fried soybean cake. Fried tapioca crackers with embedded peanuts (rempeyek) contain additional microscopic slivers of delicious green kaffir lime leaf.

Nasi campur (mixed rice) consists of an ever-changing village smorgasbord of meats, vegetables, tofu, tempe, fish and eggs served with Bali’s most pleasurable and iconic food—fluffy steamed white rice. The most common meal found throughout the entire Indonesian archipelago, nasi campur is both the basic daily meal and the solid snacking backbone of the island of the gods. Nasi campur ’s mandatory white rice base shares a supple banana leaf with smaller pre-prepared companion side dishes like fried chicken, highly spiced pork, preserved salted eggs, a potato, anchovies (ikan teri), bean sprouts, steamed vegetables with shredded coconut, kangkung, jackfruit curry, sweet crunchy tempe (tempe manis), tofu fritters and fried peanuts doused with coconut milk gravy. Nasi campur Bali is different from nasi campur Java as it includes all the Balinese favorites. A homespun Balinese village product, local nasi campur is normally finished and dressed with peanuts, krupuk and sambal garnishes.

There are many types of nasi campur in Bali as each village and each warung boasts its own specialty. Balinese nasi campur typically includes such staple plate presentation ingredients as rice, chicken, egg, satay, tempe and vegetables to form a creative harmony from that day’s available fresh food materials. Vegetarian nasi campur can include curried tempe, jukut nangka (young jackfruit) and serejele (fermented soybeans fried with spices). Serejele (jele is Balinese for soya) is a specialty of the Blahbatuh area of Gianyar regency. The dish is only popular in Gianyar. You can buy the fermented soybeans in a plastic bag in the market, bring them home and fry them with chili and salt or other spices or eat the beans directly; they have a malty taste. Serejele is normally eaten with rice, like a vegetable. Warung nasi (rice stall) sellers confidently scoop a large mound of rice out of a big basket and toss on two or three mini-dishes, sambal (spicy chili paste) and crisp-fried shallots according to customer preference and pocketbook to create nasi bungkus (simplified nasi campur packed in a banana leaf to go).

The nexus between food and culture is inescapable. Indigenous, informal traveling village warung offer age-old, grassroots, compound kitchen cuisine delivered in a uniquely Balinese-Indonesian way. Older women stake their territory and their small wooden tables and blackened pots of food under the village banyan tree, a meeting spot at the center of town, in the mornings and late afternoons. Here they sell ancient family versions of steamed white rice, pungent fish, spicy meats, sambal, bubur ayam (home-made chicken porridge) and creamy, soft-boiled rice porridges steeped with barbecued chicken, roasted coconut milk, turmeric, lemongrass and salam leaves. Nomadic warung women balance home-prepared foods, plates and plastic buckets on an upturned table on their heads as they track the local crowds to village cockfights, temple festivals and supernatural Barong-Rangda theatrical performances. A traveling warung woman in Kuta Beach-Tuban bears a heavy glass and wood case on her head, plying a beachside route offering fried lumpia spring rolls. She uses a knife to cut the lumpia rolls into small pieces for individual customers and then sprinkles very tiny green chilies on each serving. Her clients are mainly local Balinese and the other beach sellers.

In order to supplement their husband’s income, many local village women carve out a part-time business selling local foods to local people. They balance an scuffed, slotted plastic tub on their heads with paper-wrapped triangular packets of nasi campur or fried rice, fried fritter desserts, krupuk crackers, slices of watermelon or other fruits, Balinese jaja cakes (sticky, sweet, rice-based treats) or rujak. These ladies can be seen in all small villages. They will suddenly sashay out of a side lane to look for likely sales among young boys constructing giant fanged ogoh-ogoh monsters for the pre-Nyepi Day parade. New walking warung women may have to traipse three or four miles a day to sell all their goods until they establish a set route and a loyal clientele. Locals get to know their regular dagang, traders or vendors who carry their wares. These ladies often only have to spend a few hours walking until all their food is sold as drivers, children and passersby stop them. Village customers like to stay with the proven sellers, where they already know what the food tastes like and the quality. Enterprising old ladies get permission from entertainment groups to sell soda, beer and mosquito repellent at tourist- oriented dance performances at Pura Dalem and other temples in and around Ubud. They know the performance schedule and know when to come. As they have done for decades, the ibu balance their selected goods on round, dented metal tubs atop their heads for ease and portability.

Denpasar enjoys an even broader range of snacks and opportunities. Sellers from islands throughout the archipelago come to set up food stands on busy eat streets like Jl. Teuku Umar. The cuisine offered depends on the background of the stall owner. Food merchants from Madura run busy nighttime warung to peddle popular goat satay to homesick Madurese immigrants. Food sellers from Java outnumber other nationalities in the Denpasar night markets, offering Javanese-style spicy nasi campur, while the Chinese cook flat noodle dishes and the Balinese specialize in their native lawar, ayam betutu or babi guling.

Transmigrated cooks from West Sumatra bring yet another hot and spicy culinary journey with them to Bali. It is said that whenever “three people of West Sumatran origin meet anywhere in the world, a Padang-style restaurant will be set up!” Padang, the provincial capital of West Sumatra, is the birthplace of Indonesia’s most popular regional cuisine. In every town and city across the archipelago, there is a rumah makan Padang restaurant serving home-cooked Padang food. A large variety of different foods forming a multilevel, stepped pyramid of neatly displayed dishes, is stacked up on shelves in the shop window. The plates are piled high with conical food portions largely containing an array of animal entrail specialties and highly flavored boiled vegetables, such as cabbage. Padang food is the most popular cuisine of the largely Muslim Minangkabau people of West Sumatra: protein comes from beef, water buffalo, goat, lamb, poultry and fish (not pork). Almost all parts of the animal are used and are sold in Padang restaurants, leavened with rich coconut milk for taste and inflamed with hot chilies. Curry sauces with coconut milk and spices further disguise dishes such as fried beef lung and delicacies made from the ribs, tongue, tail, liver, brain, bone marrow, spleen, intestine, cartilage, foot tendons and skin of the animals.

Customers choose from the dishes displayed in the window, and all food is served family-style with the various selected dishes being brought to the table on small plates, accompanied by hot steamed rice. The price is determined by the number of plates and what is eaten. Tasty beef rendang —tender brown meat cooked with coconut oil and coconut milk—is the signature food of the Padang region. Rendang reigns supreme among homesick West Sumatran sons separated from their mothers who provision them with a parting gift of portions of classic rendang -for-the-road. Slow cooked in a thick, spicy, coconut milk sauce made from shallots, garlic, red chilies, turmeric, ginger, galangal, coriander, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric leaves and lemongrass stalks, this magnificent food can be kept for a long time and becomes better when reheated. Traditional rendang has no sauce when it is done. It must be stirred frequently and laboriously while cooking until the sauce is totally absorbed by the meat. Sometimes it is subsequently dried in the sun. Because of the preparation process, the meat is always a dark brown in color. Coconut milk is a widely used element in Padang cooking. Food purveyors in far from home Denpasar reconstruct their classic Sumatran mild coconut milk soup, with its seductive coconut aroma.

Chefs from the Bukittinggi area of Sumatra import their popular local dish, katupek tek apuak, the Padang version of kutupat rice cooked in coconut leaves. The ketupat is cut in pieces and then quickly doused with gulai nangka (young jackfruit cooked in coconut milk). The cook skilfully adds cooked vegetables and noodles, finishing the gravy-wet presentation with peanut sauce, fried shallots and pinkish fried Indonesian crackers. Creative Minangkabau culinary masters also hit the night market streets of Bali with teh talua (hot tea and blended egg yolk). While the eggs are simmering, they are stirred hard by hand. As the batch becomes bubbly, a hot tea is poured through it, cooking the egg quickly. The result is a sweet, hot, two-colored, two-layered beverage—dark brown tea at the bottom and bubbly white egg on top. A dash of mocha syrup is the crowning touch. Stirred, not shaken, it is the perfect drink to warm up the body during the chilly, rainy musim hujan in Bali!

Nasi jenggo, rice mixed with spicy meat, chili sauce, fried noodles, vegetables and dried sweet tempe wrapped in a banana leaf, injects additional excitement into the local commercial snack mix. It is a nightly social obsession among locals, young university students and low-income workers on a budget. Nasi jenggo was originally introduced to Bali in the 1970s and named after a popular Italian movie, “Django.” Movie fans turned a few unprepossessing, pioneering nasi jenggo stalls into trendy nightspot hangouts. Hundreds of women now sell nasi jenggo at modest food stalls—a simple wooden table, a plastic or bamboo mat to sit on and a kerosene lamp for lighting—from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. on downtown Denpasar’s main streets, concentrated on Jl. Sulawesi in front of the crowded Kumbasari market. The market itself is very busy every day from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. as produce arrives from the countryside and vegetable wholesalers offload produce to villagers to bring back and resell in their early morning home markets. People who work at night need simple food and nasi jenggo sells for a very affordable Rp.1,500–2,000 in Bali. Before so many competing stalls emerged, the early nasi jenggo stalls used to turn over from 500 packages of the delicacy per day to 1,000 on a Saturday night, with the average patron eating two or three servings. The women also sell local beverages like wedang jahe, a hot ginger drink. Coffee, tea, soft drinks and beer are also stocked. Customers are often forced to buy an accompanying bottle of beer.

Nasi jenggo is characteristically produced in, and known for, its small portions, typically the size of a handful of food. In actuality, it is a lot bigger than that, about 35–40 percent of the size of nasi bungkus. The Balinese and Javanese alike will eat nasi jenggo either for breakfast or late at night, from midnight to 7 a.m. They purchase it at local warung or a kaki lima pushcart. Each kaki lima will carry a different type of nasi jenggo but all are precooked and prepackaged by larger manufacturers who sell them in bulk to the local kaki lima stands. Customers in Kuta can buy nasi jenggo closer to home at the nearby Kuta market. They can choose or ask what the day’s selection is, but by 8 p.m. most packets are sold out. Sepeda motor riders eagerly grab whatever is left and speed off, protected by hot food and good karma instead of a driver’s licence! The very modest price ranges from Rp.3,500–5,000 per package. Most Balinese buy three or four to construct a complete meal because they are so small. They can typically contain ayam betutu, lawar, ayam, babi guling plus rice, noodles, grated fried coconut (serunding) and Indonesia’s ubiquitous hot red sambal sauce. The wrapping for nasi jenggo depends on the seller. Balinese wrap it in banana leaves while more modern Javanese-owned enterprises wrap it in paper.

Creativity is the key to nasi jenggo. Each supplier will make it differently and there is variation between Balinese and Javanese producers. Nasi jenggo in its purest form resembles an artistic, house-shaped package of pleasure. A double layer of banana leaf squares serves as both outer wrapping and plate, secured with splinter thin semat toothpicks. Open the outer leaves to reveal the rice glory inside. The nasi jenggo itself is beautifully folded up in another semi-triangular banana leaf bundle with overlapping flaps. Lay the banana leaves out flat as a plate for the nasi jenggo construction within. The nasi jenggo consists of a triangular dome of white rice stuck against one side of a circular banana leaf piece. The other side of the leaf contains a trendy mixture of hot, blood red sambal sauce; thin, wiggly yellow noodles; peanuts, tempe slivers, green bok choy shreds, corn kernels; fried coconut serunding and tidbits of ayam. Eat the nasi jenggo with your right hand. Scoop up luscious, fiery fingerfuls and combine it with a generous mouthful of rice for a popular local culinary sensation. Satisfying, fulfilling nasi jenggo is a twenty-four hour a day. Indonesian comfort food for the market-going Balinese and Javanese masses in search of a quick, cheap, smaller version of nasi campur on the run.

Nasi Campur

(MIXED RICE)

Nasi campur consists of a heaping mound of cooked rice partnered with small quantities of seasonal side dishes. It typically includes creative combinations of banana leaf-wrapped surprise packages, hot curries, fish (teri or pindang), meat, chicken, eggs, peanuts, crisp-fried shallots, fried tempe, tahu (tofu), grated coconut with turmeric and spices and crisp fried crackers (krupuk) enlivened by sea salt and hot chili peppers. The vegetarian part of nasi campur can be any dish, from aromatic jukut kacang panjang goreng (long green beans) to chopped kangkung leaves to vegetables cooked in broth (kuah). Sambal (a typical chili sauce made with salt, fried shallots, shrimp paste, garlic, fiery chopped raw chilies and coconut oil) is prepared daily and put out in a separate bowl as a condiment for the nasi campur. Each person can thus make their food as spicy or as salty as they wish.

The Balinese eat some version of nasi campur almost every single day. It serves as either a snack or a main meal. The combination plate is always composed of white rice and whatever else is fresh, available and cooking in the kitchen that day. A driver will stop off at the renowned night market in Gianyar to enjoy a generous plate of nasi campur after a day of escorting tourists. He may also find time at midday to buy a delicious nasi campur assortment of mixed Balinese favorites at a local warung. Nasi campur is not usually made at home. Most people will go to a warung to eat this surprise orgy of multifarious, spicy odds and ends. The dish will always include satay sticks as an essential, expected and favorite meat splurge. And wherever there are satay sticks, a delicious fresh peanut sauce is sure to follow. The Balinese are experts at creating an eminently simple but perfect easy to create village peanut sauce. All that is required is 11 oz (300 g) of fried peanuts, 3½ oz (90 grams) of long red chilies (cabe Lombok), 2½ oz (60 g) of shallots, 1 oz (30 g) of garlic and ⅔ cup sweet soya sauce (kecap manis). Cut up all the ingredients first, fry all the spices in oil and then blend (or crush them using a mortar and pestle). Fry for ten minutes, and the authentic peanut sauce—forged in the dark, crowded kitchens of paradise—is ready to serve six lucky persons.

Recipe courtesy of the beautiful Pundi-Pundi Restaurant in Ubud, situated in the tall, productive, emerald green rice fields in the heart of the Balinese countryside. The Balinese architecture and natural beauty of these unique surroundings reflects the renowned healing (and eating) environment of Ubud. It is a spiritual experience to sample flavorful nasi campur surrounded by the peace and serenity of Bali’s untouched sawah. It is a magnificent and rare privilege to sit outside, facing a pink-flowered lotus pond, while enjoying the Pundi-Pundi’s excellent culinary creations. There are five delicious, characteristic Balinese food choices on Pundi-Pundi’s extensive menu: crispy duck, bebek betutu, ikan bakar (grilled whole fish) Jimbaran, pepes ikan and nasi campur. Recipe provided by the Pundi-Pundi’s executive chef, Nyoman Suartajaya (Karangasem Regency). e-mail: suartajayanyoman@yahoo.co.id Pundi-Pundi Restaurant. Jl. Pengosekan, Ubud. www.pundiubud.com, December 2011.

1 lb (450–500 g) steamed white rice

1¼ lb (600 g) grilled chicken with bone, either plain or spicy

3 boiled eggs

²/₃ lb (300 g) chicken or beef for satay

½ lb (250 g) fillet fish (snapper) for grilled minced fish rolled in banana leaf (pepes)

deep-fried potato or corn fritters (bergedel)

sweet tempe, sliced (page 70)

¹/₃ lb (150 g) long beans, sliced on the diagonal

¹/₃ lb (150 g) white cabbage, chopped

2 oz (60 g) bean sprouts, headed

sambal sauce

shrimp crackers (krupuk)

Steam the rice and set aside.

Grill the chicken and cut into suitable sized pieces.

Hard boil the eggs and cut into halves, quarters or slices.

Deep fry the sweet corn or potato fritters using previously boiled corn or mashed potatoes mixed with egg, shallots, chicken, flour and mild spices. Alternately, make minced meat ball patties or crab cakes.

Prepare the mixed vegetables (urab sayur) using the beans, white cabbage and bean sprouts.

Grill the minced fish rolled in banana leaf (pepes).

Make the satay sauce (page 69) and grill the satay sticks.

Make the sambal sauce (below) to put on the egg.

Arrange the various small food items on a round plate in a characteristically Balinese way to resemble a cheerful sundial or a sacred food mandala. Place a mound of white rice in the center, surrounded by an artistically perched chicken piece, half a boiled egg, slices of tempe, finely minced urap vegetables, bergedel fritters, fish pepes in a banana leaf, two chicken satay sticks and crunchy shrimp crackers (krupuk).

Serve warm.

Serves 4–6.

Sambal Tomat

(TOMATO SAUCE FOR NASI CAMPUR)

²/₃ lb (300 g) chili

¹/₃ lb (150 g) shallot

3½ oz (90 g) garlic

2 tbs shrimp paste

4 oz (120 g) tomato

Chop up all the ingredients.

Fry all the ingredients for 10 minutes and then blend.

Crush after cooking.

Serves 4–6.

Achar

(INDONESIAN PICKLE)

Achar is originally an Indonesian dish but it is served in Bali as an accompaniment to both nasi campur and nasi goreng.

1 oz (30 g) carrots, sliced

1 oz (30 g) cucumber, sliced

1 oz (30 g) shallots, cut into cubes

2 tbs vinegar

2 oz (60 g) sugar

3 cups water

Heat the water. Before it reaches the boil, add the vinegar and sugar.

Once the water boils, add the carrots, cucumber and shallots to the pot and boil for a maximum of 10 minutes, mixing the ingredients together until they are barely cooked.

Serves 4–6.

Jackfruit Curry

(KARE NANGKA)

“If you ever find yourself in Bali, you can try these dishes at my restaurant, Murni’s Warung, Ubud, or in my guest accommodations, Murni’s Houses and Murni’s Villas. The recipes are from my village—actually, from my family.” Murni celebrates and acknowledges regional and local variations: “If you go to the next village, the recipe will be different. Such is dining in Bali: Selalu lain tapi selalu enak! Always different, but always delicious!” Selamat makan!

Balinese recipe courtesy of Ni Wayan Murni, Ubud, April 18, 2011.

2²/₃ lb (1.2 kg) unripe jackfruit, cubed

6 tbs coconut oil

30 shallots, finely chopped

18 garlic cloves, finely chopped

18 hot chilies, finely sliced

2½ in (6 cm) peeled greater galangal

2½ in (6 cm) peeled lesser galangal

2½ in (6 cm) peeled fresh ginger

2½ in (6 cm) peeled fresh turmeric

6 tsp ground candlenut (as a thickener)

6 tsp chicken powder (or 6 chicken stock cubes, powdered)

6 large coconuts, grated

3 cups coconut milk of the desired thickness, made from 6 large coconuts and 12–15 cups of hot or boiling water

6 tsp shrimp paste

salt and pepper to taste

Grind all the spices into a smooth paste using a traditional Balinese mortar and pestle. Add a little water if necessary.

Heat the coconut oil in a wok and fry the spice paste for a few minutes.

To make the coconut milk (santen), grate the flesh of the coconuts into a bowl, add the boiling water, then let stand for thirty minutes. Squeeze the coconut meat by hand until the water turns white and the flesh is dry, to produce thick, creamy coconut milk (first squeeze). Strain before using. Set aside the thick milk. For a thinner coconut milk, add more water to the coconut flesh and re-use the pulp (second squeeze). Mix the result with the thick milk or use by itself for a thin coconut milk. To make an even thinner milk, squeeze the coconut meat a third time. The coconut will yield about six cups of milk, enough for making a curry for six.

Lower the heat/flame, add the coconut milk and cubed jackfruit. Cook gently until the fruit can be pierced with a skewer.

Serve with steamed white rice.

Serves 4–6.

Tempe Manis

(SWEET SOYBEAN)

Tempe manis is a sweet crunchy tempe married to deep-fried peanuts and a secret, wet Balinese combination sauce of fried and simmered village leaves, chilies, sugar and spices. Tempe manis is a typical local Balinese village dish. It is for everyday eating by women in the home and is made fresh each day.

Recipe Courtesy of I Wayan Sudirna, head chef at the Tanis Villas resort in Nusa Lembongan. www.tanisvillas.com, December 2011.

2²/₃ lb (1.2 kg) soybean-based block of tempe

2²/₃ lb (1.2 kg) peanuts

½ lb (250 g) small hot red birds’-eye chilies

13 oz (360 g) big red chili Lombok

13 oz (360 g) shallots

4½ oz (120 g) garlic

6 kaffir lime leaves

5 cups coconut oil

1 tsp sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 lb (500 g) palm sugar (gula merah)

Cut the block of tempe into thin sticks, then fry with the peanuts in the coconut oil for 10 minutes until brown.

Crush the chilies, garlic and shallots in a mortar and pestle, then fry in coconut oil for 3 minutes.

Add the tempe and peanuts to the frying pan and cook further.

Season with kaffir lime leaves, salt, pepper and palm sugar.

Serve with white rice or with jackfruit or pumpkin soup.

Serves 4–6.

Kering Tempe

(SPICY CRISP-FRIED SOYBEAN CAKE)

Kering tempe is a very exciting, nutritious, flavorful village specialty. This vegetarian soybean-based protein boost is easy to make and has a delicious crunchy texture (kering means dry or dried out). The core ingredient is Bali’s superlative, inexpensive, pale yellow block of fresh tempe—awakened, agitated and brought to life by blazing, fiery, scarlet red chilies and spices.

Recipe Courtesy of I Wayan Sudirna, head chef at the Tanis Villas resort in Nusa Lembongan. www.tanisvillas.com, December 2011.

1 lb (450 g) soybean-based block of tempe

15 red bird’s eye chilies, seeded and sliced diagonally

3 shallots, peeled and sliced thinly

8 cloves garlic, peeled and cut up

5 oz (150 g) palm sugar

¾ tsp tamarind, soaked in water

1½ pieces fresh galangal root, one inch long

¾ tsp shrimp paste

3 salam leaves

sea salt

coconut oil

Cut the tempe into small rectangular sticks, deep fry-dry until crisp and brown. Drain and set aside.

Deep fry the red chilies, shallots and garlic and set aside.

Peel the galangal root and crush.

Heat the palm sugar in a pan until melted, then add the galangal, salam leaves, shrimp paste, salt, oil and tamarind water.

Continue frying at a low temperature until the sauce thickens and the palm sugar caramelizes.

Add the fried ingredients (tempe, onions, red chilies and garlic) to the frypan. Stir until everything is well mixed and well coated.

Serve with steamed white rice (nasi putih) or ceremonial nasi kuning.

Serves 4–6.