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Dedication and Thanks

This book is dedicated to the extraordinarily beautiful young Bali-Hindu goddess Saraswati. Seated atop a pure white multilayered lotus flower with her loyal white swan mount at her feet, Saraswati is the revered goddess of literature, wisdom, science, music and the arts. She is worshipped by everyone interested in knowledge and learning, especially students, teachers, scholars and scientists.

I also dedicate Balinese Food to my beloved, precious, beautiful Balinese dog—and constant companion—Chessie. With love and protectiveness and loyalty, my sweet Chessalopolis sat right by my side, watching me and guarding me during virtually all of the joyous, creative, multi-year writing, tasting and photo-taking process. Chessie and I lived side by side, body to body and soul to soul with each other; we shared the same karma and the same road towards enlightenment. Very special thanks goes to Starbucks on Jalan Pantai Kuta, Starbucks in the Discovery Mall (Tuban), Starbucks on Orchard Road in Singapore (Plaza Singapura) and in Waikiki, Oahu (Hilton Hawaiian Village), USA. My pretty black and white border collie patiently sat underneath the table at every single Star-bucks from our home base in Kuta and Tuban in Bali to Karangahape Road in Auckland, New Zealand, to her favorite place in the world—Waikiki Beach in Hawaii. My little girl watched me write and rewrite every single page of this extreme love affair with the food and food culture of her native island of Bali.

Special gratitude goes to Wayan Sarma, long-time friend and driver from Pelaga village, Sanggingan-Ubud, who patiently accompanied me as I trekked through muddy rice fields to photograph dragonflies on the wing and ducks on the march, and to distant experimental agricultural farms where he sampled Bali’s famous kopi luwak (civet droppings coffee) for me. Wayan showed me almost every edible food source on Bali, from rice field eels to wani fruit, from taop nuts to barrel-cured speckled black eggs. We sat together on a wooden bench at the famous Gianyar night market to feast on Bali’s classic mixed rice dish, nasi campur, and to photograph buckets of blood-blackened Balinese urutan sausages. Wayan drove me to ramshackle rural village stalls, known as warung, to sample delicious finger bananas, tulip-shaped kue mangkok offering cakes and freshly made jaja gina rice cakes.

Extra special thanks also goes to another long-time friend and driver in Bali, Gede Kasena from Desa Jinengdalem, Singaraja, who patiently sat with me through endless food conferences and nasi goreng (fried rice) lunches in the mountains of Pacung to answer my most persistent questions about Balinese foodstuffs and cooking. With a happy heart, ready smile and spotless soul, Kasena generously enlightened me about Balinese eating culture and village produce, from the countless species of chili peppers to intriguing varieties of edible yard-long beans to ceremonial turtle lawar. Blessed with Balinese grace, intelligence and kindness, Kasena was my most important living local dictionary. He knows everything about Bali and this book would not have been possible without him.

Spiritual thanks go to my yoga teacher and friend in Darwin, Australia, Sanjit Das, who patiently explained the constellation of gods, kings and heroes in the ancient Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. In the legendary tale of the great warrior Yudisthera rests the ancient nexus between steadfast dogged myth and lunchtime dog satay in warung throughout Bali.

Academic acknowledgment is awarded to the elegant state-of-the-art Parliament House Library in Darwin, Australia. As a visiting scholar from the United States, I was accorded innumerable research privileges, kindness and Internet courtesies by head librarian Gaynor Lovett and librarian Suzie Young during the initial stages of this work. The library fortuitously maintained an invaluable Indonesian language resource on their reference shelf: Alan M. Stevens and A. Schmidgall-Tellings, A Comprehensive Indonesian–English Dictionary (Ohio University Press, 2004 and 2010 editions).

As a social historian with a Ph.D. in American history from Columbia University in New York, I wanted to produce a meticulously researched and comprehensive storehouse of hard-to-find information on Balinese cuisine, encompassing all aspects of traditional village food found, grown and consumed on the island. I first began to write about Bali in the late 1990s, producing a number of culture articles for Bali and Beyond magazine (2000–6). I have special memories of working with my talented editor at Bali and Beyond, Debe Campbell. During these years, I also wrote a large number of reviews of published books about the island of Bali, which still appear on www.amazon.com. I then spent eight years (2005–12) doing field research on the extraordinary foods and peoples of Bali, during which time I lived in Bali for two years. Earlier and shorter versions of the chapters in this book appeared in the Bali Advertiser (www.baliadvertiser.biz), Bali’s most widely distributed English-language expatriate newspaper in Indonesia after the Jakarta Post: 13,000 copies are printed twice each month. I was fortunate enough to be asked to write their monthly food column (“Food of the Gods”) for two years, from 2006 to 2008. This was a very fertile breeding ground and test run for my own Balinese cultural cookbook.

I am enormously grateful to a large caste of Balinese cooks and villagers throughout Bali. They guided me well with open hearts and took me inside many cramped compound kitchens during my spice-laced odyssey through the culinary Ring of Fire. Thank you to the hundreds of smiling, giggling, helpful friends everywhere in Bali, among them Mr and Mrs Dolphin (Warung Dolphin), Made Janur and Iloh (Janur Dive Inn), Justine Friedman (owner of the Akar Cafe), Iluh Padmi Antariasih (whose father is a powerful village balian), Australians Moira and David (owners of the Dolphin Beach Holiday Apartments), and my loyal friend and massage lady Yoni—all in Lovina on the north coast of Bali. Mr Dolphin was gracious enough to send me many international sms’s to answer my emergency questions about local red snapper and mysterious coral reef fish! Endless thanks go to my very good friend Mega Barbara Ngoei from Jakarta; we had the best fun and food parties and food orgies in Lovina in 2009!

Special gratitude goes to another very good friend, since 1993, in Kuta, Eka Noviyantie, originally from Jakarta but resident in Bali since childhood. Eka helped me immeasurably with this amazing food journey, speeding off on her sepeda motor (motor scooter) to buy me nasi jenggo in the local market and sending me many sms’s about my urgent jaja and Balinese roast duck dilemmas! When I am in Bali, Eka accompanies me everywhere—to the fabulous Hard Rock Hotel for Mexican quesadillas and to Matahari Department store for tropical sandal shopping. Eka made phone calls all over Bali to help me get formal permission to use the beautiful Balinese recipes in this book. When Beachie (my dog Chessie’s mother) died inside McDonald’s in 2012, Eka and Kasena drove this precious dog to a veterinarian for a special Balinese cremation ceremony, performed from the heart with love, honor and kindness.

On a plane trip from Bali to Darwin, I was also fortunate to meet Balinese ecologist I Wayan Mudita, who teaches at the Faculty of Agriculture at Nusa Cendana University in Kupang, West Timor. He was kind enough to spend a great deal of time and effort helping me track down some of the most beautiful edible leaves in Bali: daluman, bulan baon and salam.

Additional thanks go to Ni Wayan Murni and Jonathan Copeland in Ubud, who blessed me with many original recipes; Urip Sudiasa and wonderful chef I Wayan Sudirna at the Tanis Villas in Nusa Lembongan; the Puri Lumbung Cottages in Munduk; Cok Oka Derana, a Balinese prince from Guwang, and my little sister Miss Era and her real sister Sri in Seririt, who gave me food, family recipes, cooking demonstrations and insight into the ancient, divine cooking on the spectacular island where the gods live.