Bite-Size Bali

Tour Bali through its cooking schools and, as Samantha Brown discovers, you’ll uncover a lot about the island and its favorite dishes. Photographed by Johannes P. Christo

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I hear the man in the tree before I see him. He’s perched so high that the foliage initially hides him. He uses a stick to whack the fruits that will be used to brew tuak, a slightly fizzy sweet wine popular with Balinese farmers.

As far as missions go, so far this one is successful. I’m determined to explore Bali one cooking school at a time, and I’m far away from any kitchen, getting sun-kissed and, occasionally, startled by a lowing cow.
With my guide Ketut and another student, I’m rambling through the surrounds of Bali Asli, a restaurant and school set up by British chef Penelope Williams outside Amlapura on the east coast.

Though we started our walk on the asphalt road outside the school, in a few minutes we’re encircled in farmland. We roam through a field of cassava trees, past gleaming caged fighting cocks, until the view opens to the ocean. Lombok sits in the distance. Sarong-clad women wash in the canals of the Balinese subak system, which irrigates the emerald paddies crisscrossing toward the horizon. It’s a small, no, make that bite-size, slice of Bali.

Then it’s off to the kitchen. Our class takes place in full view of soaring Gunung Agung, Bali’s highest and most revered volcano, and begins with a crash course in all the key ingredients of Balinese cooking. As with many other Asian cuisines, it’s about getting four flavors—sweet, salty, sour and hot—just so.

One of the spices I’m most intrigued with is kencur, or lesser galangal, a gnarled turmeric-like root. Bite down on a slice and it leaves your tongue gently anaesthetized, almost like chili without the heat. The “Balinese truffle,” or pangi, is also new to me. It’s the nut of a fruit, which when broken open reveals a deep brown flesh reminiscent of fine dark chocolate. Williams says she’s added flecks to a chocolate pudding with success.

The key to Balinese dishes is nearly always a version of a bumbu, or spice paste. It’s a dish I’ll repeat at all the schools, one that contains a combination of at least some of the following: chilies, garlic, Asian shallots, candlenuts, nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, kencur, torch ginger, tamarind, palm sugar, shrimp paste, lemongrass and salam leaves.

In this class we use a bumbu that includes coriander seeds, common in Balinese cuisine, mixed with minced chicken to form satay on lemongrass skewers. Our pesan be pasih, a spiced fish fillet steamed in banana leaf, plus a tofu version, uses the key bumbu, as does our urap paku kacang merah, a fern-tip salad that is heavy on coconut and red beans.