Balinese Banter

My birthday wish last year was to spend my next one, on a beach in Bali and by sheer hard work and bloody mindedness I made my wish come true! As a treat to myself, I booked in to do a Balinese cooking course - one of those days where they take you to the early morning markets and teach you real home cooking. It was a real eye opener to the Balinese way of eating and economising. I also learnt a lot of interesting cooking tips from the course which I will share with you and a few yummy recipes.

When I think of Indonesian foods the 1st things that come to mind are dishes like Nasi Goreng [translates as Fried Rice] or satays and rich curries. It seems that Bali has a lot of influences from other Indonesian Islands like Java and countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and China. Nasi Goreng is essentially a chinese concept - left over bits all fried together with yesterdays rice. The satays with peanut sauce apparently is a Java-nese concept. It was really hard to find a true and pure Balinese restaurant on the Island or real Balinese food on the streets. The real Balinese cuisine is in their home cooking and the cooking school gave me an insight to what the people of Bali really eat.

Their main staple is rice and all the other bits are condiments to flavour the rice. So a small amount of curry or sauce of some description is presented to enable them to eat the rice. I was also told that they are one of the only nations that don't really sit down to eat together as a family but eat as and when they are hungry and it usually is a bit of cold rice with what ever is available! They have a real sweet tooth here as breakfast is usually rice and shredded coconut with palm sugar syrups or an array of sweet desserts made primarily with tapioca, coconut and palm sugar or sweet rice/mung bean puddings eaten with coconut cream.

They have a lot of weird and wonderful fruits too which they grow in their back yard and sell but don't really eat! Ever heard of snake fruit?

Apart from that I learnt that they have 2 basic spice mixes for curries, one for meat & one for fish/seafood. If you make it from scratch you may have to substitute some of the ingredients and the recipe, unfortunately, is as long as your arm. I think I will venture to make a large batch when I get home [if not exactly the same batch as the course!] and store it in ice cube trays in the freezer. Then I can just defrost a few cubes at a time when I get the urge to make an Indonesian curry! They use these spice mixes for every savoury dish so it is worth making. They also prefer to use coconut oil but veg oil is just as good. I personally will be sticking to using canola/rapeseed oil myself as it is the healthiest option! The addition of coconut cream and palm sugar to many dishes make their cuisine very rich indeed and far too sweet for me. So I will be adapting those elements too if I recreate these recipes!

Ingredients for Basic Spice Mix: To use with Chicken/Beef/Duck/Venison/Lamb...

Red chillies, garlic, ginger, shallots, galangal, kencur [lesser galangal = ??], fresh tumeric, dried shrimp paste, corriander seeds crushed, candlenuts [substitute : raw peanuts without the skin], black pepper corns, grated nutmeg, crushed cloves, bruised lemongrass, salam leaves [?? no idea??], veg oil, water and salt!

So all these ingredients get toasted, roasted, crushed and pummeled into a paste before cooking out slowly over an hour! It can then be cooled and stored. I reckon I can make a close imitation with whatever I can find and it will have to do! Lord help the neighbours as it really did stink when they were making up a batch!

Recipe No. 1: Whole chicken
A really great technique for a whole chicken is to mix a batch of the spice mix with chopped spinach that has been wilted then cooled.  This stuffing is then shoved under the skin on the breast side and inside the cavity. The chook is liberally massaged with more of the spice mix and then steamed in banana leaves [which I believe we can get at flower shops in Blighty or just use foil and a bamboo steamer!] for an hour and then roast it in the oven for an hour without the leaves/foil, to crisp up the skin.

Recipe No. 2: Cubed chicken
Mix a handful of the spice mix with cubes of chicken and grate a good bit of palm sugar all over the mix. Then throw in a generous pinch of chopped red chillies and salt and finally give the chicken a Balinese massage. Leave to marinade while the BBQ gets hot then skewer the cubes onto soaked wooden sticks and BBQ yourself some chicken satays. This can be done with cubes of beef/pork too!

Recipe No. 3 : Peanut Sauce
Ever wanted to make a great satay sauce? Well this is what you do... Take 500mg of roasted peanuts with their skins on and grind them finely in a food processor along with 5 cloves of garlic and about 5 red birds eye chillies [or less if you aren't brave enough] and a peeled knob of galangal. Then bring this paste to the boil in a litre of coconut milk and 20g of palm sugar and 4 tablespoons of sweet soy sauce. Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes and serve with lime juice on top [check for salt and season to your taste].