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.
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
