Bali Echo Visitor's Guide

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February/March, 1998
No. 033/VI/98

cover story

Galleries Galore
The boom in
contemporary Balinese
art

A Matter of Taste
Why bourgeois Balinese
are collecting art

beyond
bali

From Toraja to the
Togians
Sulawesi's most seductive
parts

Treading Lightly in
Lombok
Tips to being a green
tourist

regular
features

Weekender
The Saltmakers of Amed

Home Grown
Legian's Legend,
Made Kasim

Health and Beauty
The Ubud-based
Bali Utama Spice

Books
The search for the Great
Bali Novel continues

Cuisine
Bumbu Bali cooking
school

Fiction
Marni's Ride by
K. Landras Syaelendra

Jungle Drums

advertising index for
Bali Echo web site

A quarter to six in the morning. That's when I am supposed to meet Heinz von Holzen. It's not an hour I am accustomed to, but as I ride through the tender light I vow to get up early more often. On this particular morning though, I have a special reason to do so. I am going to take part in Heinz von Holzen's Bumbu (pronounced Boomboo) Bali Cooking School.

Swiss-born von Holzen has lived in Bali for eight years. He has managed to pack an abundance of culinary experience into that time, starting out as Executive Chef at the Grand Hyatt, then moving to the Ritz Carlton, before leaving hotel kitchens for good and becoming a culinary consultant for Spice Island Cruises. He has also written The Food of Bali, a cookbook published by Periplus, and married Puji, who worked with him at the Grand Hyatt, and with whom he has a son, Fabian. In November last year, Puji and Heinz furthered their comitment to Balinese cuisine when they opened the Bumbu Bali Restaurant and Cooking School in Nusa Dua.

The six o'clock start is not just because von Holzen happens to be an early riser. It is because he has an holistic approach to cooking, and Bumbu Bali's one-day program begins not in the kitchen, but at the market. It is von Holzen's firm belief that understanding the social economy of the Balinese household brings as much flavour to the cuisine as the preparation process itself. So before they begin chopping and frying, his students gain an insight into where and how Balinese shop, economise, and design their homes and kitchens.

Kedongonan Fish Market, 6.30am. Heinz von Holzen is crazy about it. "Nowhere else in the world could you get such a variety of fresh fish at these prices". Indeed, even though it's low season when we visit - hazardous winds from the west make fishing from the little outriggers too dangerous - the variety of seafood is astounding. On the damp sand and in the cool shadow if the jetty women squat by baskets brimming with all kinds of weird and wonderful marine life. But we don't do any buying here, as von Holzen calls us to venture back to the market proper, where a whole fresh spread of strange seafood greets us. We come to a stall abounding in squid. Yet to be cleaned, they ooze like pearly gizzards from a deep foam box. Our host grasps one, wrenches out its little legs and pokes the tubular torso toward one nostril. "If it doesn't smell fishy, it means it's fresh," he explains, and promptly orders six kilos. All the stallholders display their wares in the big polystyrene boxes. Walking from stall to stall we spot a few small sharks and tubes of gritty tuna roe, as fat and long as your forearm, and a long, fleshy mahi-mahi. We laugh at its bulging forehead and toothless grin as von Holzen selects a snapper by checking its eyes for clarity and gills for redness.

Above: ikan pepes with jukut

continued