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

News Flash

Bali Chefs Show...
Kafe Batan Waru's...
Natrabu comes...

advertising index for
Bali Echo web site

"A Balinese family of four lives on a budget of between seven and ten thousand rupiah per day." It's 7.30am and von Holzen is holding forth to a class of three in the midst of the hustle and bustle of Jimbaran market. "Two kilos of rice costs Rp2,600, leaving only Rp5,000 for vegetables, meat and spices which are bought daily in little packets." He points to a stall garlanded with square packets of clear plastic, melded end to end like paper chains, some containing nuggets of turmeric, some rounds of galangal or ginger, some tiny blocks of shrimp paste or a few chillis, some broken candlenuts. The stock at Jimbaran market is as much a feast to the eye as it is later to be to the palate. One stall is stacked with sticks of sugar cane. Another boasts pink and green cakes arranged in a pyramid. There's also a flower section, a meat section, stalls selling tacky dresses and shirts, children's toys, kitchen utensils, and fruit and vegetables that you've never laid eyes on before. But von Holzen is here to buy mangoes for our breakfast. He makes for the mango stall and picks out several different sorts, pressing them gently to his nose and lips before dropping them into his plastic bag.

By 9am we are savouring the breeze that wafts through Bumbu Bali Restaurant, which von Holzen opened in November with a ceremonial blessing by a Hindu high priest. His holistic approach to cooking has driven him to repeat the basic themes of Balinese interior design at Bumbu Bali, so bamboo poles, coconut wood, thatch, and matt tiles lend a raw earthiness to the space. Its focal points are the family temple, situated at one end of the courtyard, and the kitchen, separated from the dining area by only a low bench. The dining space itself consists of two pairs of bales, or gazebos, which face eachother on either side of the courtyard. As we sit around a large round table in one of the bales, von Holzen cuts sun-coloured mango into ashen-blue ceramic soup bowls, and invites us to taste the difference between the different varieties: harum manis, lali jiwo, manalagi and the creamy wani. When we have eaten our fill, he explains how the cooking part of the program is to proceed.

"On doing the research for The Food of Bali, I discovered that every region has a different way of cooking the same dish, so I had to find a way to standardise the recipes for the book. What I came upon was the key to Balinese cooking is knowing how to prepare the five basic marinades." It is these five marinades - for fish, chicken, beef, pork and vegetables respectively, that von Holzen uses as the basis for his menu. And it is the five basic marinades that students of the Bumbu Bali Cooking School learn to prepare.

Heinz von Holzen met Wayan Wenten in the kitchen of the Grand Hyatt, and later they moved together to the Ritz Carlton. When von Holzen opened Bumbu Bali, he invited Wenten to join him. As chef at Bumbu Bali, it is Wenten that takes students of the cooking school through preparation of the dishes, teaching them how make ayam pelalah by shredding a roast chicken and mix it with a marinade and lime juice, how to soak sate sticks before skewering to prevent them from burning, and how to rap fish in banana leaf to make a pepes, and how to add a little white rice to the mix when making black rice pudding.

Wenten's lifetime of eating Balinese food has furnished him with childhood memories of indigenous flavours since extincted by 'modernisation'. As we go about our respective tasks, he tells us of how ingredients once essential to Balinese cuisine have been lost as the area of farming land on the island diminishes by the day. "Even fresh pandan, the palm leaf used to colour and flavour many Balinese cakes, is often hard to find now, and most kitchens just use the processed variety," he laments.

Wenten has sliced and grated many of the ingredients we are to use on the class before we arrive, and laid them out in a series of colourful mounds and we are disbelieving when Wenten assures us that "Balinese cooking is very simple." So by 12.30, when everything is ready to go on the table, the budding chefs have worked up quite an appetite. Savouring the fruits of ones own labours is the prefect prelude to a siesta.

by Emma Baulch
photos courtesy of Bumbu Bali

Above:
1. Bumbu Bali's Balinese-style kitchen
2. Ayam Betutu

Bumbu Bali offers one day and three day cooking courses.
Tel. (0361) 774 502