Galangal, Gods, and Gridlock, A Culinary Tale from Bali

When I was chatting up a Seattle friend about what I should do while in Bali, Indonesia, she mentioned her favorite memory of her time on this island was a cooking class. How fun! That one was in Ubud, which is a gorgeous town inland that is practically inaccessible right now after this giant storm hit the island and caused a ton of flooding. Yes, I’m well aware that I am supposed to get scarce before the wet-season starts, but it came early. Sigh.

What to cook?

Even though Sanur (dubbed by some as s-nore) is the sleepy side of Bali, there is still so much to do here. Scuba diving the coral reefs, island hopping, swimming, long walks on the beach, Insta selfies in front of magical temples, iconic terraced rice paddies, and intricately carved doorways, wind surfing, kite surfing, kite boarding, flying kites… it’s really windy on this side and the Balinese peeps really like their kites. There are festivals and everything. It’s great fun to watch, and there are some really creative kites. But, per usual, my favorite thing to do in a new area is eat. I’m working my way through menus!

What better way to learn about a culture than to see how they cook some of my new favorite local dishes? Lucky for me, the chef at my favorite restaurant (Warung Rainbow) has a cooking class in his outdoor kitchen at his home. But he wants me to choose what to cook from his menu as I’ll be eating it for lunch as well. So many options! No beef because this particular island in Indonesia is mostly Hindu (so nicknamed Island of the Gods!), so cows are considered sacred and not to be eaten.

There’s vegetarian (no vegan because fish sauce and shrimp paste are in just about everything!), chicken, and pork. I picked the Ayam Kari Bali (similar to a chicken curry), Babi Sambal Merah (spicy pork), and Ayam Lada Hitam (chicken in a black pepper sauce). These are my favorite dishes on his menu. I’ll be sure to take leftover containers!

Brekkie

When I booked the homestay I’m currently in, I paid US$2/day for breakfast because it is amazing and so why wouldn’t I. Every morning, I head to the small restaurant for fresh fruit, amazing Balinese coffee, and Nasi Gorang (fried rice with an egg on top and shrimp crackers). It’s so good! I could eat this every day! However, I’m usually the only one there. So I was super surprised to find company.

The next table over had an absolutely delightful couple from The Netherlands. We chatted for an entire hour about all kinds of things and ended up exchanging numbers in case we cross paths in the future. Making friends! Unfortunately, I have a cooking class to get to and have to duck out early. Of all the days! I wish I could have stayed longer.

The chef said he would pick me up but asked if I could hike to the main road. I’m down some seriously skinny back alleys. It’s fine if you are on a motorcycle or walking, but he is being nice and picking me up in a car. I appreciate that! He’s right on time, and off we go. Here’s the thing… traffic in Bali is no joke. It’s famously bad. Like maybe worse than Seattle bad (it’s not), if that is possible. I read about it before I even got here, so I didn’t plan many car excursions.

We could walk there faster

Add to that, someone just built a really fancy massive mall on the only road into Sanur, and it’s Sunday, so that mall is hopping. Plus, it’s a holiday… and there is road construction. The chef would have, for sure, scheduled the class for a different day if he had known. We were stuck in traffic for an entire hour! And he doesn’t live that far away. It was crazy! If you have a moto, you can just zip between the cars (sorry, Chef!).

I was happy when we got there and I got to meet his new brindle puppy. So cute! Skritches! Okay, we are behind, so time to cook. To the kitchen. The chef has a large round cutting board covered with all these shallots, garlics, gingers, turmerics (do people pronounce that first ‘r’ in turmeric?), lemongrasses, and some root that I have never seen before. Galangal! It’s closely related to turmeric (which is spelled with a Midwest silent ‘r’ for some reason… I digress).

Then the chef hands me two really heavy chopping cleavers, and I get to work, one in each hand. Chop-chop-chop with bits a-flying! Now that is how you get some aggression out. With help, I chopped until it was just about a paste. Then the chef added shrimp paste, tamarind, coconut sugar, coriander seeds, pepper seeds, candlenut, and aromatic ginger (galanga but different from the other galangal?… I’m so confused), and the chopping continued.

Bumbu Bali

Keep in mind that you could put all this into a blender to save some time, but it just won’t be the same. The chef mentions that the skins are left on the ginger and turmeric and such because they don’t use pesticides to grow any of the rhizomes. Just put them in the ground! The roots are also much smaller than what I have seen in North America. Interesting. At this point, the paste is ready to be fried in a neutral oil that has been previously used to fry up some pork. Waste not!

What you are left with is a whole bunch of basic Bumbu Bali. It’s similar to a Thai curry paste in a way. It can be frozen and used as needed in a ton of Balinese recipes. All you need now for Kari is to cook some chicken with a bit of this paste, add some water, salt, mushroom powder (natural MSG!), sugar, potatoes, carrots, young pineapple, lemongrass, and kaffir lime leaves (another mystery to me… used similar to bay leaves but tastes very different).

Cook until veggies are soft, then add coconut milk, ground pepper, and chopped hot peppers. Easy peasie, right? The chef was all fancy and topped the dish with green onions and fried shallots and garlic and served it with rice. So delicious! But that’s not all. While we were cooking that up, the chef was also making the spicy pork and the chicken in black pepper sauce.

You’ll have to DM me for those recipes!

I ate until I could eat no more! And then I packed all the leftovers into the containers I brought, because of course I did. I will be eating delicious Balinese food for days. The ride back was much faster as traffic had cleared up considerably. Thanks, Seattle friend, for the cooking class suggestion. I learned loads, and it was well worth it.

A few days after the cooking class, one of the worst storms seen in years hit Bali. Lots of flooding. Vehicles lost. Roads destroyed. Boats sunk. People stuck in Ubud or unable to get to Ubud. It was crazy. My neighborhood was surrounded by flooding, such that I had to wade through knee-high water to get out of the area to find food. My kitchen got some water intrusion, but the worst was the new swimming pool.

The owners have been putting in a new swimming pool since the moment I got here. It was just a hole at the beginning but has been moving quickly along with the hopes of finishing before I leave. It has been really fun to watch the progress. Well, it flooded. And they don’t have a pump to get the water out so that they can finish tiling. No pool for this lady.

Lucky for me, I’ll soon be flying to Manado, Indonesia, where I will be getting on a boat for an epic adventure crossing from north of the equator to the south. I’ve never lived on a boat before. I’m super nervous as I do get seasick really easily, but I’ll be trying out some new motion sickness drugs for this leg of my adventure. Wish me luck!!!