While perusing the bookshelf at our delightful Villa Tukad, I discovered myriad guidebooks on Indonesia and Bali. There’s a rather dry but informative old copy of a Dorling Kindersley-style Knopf guidebook, a conservative Insight Guide, a detailed Rough Guide to Indonesia, and a couple of insubstantial Lonely Planet guides that appear to pander to pissed-up Australians*.
One Lonely Planet claims Balinese cuisine is “Not as sweet and subtle as the food of the neighbouring island of Java,” while the Rough Guide calls the local cuisine “sweet and not overly hot”. Of the rest of the books, only the Insight Guide really makes an effort to understand the cuisine and the ingredients that distinguish Balinese cuisine from the other islands in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia.
Bali is known for a couple of distinctive dishes, both traditionally only eaten for feasts – babi guling (suckling pig) and bebek betutu (marinated duck wrapped in banana leaf). You can order bebek betutu 24hrs ahead at some restaurants and see suckling pig at roadside stands, but they’re not really the same as the dishes served at ceremonies.
Another dish that is unique is saté, but, unlike Thai satay sticks, it’s not comprised of cubes of marinated meat on skewers cooked over charcoal. Rather, it’s mince (generally seafood, chicken or pork) pounded together with the same sauce that marinates the duck dish, basa gede (commonly written in English as ‘Balinese Sauce’), on ‘skewers’ of lemongrass or bamboo.
While these all sound delicious, it’s difficult to find good Balinese restaurants where you can try them, because sadly the island doesn’t just cater to foreign tourists, it panders and kowtows to them. Generic French, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese restaurants abound, as well as the dreaded ‘International’ places with menus featuring at least one dish from each of the cuisines on the aforementioned list.
Say that you’re going to try street food and the locals get very nervous – they don’t like seeing their guests get the dreaded ‘Bali belly’. There are some restaurants that do feature local specials, but all the guidebooks agree that the best Balinese food is to be found in the home.
Thankfully, we’re in one. And one with a local Balinese cook, Desak, who grew up making these dishes – and she definitely has an opinion on how they should be made. The villa has a menu of local specialities, so every meal has been a cooking lesson as I’ve sneaked into the kitchen to watch her cook.
We tried the local saté first. Both the chicken and pork piqued my curiosity, as Desak served the saté without sauce, saying that the sauce was part of the saté mix of the ground meat. She was right – it was fantastic.
Keen to try another dish that used the same sauce, we asked her to make bebek betutu, however, she said she preferred to make ayam betutu, substituting the duck for ayam (chicken) as she insisted the ducks were not very good around here: “dry and tough” she said. We weren’t going to argue. Especially since we saw the duck looking just that way in a couple of restaurants that specialized in the dish.
Desak’s dish was amazing. Moist and tender, with the sauce providing a complex spice kick that we couldn’t get enough of. We’d enjoyed Desak’s cooking so far, but this was a knockout. Even when we reheated the leftovers the next day the chicken was still moist.
Given that you’re not going to make suckling pig at home, I thought that the most practical dishes to make were the saté and the chicken dish. You can serve the satay as an appetiser and the chicken as a main course. A great introduction – or reminder – of the cuisine of Bali.
Firstly, the sauce. This is one that you simply cannot mix in a blender. Desak says that she has tried it but it simply does not taste the same. Her stone mortar and pestle get a real workout every time she makes it – and she prefers to sit down on the floor to do it as it takes a while to mix it up.
While the sauce may be available as a commercial product, Desak won’t even buy it from women at the local markets who make it at home! Once again, she says that it simply does not taste the same! Blend it if you want, but I’ll take the advice of a local cook over the TV chef I saw making it in a blender the other day.
This recipe makes a good batch of ‘Balinese Sauce’ but double this amount if you’re making the sauce for the chicken as well. In Part 2 of this post I’ll share the recipes for the saté and the chicken.
Ingredients ‘Balinese Sauce’
18 shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed a little
3 stalks lemongrass, chopped roughly
3 Indonesian bay leaves (dried)
6 candlenuts
2” ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
3” fresh turmeric, peeled and roughly chopped
3” kencur, peeled and roughly chopped
5 Medium red chillies
1 tsp. peppercorns
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. shrimp paste
Directions
Get that pestle moving! Put in some of each ingredient and grind and crush the ingredients together, making a paste. Add a little neutral oil to help moisten the mixture if necessary.
* And yes, I am Australian, but a quiet drunk. And, yes, I used to write for Lonely Planet.
Weekend Eggs: the New York City Edition
New Yorkers love their café breakfasts and we’ve been enjoying eating them here. Probably the most popular item on any New York café or restaurant brunch menu is Eggs Benedict: a toasted English muffin, some good ham (often from Canada), soft-poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, and perhaps some chives for colour and a slightly peppery counterpoint flavour. Lara had a particularly delicious one with a Moroccan twist at Cafe Mogador in the East Village.
While it’s a weekend eggs dish that never goes out of style, I’ll let you in on a little secret: it’s a dish that I’ve always used to test out cafés when I’m reviewing them. Why? While the dish appears deceptively simple, it requires skill to get it perfect – and get it to the table hot.
I’ve written about poaching eggs at home at length in my Weekend Eggs series over the last few months, but poaching eggs in a commercial restaurant situation is a completely different situation. Whether poaching the eggs beforehand and holding them so that they’re still soft-centred after reheating or poaching them to order, in a busy kitchen, and with orders piling up, requires skill. It’s all too easy to overcook the eggs, have them turn out tasting of vinegar from the poaching process, have them arrive stone cold, or have them arrive as a stringy mess from bad technique.
Hollandaise (essentially warmed egg yolks, clarified butter, cracked pepper, salt, lemon juice, white wine or white wine vinegar, and cayenne pepper) can test even the most accomplished chefs. Making it is an art requiring great timing, plenty of wrist action with a whisk, and a keen eye. The sauce can easily split or curdle. The finished sauce is thick in texture, but fluffy – not easy to achieve. And a batch should not be held for more than an hour unless you like making people ill – although some disagree on just how long you can hold the sauce.
One of our favourite cafés in Sydney, Australia, which we used to frequent every weekend when we were first starting to become a little obsessed with food, would turn out hundreds of plates of Eggs Benedict over a weekend. One cook’s only job was to keep making batches of hollandaise, while another poached eggs continuously, and yet another assembled the dish. They were consistently delicious.
One of the reasons making Eggs Benedict is generally expensive is because of the labour involved. It’s okay to pay $18–$20 for the dish if it’s made well. But that’s a big if. I’ve seen it done with horrifying ‘hollandaise’ from a Tetra-Pak carton. I’ve seen fatty, greasy bacon (as if the hollandaise itself isn’t calorific enough) used instead of ham. I’ve seen French baguettes instead of the classic English muffin. I’ve seen cold eggs placed on the muffin, sauce pored over, and then the dish placed in a broiler to heat the eggs. I once had all the aforementioned crimes against Eggs Benedict presented on the one plate.
So why would you bother wasting time making it when you can go to a café and order it? If you know a place that does it well, doesn’t break any of the rules, and doesn’t charge like a wounded bull for it, I say don’t bother making it at home. That is, unless you’re really interested in cooking. Why? Because hollandaise is one of the master sauces of French cooking and learning to make it gives you skills that will serve you well.
My favourite way of making it is the more complex, traditional way, where sliced shallots, cracked pepper and vinegar are simmered in a pan until almost dry, and then a couple of tablespoons of water are added to make a reduction. The eggs are added, and then clarified butter and lemon juice to taste. It’s complex, rich and delicious.
I like to ‘cook’ the sauce in a metal mixing bowl over a pot of simmering water (the bowl shouldn’t touch the water), lifting the bowl out of the pot to control the temperature. And controlling the temperature is very important. The most common problem most people strike is that the eggs start to cook. If this does happen, I take the bowl off the heat and add an ice cube, stirring vigorously to bring the temperature down. The other problem is that the sauce can ‘split’ or ‘break’, which is when you can see a separation of the eggs and ‘water’. The best fix is to have another mixing bowl with a tablespoon of water in it and then add the hollandaise slowly to this while stirring vigorously.
A couple of final notes… Hollandaise should be ‘lemony’ and rich and have a little cayenne pepper in it. Some would argue that hollandaise is only butter, egg yolks and lemon juice. Some people don’t like it lemony or with cayenne pepper – it’s still hollandaise if it’s not too ‘lemony’ or doesn’t has cayenne pepper, it’s just not the classic version. There are recipes around that mention Hollandaise and blender in the one sentence. If you do want to go that route, make it the classic way first so you understand the difference.
Ingredients for Hollandaise Sauce (makes a batch good enough for 4 serves of Eggs Benedict)
1 shallot, chopped finely
¼ cup white vinegar
a few peppercorns
a bay leaf
¼ cup water
4 large farm fresh, free-range eggs – yolk only
200ml clarified butter
lemon juice to taste (1–2 tablespoons)
cayenne pepper to taste
salt to taste
Ingredients for Eggs Benedict (serves 4)
Hollandaise sauce (see above)
4 large farm fresh, free-range eggs
2 English muffins sliced in half
Plenty of slices of good quality ham
1 bunch of chives
Directions for Hollandaise Sauce
1. Add the first 4 ingredients to a pan over medium high heat and simmer until nearly dry
2. Add the water and reduce a little again, then strain.
3. In a metal mixing bowl, add the eggs and the reduction.
4. Over a pot of simmering water, whisk the eggs and the vinegar reduction with a wire whisk until it thickens – but doesn’t start to scramble.
5. Add a little of the clarified butter and incorporate that into the sauce fully.
6. Slowly add the rest of the butter, making sure to incorporate it fully.
7. The mix should have the consistency of thickened cream and a glossy surface. Remove from the heat.
8. Add a little salt, a little lemon juice, and a little cayenne pepper to taste.
9. The sauce can now be ‘held’ in a warm place for around an hour. Add a little water if it becomes to thick.
Direction for Eggs Benedict
1. Toast the muffin slices.
2. Poach the eggs as per this post.
3. Place the ham on the muffin slices.
4. Top with the poached eggs and the warm sauce.
5. Add chopped chives and serve immediately.
6. If you’ve pulled it off, champagne goes very well with this dish!