Balinese Food. Vivienne Kruger
Grind and add small black and white peppers (tabia merica). Mix the result together into a powder—a dry grind. Cut an old (brown) kelapa (coconut) in half. Grill (burn) it first. Slice the coconut. Add the burnt coconut.
In order to make the lawar the religiously required red color, add the raw blood to the sliced coconut. Use real fresh blood from the pig. The fresh blood becomes hard after only ten minutes. When you want to use the blood for the lawar, it must be blended with lemongrass to make it soft again—the consistency of red water. Mix hot coconut oil into the blood, and then mix it together with the meat, sauce and coconut. Add a squeeze of lime for fragrance.
Taste the lawar mixture to test the balance of sweet and salt levels. Adjust to taste.
This lawar recipe can be used to make lawar jukut (vegetarian lawar). Simply omit the pork meat, blood, skin and by-products. Add yellow ginger to turn the lawar a yellow color and add young burnt taro and peanuts. Add kalas, made by mixing coconut milk with bumbu (spice paste) and boiling to a temperature of 80 degrees centigrade.
Various other important side dishes are usually prepared as an offshoot of the effort and number of ingredients involved in making lawar. A meat version of kalas is ordinarily prepared as a spin-off. Boil the kalas (coconut milk with spices) with pork meat and mix with long green beans. Delicious pork meat sausages (urutan) are always made on the side from the rich extra supply of pork meat available on these ceremonial occasions.
The lawar is transferred to a pan. The same recipe can also be prepared as lawar putih —white lawar without blood.
Serves 4–6.
Jukut Ares
(YOUNG BANANA TREE TRUNK IN SPICY SOUP)
Ares is a Balinese stew made from young banana stalks and chicken or other meats. Banana trunk (the tender heart of the banana tree stem) may admittedly be hard to find, but it’s worth enquiring at specialty Asian stores. The flavor of banana trunk is similar to celery.
Ni Wayan Murni is the successful owner and creator of internationally famous Murni’s Warung (the first real Western-style restaurant in Ubud, opened in 1974), Murni’s Warung Gift Shop, Murni’s Houses, the Tamarind Spa in Murni’s Houses, Murni’s Villas and the treasure-filled Kunang-Kunang I and Kunang-Kunang II antique shops in Ubud. Murni’s prestigious, well-trafficked network of Ubud businesses has attracted many decades worth of annual customers, friends and repeat food-loving clientele. Her extensive, culturally oriented website empire, www.murnis.com, is a leading online resource center for all things Balinese.
Recipe courtesy of Ni Wayan Murni, Murni’s Warung, Campuhan-Ubud, Bali, 2006.
10 shallots
2 garlic cloves
10 red chilies
5 hot chilies
4 candlenuts
1 tsp coriander seed
1 tsp cumin seed
½ tsp grated nutmeg
½ tsp lesser galangal
½ tsp white pepper
1½ in (4 cm) lemongrass leaf
1 tsp shrimp paste
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp salt to taste
3 tsp vegetable oil
4½ lb (2 kg) banana trunk, finely sliced
8 cups chicken stock made from 2 tsp Masoko chicken powder or 2 crumbled chicken stock cubes
Place the spices in a blender and pulse until reduced to a smooth paste or, for a better taste, grind with a mortar and pestle. Add a little water, if necessary.
Fry the paste in vegetable oil for a few minutes, taking care not to scorch it.
Add the sliced banana trunk and stir fry until the banana wilts.
Add the chicken stock and gently simmer until the banana trunk is tender.
Serves 4–6.
Lawar Capung
(DRAGONFLY LAWAR)
Lawar capung is only prepared and eaten for ceremonies. It is not an everyday village food. It is normally cooked for family ceremonies, not for temple ceremonies, such as a six-month baby ceremony for a son. In Nusa Lembongan, the dragonflies are caught with a net resembling a tennis racket. In Bali, the capung are caught in the sawah (lush rice fields), but in more arid Nusa Lembongan they are found in the cassava or corn fields. The weather varies in different parts of Bali. Nusa Lembongan is dry and hot and the only source of water is rain; there are no rivers, mountains or wet, irrigated rice fields as in Bali. Because there are different conditions, the food is different. The people of Nusa Lembongan only eat capung when the rainy season (musim hujan) is coming or in the rainy season itself when they can get the capung. The men catch them in the morning rather than at night.
Recipe courtesy of I Wayan Sudirna (Ceningan Island), a local Balinese chef at the Tanis Villas Resort, Nusa Lembongan. The village chief in Nusa Ceningan depends on Wayan to prepare the lawar for Balinese wedding parties. Two hundred men will come to a typical Nusa Lembongan wedding with many traveling back from Bali for the event. Wayan makes the food for the men while the women make the offerings for the gods. There is a different menu at wedding parties for single young men and for old married men. The young men will eat chicken curry, chicken nuggets, saté ayam, lamb (kambing) and suckling pig. The old men will eat pork or fish lawar, saté lilit (pork only) and ares. Members of the banjar will cook from 4 a.m. until 9 a.m. The men do the chopping (only the chopping, no grinding) until the ingredients smell and taste very good. The foods are cooked from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. or until ready. Dinner is usually held from 7 to 10 p.m. The local banjar also asks Wayan to make the required number of satay sticks for ceremonies. Cooking is still very traditional in Nusa Lembongan. In order to cook, the satay sticks rest on two stones suspended over a fire dug in a traditional sandpit. www.tanisvillas.com, December 2011.
1 tsp fresh turmeric
1 tsp fresh ginger
1 tsp fresh galangal
4 oz (120 g) shallots
2½ oz (60 g) garlic
2½ oz (60 g) small red chilies
¼ tsp black pepper
1¼ lb (600 g) dragonflies
¾ lb (350 g) young coconut
½ lb (250 g) jackfruit
4 kaffir lime leaves, sliced
Masoko chicken powder
brown sugar
Clean and wash the turmeric, ginger, galangal, shallots, garlic and small red chilies and chop until small. Fry the spices in coconut oil for 5 minutes.
Clean and cut the heads off the dragonflies and grill the bodies until brown.
Grill the whole young coconut on the fire, then hand-grate for 10 minutes.
Boil the jackfruit for 10 minutes, then chop until small. Put the jackfruit, grilled dragonflies and grated coconut into a bowl.
Fry the shallots until crispy along with the sliced kaffir lime leaf, Masoko chicken powder and brown sugar. Add to the bowl of jackfruit, dragonflies and grated coconut. Mix well.
Thread the dragonflies onto a satay stick, ten to a stick.
Serve the lawar with yellow rice.
CHAPTER TWO
The Balinese Kitchen: Hearth and Home
Traditional Balinese cuisine