Honey Thieves and Satay Sellers
April 7, 2011So how was your Sunday?
The only slightly unusual thing about mine was how not unusual it was… by Bali standards. You know, praying in a cardinal Hindu temple, a visit from a Brahminic motorcross gang, a sale of a Philippine fighting cock, a hands-on lesson in making street-style satay, a delivery from a reformed-cow-thief-turned-wild-honey hunter (who has buried the spellbinding belt that renders him invisible), and a reading from three colluding Javanese paranormals (one of whom—and this worries me, people—is a judge) who arrived with an in-law and whom it took us about two minutes to discern were quacks, and two hours to get rid of. The whole day had the rhythm of a Balinese Huckleberry Finn, only we didn’t have to raft down a river, and there weren’t any inbreds in a feud.
The night before, my husband Gusky and I had convoyed up to our “country house” (nothing fancy, it’s a former cow shed) north of Ubud, planning to imbibe some Bali spellbinding of our own with a late-night worship at the Gunung Raung temple. It was the climax of one of those month-long, once-every-three-centuries blowout ceremonies that flout anything and everything you read about Bali being “over.” Let me tell you that ceremonial life in Bali is so not over that thousands of other Balinese families shared our idea, and it was all we could do to crawl up the clogged mountain lanes and make it home, by which time it was after midnight and we had no energy left to take a cold-water outdoor bath, get dolled up, and tackle the traffic all over again.
But if there’s one thing you don’t want to do in Bali, it’s invite calamity by saying you’re going to go to temple, and then backing out. So early Sunday morning we headed down the hill to Gunung Raung and to say thanks for the many blessings we have.
I can be pretty blasé about floral and fruit religious offerings, yet this time the Balinese had crafted harvest effigies so aesthetically astonishing that while the mangku led a group of us in Sanskrit prayer, I kinda missed the spiritual point because I couldn’t stop dwelling on the fact I hadn’t brought a camera. So when we got home, instead of getting to work with a street-stall satay vendor whom Gusky had somehow persuaded into abandoning his sidewalk post and sharing the secrets of his trade, I grabbed my Nikon and drove back to the temple.
The five kilos of raw pork, tuna, and chicken I came home to an hour later were the first indication that Gusky had clearly put the word out about the satay. We weren’t just in for lessons. He was shooting for a feast and we went to work grinding a spice paste.
The first arrival was Gusky’s brother and eight of their friends and relatives, all clad in padded Power Ranger gear, who roared up our dirt driveway on motorcross bikes, followed by a handful of our chefs and assorted staff, then buyers for one of my brother-in-law’s gladiator roosters he raises down the road, and then some farm hands with bundles of wild fern tips they had just gathered in the forest. There was so much food we offered some to the Kak Dayuh, the honey hunter whom we pay to purloin the nectar of bees rather than the cows in neighboring villages.
We even fed the soothsaying charlatans, thinking it would shut them up, but they persisted in their guesswork even on full stomachs, and smoked so many cheap cigarettes that I felt like I’d been in a grimy nightclub once they finally took their leave.
Next Sunday? Maybe I’ll bring bagels.
Hot Eggplants and Clean Teeth
March 27, 2011In the dark shadow of the tsunami, and the Fukushima reactors, and Tripoli, it just felt too trivial last week to post about food and cooking and eating. But funny enough I’m now reminded of Homer and his hero Odysseus, who after his forays into battle against colossal forces and mythic beasts, always retired with his army to base camp for a feast (one quite lavishly described by the poet, if I remember correctly) that served to remind us that food, and our mortal hunger, are at the core of the human experience. Food brings and holds us together, and brings us down to earth.
And it brings pleasure, which must be why it felt glib to write about last week. But for all the wrath of Mother Earth, and the errors and atrocities of humans, maybe it’s a better time than ever to reflect on what we do have, big and small.
Here’s one very small thing I’m grateful for: toothpaste and toothbrushes.
Here’s a big thing we’re all grateful for: friendship and family, though admit it, neither would be as fulfilling if our teeth felt fuzzy.
And I’m grateful for our farmland in Bali and those who work it, and the fact that I live in a society where the cycle of birth and death is so accepted and so integral to everyday life that striking a land deal at a funeral of a distant relative isn’t frowned upon. That’s exactly what happened eight years ago, after the death of my mother-in-law’s centenarian cousin, Dadong Taro, when my husband, Gusky, came home to say he’d been offered fertile land on the edge of a gorge.
I’m also grateful for Gusky, and how much he makes me laugh, and his penchant for bulk-buying, which sometimes drives me nuts because we can’t possibly need a dozen combs at a time, but which put him on a mission to cobble together an expanse of farmland from that original plot that now measures in the hectares and that in these past few weeks—yes these otherwise pretty awful two weeks if you only look at the headlines—yielded its first harvest of edible greens. There’s also cocoa, and vanilla, and lemongrass, and purslane, and galangal, and turmeric, and four kinds of eggplant, and three kinds of basil. The list is long, and like the farm it’s growing.
And what did we do to deserve this harvest? Honestly, not a whole lot. I bought seeds online with the previously unfathomable simplicity of the click of a laptop’s keypad, my son hand-carried the seeds here via the miracle of jet travel, we tilled the already-rich volcanic soil, it rained, we weeded, and we waited. And now we harvest and exercise the curious talent we humans have for that phenomenon called cuisine. And we come together as friends and family and share in this glorious gift of sustenance. If that’s not something to be grateful for and amazed by and downright gleeful about, tell me what is?
RECIPE Spicy eggplant with minced pork and Thai basil
TAGS Asian food, Thai food, Vegetable Dishes
COMMENTS 4 comments.
Quiet. Lentils.
March 10, 2011Why are we whispering?
It’s Nyepi, and we’re not supposed to light the stove. No flames today. No incense. No smoke. No offerings. No prayer.
So we’re cheating.
Yes. We are cheating. Strictly speaking no food, hot or cold. No pulling out dishes, or washing them, or putting them away. They’re not supposed to know we’re here.
They?
The spirits. The ones we chased away last night. If we’re really really quiet they’ll think no one lives on this island and then they’ll go away until next year. That’s why the airport is closed. And the roads are empty. We have to stay inside or we’ll blow the secret.
I’m going to go read then.
No reading either. In fact, no writing, no blogging, no television, no radio, no Facebook, no Twitter, no phone calls, no texts. They’re mind readers, so try to make your mind still. Later tonight, no lights either, but you won’t mind because what do you need light for when you’re gazing at a trillion stars?
But you’re still going to eat?
I’m cheating, I told you. It’s just rice and beans. I eat rice and beans on Nyepi. Feels yoga-ey, Hindu-ey. Feels good to gives the animals a break.
Green Pancake Blues
March 4, 2011So about Kue Dadar, those rolled pancakes I keep meaning to tell you about…
Here’s me, on a (yet-again) hot day in Bali’s capital, negotiating a deal on fixtures for my son’s new bathroom when I feel it: the moment when the gritty sandpaper in your belly reminding you you didn’t eat breakfast realizes it’s well past noon and pulls the reptilian alarm in your hypothalamus that shrieks if I don’t get a guacamole-colored rice-flour pancake rolled around some sweetened, grated coconut soon, someone may DIE.
Fortunately I have bottled water and a plan. Across the street from Telaga Mas, a cornucopia of tubs, tiles, and everything loo-related, there’s a local supermarket with tiny parking slots built for the tiny cars we all used to drive, and a cake counter just to the left of the main entrance where amid the displays of room-temperature fried risoles that are parceled with hot green chilies, and sweet yeast rolls filled with what-were-they-thinking combos like bananas and processed cheese, and the cubes of sliced crust-less white or bright green bread (remember folks, this place was colonized by Dutch administrators, not French pastry chefs), lie a few greatest hits from the long and venerable tradition of Malay rice-flour pastry.
I don’t advocate these as a substitute for a molten chocolate cake, or a pear and marzipan tart, or even an almond croissant. They’re not designed to be the glossy finish to meal. But when you’re up to your neck in faucets, and your blood sugar is plunging down the toilet, look no further.
Or should I say look far and wide, because it turns out my death-defying dash across the relentless stream of cars and motorbikes speeding along Teuku Umar Street is in vain. I don’t know what this world is coming to when it’s easier to find a hydrogenated-fat croissant or twenty varieties of factory donuts than a hand-rolled, sweet rice confection in a small Asian city. Starbucks and JCo Donuts may line the street, but the traditional pastries, I’m told by a nonplussed salesgirl, are gone.
Of course they are not all gone from Bali. Attend a Balinese wedding, or a tooth-filing, or any of dozens of ceremonies that mark the milestones in the Balinese life cycle, and you’ll likely spot at the welcoming stand, among the fried peanuts, and the brown and yellow layer cake, and the bottled jasmine tea, little green rolls filled with the fruit and sugar of the bountiful, abundant, iconic, affordable, versatile, humble, life-giving, lauric acid-rich—and let’s not forget delicious—coconut.
Viva kue dadar and viva Bali.
RECIPE Kue Dadar, or Dadar Gulung
TAGS Balinese food, Gluten-Free, Sweets, Vegan
COMMENTS 3 comments.
Big Sister Mole Noodle Shop
February 23, 2011You should know that a minor miracle occurred on Bangkok’s Maha Chai Road last Saturday night. The last time my godson Sam and I went for noodles at Big Sister Mole Face, (of course that’s not the restaurant’s actual moniker, but I swear that’s what the Chinese name, Jay Fai, means), we endured an epic wait of one hour and forty-five minutes, made more interminable by the fact I had just gotten off a sixteen-hour flight from Los Angeles and was hungry, groggy, grumpy and not amused by the humidity. I came close to walking out several times, but Sam exhorted me to stick it out, and sure enough by the time I was scraping the last rivulets of Phat Ki Mao seasoning off my plate, it was like amnesia. I was sated, pleasant, and glad I lived in Asia.
So on Saturday, when real father of Sam landed in Bangkok from Los Angeles via that time warp, Narita Airport, we thought twice about putting him through a similar ordeal. Until our own appetites prevailed, that is, and we decided the hell with Dad, his bleary-eyed butt is going to Jay Fai. We downplayed a worst-case Saturday-night scenario, explaining we could snack and drink Singha beer while we were waiting, and employed colorful language to describe the wickedest plate of Drunken Noodles this side of the Milky Way. Dad bought it, we hopped in a hot pink taxi, and headed toward Maha Chai Road.
What didn’t occur to us was that the Red Shirts might be going out too. Remember them? The demonstrators who paralyzed the capital for almost two months last year. Earlier in the day we’d seen a smattering of them from the Skytrain, near their former outpost, but they appeared genial, and in small numbers, and frankly we forgot about them as soon as the train glided into our station.
So how they got to Democracy Monument by late afternoon beats me. Maybe they split up, or worked in shifts. What mattered to our politically oblivious stomachs was that literally seconds before our taxi rolled up, they had dispersed. One short block from our destination the police were just dismantling the barricades, which meant Big Sister Mole Noodle Shop was—are you ready for this?—E M P T Y. You’re either deaf or don’t get it if you are still standing. Jay Fai on a Saturday night doesn’t get empty. E V E R. Leer at stragglers as much as you want. Good luck with that bribe. You want food out of that wok, you wait.
So what’s all the fuss? You simply have not lived until you’ve witnessed the heavily-make-upped, Wellingtons- and acrylic-knit cap-garbed Chinese grandmother with the big mole on her right cheek wielding two metal frying spatulas like the mean transformer robot in the climactic scene of Avatar, only she’s beating up on rice noodles, not a blue paraplegic-proxy. I’ve eaten at Jay Fai at least twenty times, know a thing or two about Thai food, and scrutinize grandma each time I go, and I still can’t discern her secrets. What I do know is how well those wide, silken noodles slide down with the white, rectangular crunchy things, and the whole ear of fresh baby corn, the oval mushrooms, the pungent basil, the lumps of mangrove crab, the tender squid rings, and the prawns so toothsome and enormous I sure hope radiation isn’t involved in raising them.
The shell-less curried crab and her Tom Yam Tale soup aren’t too shabby either, but don’t just take my word for it. Book your ticket. Go. Now.
Jai Fai, 327 Mahachai Road, down the street from the fabulous white walls of Mahakan Fort. An after-dinner stroll toward the Democracy Monument will walk you right by them, and walk off some of the food. Open afternoon until very late. Closed Sundays. Tel: 0-2223-9384.
COMMENTS 5 comments.