t+l journal |

INDONESIA Fusion Plates Decent menus in are often an iffy prospect, but JEN LIN-LIU meets a few chefs who are raising the culinary ante. Photographed by SIMON FURLONG

ALFWAY THROUGH my most recent I was trying to love Balinese food. Really. I trip to Bali, I faced a sudden, stark distinctly remember trying to rustle up some realization that I’d been trying to enthusiasm in my husband at a food stand as I bit avoid since I first visited years ago: into a fried shrimp chip with all the texture of H Balinese is simply not that good. cardboard: “Hon, aren’t these delicious?” I’ve had my share of it. I’ve taken some of the But it finally hit me while I was strolling many touristy classes that sing the through a local market in the ancient town of praises of Balinese food, tried fancy versions of Klungklung in east Bali. I’d passed stand after the food in hotels and “modern” restaurants, and stand of the same basic ingredients like eggplants, visited numerous well-known, roadside stands tomatoes and . Dry doughnuts, the size called , including the Ibu Oka, a stall in of Bundt cakes and topped with rainbow Ubud famous for babi guling, roast . , took up another aisle of the market, The turned out dry and seasoned rather while many shoppers seemed interested only in blandly with a few green chilies. I’ve sampled the buying pre-made offerings for the gods, which culinary repertoire of the island: dozens of consisted of -leaf baskets filled with flower chicken and satays with , nasi petals, and incense. It was then that I realized goreng, mee goreng and grilled fish with that this was a culture that cared more about sauce. I’ve browsed the offerings at a local placating their gods than satisfying their stomachs. supermarket— biscuits, anyone? Chris Salans, the founding and owner of

A_Ya[h>[h[ 9beYam_i[\hec b[\j07b_bWCWd]]_i Y^[\nnnnnnn1W nnnnnnnZ_i^\hec A[c_h_1Z_dd_d]Wj j^[7b_bWÊiI[WIWbj$

92 Mozaic who has lived in Bali for more than a decade, put it bluntly: “Cuisine is used more for A_Ya[h>[h[ celebrating religious occasions than it is for the 9beYam_i[\hec pleasure of the palate. So food is important but b[\j0:_dd[hnnnn Z[iYh_fj_edWjI[W quality, flavor and texture is not. That, mixed IWbj1A[c_h_ijW\\1 j^[[nj[h_ehe\ with limited standards of hygiene and lack of 9ECEI^Wc^WbW refrigeration, makes the food more than too ;ijWj["=bem$ often [just] on the verge of palatable.” My approach was to begin appreciating the ingredients Bali had to offer—the exotic produce and fruit and the abundant seafood—as opposed to its culinary traditions. I fondly recalled the night that my husband and I had eaten at the Jimbaran Bay seafood stalls, chowing down on simply grilled fresh lobster, juicy prawns on skewers and snapper. In my last remaining days, I visited the new Bali Botanic Garden, where I admired beautiful pink dragon fruit growing on the wild cactus-like plants, and sampled She takes —the dry, ubiquitous soybean butternuts, a starchy, almond-shaped fruit as red cakes found on Bali—and tosses them with local as a tomato. And I visited several chefs who have pomelo, a sweet grapefruit-like fruit, and star familiarized themselves with Indonesian fruit, which has the texture of a grape but tastes ingredients and incorporated them into their like an apple to make a delicious salad. At own —whether it be Australian, raw Seasalt, I sampled a wok-fried lobster with food or French. and Balinese lime, which Williams called “small but strong.” The lobster was cooked Y FIRST STOP WAS SEASALT at the Alila to tender perfection, and the coriander and lime M Manggis in east Bali. Chef Penny broth that accompanied it was fragrant. Williams was an energetic, freckled woman In the rice paddies of Ubud, Chris Miller, with a pixie haircut who has spent the last two another Australian chef, befriended us at Glow, years not only cooking but learning about the raw food restaurant at the luxurious COMO Balinese culture. She explained that one reason Shambhala resort. Miller is a sprightly » why Balinese cuisine might not taste so good is that many households cook one in the morning, which they leave sitting on the table. For convenience sake, since Balinese households might contain more than a dozen members, everyone is free to snack on the food all day long. She also described the difference between strains of rice on Bali, noting that locals reserved the most expensive type of rice, called simply Balinese rice, for offerings to the gods. “Everyone eats ‘government’ rice,” she said, referring to a type of inexpensive, genetically modified rice that the government introduced after the 1963 volcanic explosion that decimated much of the local strain. While the varieties are comparable, Balinese rice has a more pronounced mouth-feel. Williams incorporates the more expensive Balinese rice into a truffle and mushroom risotto.

T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A Y 2 0 0 9 93 t+l journal | food

Chinese , and he encouraged us to Covered with a sun-dried tomato visit him at Kemiri, the other restaurant that he sauce and emulsified pine-nut paste, runs at the Uma Ubud, a sister resort to the the pizza was sprinkled with , COMO Shambhala. That evening, a driver dropped us off at the avocado, and Uma Ubud, which was compact but with no less a boutique feel than its sibling property. Sitting at a marble table lit only by candles in an open-air pavilion next to a pond, we started with an amuse bouche of a soft-boiled duck egg accompanied by thirtysomething with a pale complexion. Not long mint and , tinged with a bit of sweet after we were seated, he bounded over to explain and sour. that, while he was not a raw foodist nor a vegan, What followed was the kind of dinner that had he learned how to cook “raw” while working as a us protesting that we were sated halfway through chef at a Caribbean resort for several years, the meal, when we were only on the fourth where he served raw food enthusiasts like fashion . He took local squid, and salted and designer Donna Karan. The fresh fruits and peppered it the Chinese way (deep-fried and found on the island are perfect adding a crisp layer of salt and ), ingredients for Miller’s raw food. then flavored it with green , lime and He employs techniques like sun drying, chili. He served us a savory martabak, an blending, running ingredients through warm Indonesian pastry, stuffed with a delicate crab water and using an expensive dehydrator that and snow-pea filling. works like a very slow oven. A “pizza” arrived at Dessert was even more inventive, showing off our table, made of a very thin crust of nuts and Miller’s creative use of local ingredients: ice seeds that was placed in the dehydrator for 12 cream flavored with soursop, a white-fleshed hours. Covered with a base of sun-dried tomato Asian fruit tasting of apple and strawberry, sauce and emulsified pine-nut paste that stands in for cheese, the pizza was also sprinkled with basil,

94 M A Y 2 0 0 9 | T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M floating in the center of a pineapple soup with of respect to Bali, Salans incorporates many

T R A V E L A N D L E I S U R E S E A . C O M | M A Y 2 0 0 9 95