My plan this morning was to fulfill a bucket list desire of running in Bali... Rachel my friend had asked me if I would have any room in my suitcase for a few books and bits and pieces before I flew out and I said "sure!" 10kg of children's literature later I was pleased with the 30kg Malaysian air allowance! My plan was to jog across to her house which is only 3 KM away, but with only 4 hours sleep due to jet lag and general rubbishness about going to bed at a sensible time, I ended up sleeping in and left them on the balcony for her to collect later as by 9am we needed to be at our cooking class at Bumi Bali!
I work Anna up and we rushed (a little) to get ready with a similar breakfast to yesterday - again a very garlicky omelette, Bali Coffee and fresh fruit. We got to Bumi Bali and were greeted by our teacher and in a class with a German family of 4 with teenage children and a Dutch couple - everyone was down to earth and relaxed and we had a really nice time together.
Our first exercise on the course was a trip to the Ubud market to look at the ingredients that we would need for our cooking. We looked at a whole range of unusual vegetables, fruits and spices in colourful and fragrant (i.e. a mixture of very "strong" smells) across the market. We discovered that the fruit we bought yesterday with snakelike skin was indeed called "snake fruit" by many!
After our tour of approx 45 minutes where we encountered bitter melon, different types of galangal, ginger, vanilla pods and durian fruit we walked back to the restaurant to start our class. If I'm totally honest I'm a little disappointed that we didn't *actually* buy the ingredients we were using from the market itself, but at least they were all ready for us when we returned to the restaurant.
The first thing that we were to learn was how to make Bumbu Bali a spice base for multiple dishes. This involved a large number of ingredients being blended and friend in coconut oil including: fresh ginger, shallots, cloves, red chills, greater galangal, lesser galangal, fresh turmeric, coriander seeds, candlenuts, black pepper corns, white pepper corns, nutmeg, garlic, cumin, sesame seed and shrimp paste. You blend all this together and fry - it smells amazing!
The Bumbu Bali was then mixed with some blanched vegetables to make Sayur Urab and also some fried rice for our starters - blanched veg was coordinated by Anna who had to put the carrots and long beans in first, followed by all the other cabbage and "softer" beg.
After we'd munched through our first course the Bumbu Bali was used again to season chicken legs for our Opor Ayam - chicken curry with coconut. We also used the Bumbu Bali to make satay with minced pork and we wrapped it first around a usual satay stick and then around a stick of lemon grass which made the flavour so much fragrant - although would cost far too much to be practical in the UK. Also it is more difficult than you would think to wrap the satay around the stick - pinching the mixture and anti-clockwise turning is the trick it would appear! The curry bubbled away for a while and when it was finished we got to eat it with some more rice and the sauce was lovely - we slightly winced at how much coconut oil had gone it, but then again "it's natural! so that's all fine right??
Our last dish was dessert - Pisang Goreng - or fried bananas! Fairly simple - slice bananas into slices lengthways at an angle and then mix up flour, sugar and egg and dip the bananas in and then deep fry! We had ours with syrup served on top!
After our feasting session we were pretty full so we wondered down to the internet cafe to print out our plane tickets to Lombok - felt old school to be in an internet cafe! Anna needed decent coffee so we went along to one of my favourite places in Bali to eat and drink - Juice Ja - Anna had a cappuchino and I had a Bali coffee.
The plan was then to come back to the hotel, I was going to sleep (but blogged instead) and Anna went tourist shopping.
After she got back we went for a wonder and walked up to the tjampuham bridge which is still stunning and I bought some Almond body spray which doesn't actually smell like almond, but reminds me of a perfume I loved from when I was 15!
Getting a little thirsty we stopped into a fun looking place called Gedong Sisi which was really nicely decorated, pretty busy and had happy hour cocktails! We had a quick drink whilst making plans to see Rachel and her husband Made for dinner and then wandered down to Tutmak for another drink (I had a Bintang and Anna sampled Balinese Rose wine) and then Rachel arrived. We met up with Made in the car and drove a short distance to Miro's Garden Restaurant which I'd not been to since we went after Rachel and Made got married which is the first reason that I came to Bali.
It's a medium priced restaurant where after a starter, two 500ml beers and a beautiful main of Nasi Campur it feels a bit expensive at circa 175,00 rupiah plus tax i.e. less than £9! The food and restaurant is beautifully presented with flowers everywhere and beautiful paintings and furniture with water features throughout. The restaurant is fairly quiet and a little bit off the Ubud beaten track, but there were still a fair few people eating there. We had some lovely food - loved how my Nasi Campur was presented with each individual element either in a banana leaf or palm leaf dish.
As I've not seen Rachel for nearly 2 years and we were having fun we had a few animated discussions - in particular explained the seriousness that the foot bath ingredients were explained to us at the massage and luxury spar yesterday and so we were giggling a little. From out of the corner of the area we were eating a chap wandered over to us to inform us that this was a "quiet restaurant for quiet people to eat" which he felt the need to state at least 4 times! Of course by this point we now felt terrible, even though we'd done nothing wrong other than giggle a little bit - and this wasn't a staff member, just some guy that felt the need to tell us to be quiet in a slightly odd way. It reminded me of two previous occasions where I ended up feeling terrible for enjoying the atmosphere of a Ben Folds gig at Manchester Apollo (Hardly a small and intimate venue) and chatted briefly to my friends about the gig and we were all told by a particularly grumpy young woman in a dodgy hat that she had come to "watch Ben Folds and not listen to you!" but displayed not even one iota of passion for the rest of the gig! And then there was Nepal - after a long day of trekking the guides and sherpas were relaxing by dancing like mad to an iPhone through 2 tiny speakers and we were joining in, it was "gosh" 8.50 pm and an angry looking man - who we guessed might be Eastern European from what we could tell - was staring at us for a few minutes, he then exploded screaming at us and yanking the speakers off the table "Finish, finished, FINISHED!!! People are trying to sleep!!! My family are trying to sleep!!! The lovely natured Evan from our group - an ex professional ballet dancer from Australia said "people want to dance!" and the chap nearly hit him! Incidentally his "children" were in their late teens early 20s! So these things make me wonder a bit - I'm often highly irritated by what I perceive to be deliberately antisocial behaviour of other people at restaurants and other places, but I've not once (apart from perhaps shushing some teenagers when I was watching the first Harry Potter film in the cinema) ever passed comment and certainly haven't felt the need to make anyone feel too awkward - so I'm thinking I'm either:
a. too nice
b. too noisy and inconsiderate until it's pointed out
c. or both!
Answers on a postcard!
