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Bali Spice: Nose to the Grindstone

‘Bumbu’ means spice (or flavour). ‘Bumbu Bali’ is, of course, the name of Heinz von Holzen’s famous restaurant in Tanjung Benoa (Nusa Dua). However, it is also the name of a restaurant in Ubud—and in addition to their name, they both have in common that they serve authentic Bali cuisine and run cookery classes presided over by an enthusiastic chef.

Spices, or rather spice-pastes, are at the heart of Balinese cooking and give the dishes their distinct flavour—more refined than in other parts of Indonesia and many of them remniscent of Thai cuisine with their delicate balance of flavour and fragrance.

Unsurprisingly, the first thing we learned during the class was how to prepare a universal spice paste which can be used for most Balinese dishes: base gede, from ‘base’ (sauce) and ‘gede’ (complete) which has no fewer than 17 ingredients.

I waited a long time for my chance to prepare this: base gede uses fresh roots and in order to find fresh tumeric, galangal etc, I had to wait for an opportunity to visit Chinatown in Soho. Last wekend, that opportunity finally presented itself. After some foraging, I magaged to pick up the following:

Galangal, also known as ‘lengkuas’ or ‘laos’ (I wonder: is the country named after it?) this is more delicately fragranced but hotter than ordinary ginger.

Tiny, red shallots. Ordinary shallots can be used but are less sweet.

I searched in vain for kencur, also known as lesser galangal—despite this being the root of a different plant. Then I decided that the tips of this root looked a bit like it. It probably isn’t, but it tastes at least a bit ginger-like, with an under-tone of mushroom and I decided it would do as a stand-in. I have no idea what it was!
ginger-like root1.jpg

Fresh tumeric.

Lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves, both frozen for later reference.

I crushed the roots in a pestle and mortar and froze some of the resulting pastes separately—not every dish requires a complete base gede (and perhaps one day I will find out what that alien-looking root was).

For the base gede, I crushed:
10 shallots,
4 cloves garlic,
4 red chillies, seeded (remember, the hard seeds of large chillies and bell peppers are bad for the liver!),
4-6 hot chillies,
5 cm galangal,
5 cm mystery root (should be kencur),
10cm fresh tumeric (which colours everything orange-yellow with its sticky oil—especially skin and nails!),
½tb coriander seeds,
6 almonds (should be candlenuts),
½ tsp each black peppercorns,
½ tsp white peppercorns,
½ tsp nutmeg,
¼ tsp cumin,
4 cloves,
½ tsp sesame seeds.

If the paste is to be used fresh, add ½tsp dried shrimp paste (blachan), else freeze it and add it when using the paste. Otherwise it will intensify and spoil the flavour.

All this was fried in 4 tb oil, gently, until it turned golden. For each portion, one scant tablespoon is added to the dish when cooking.

Making this is a grind, but once you have it at hand, cooking Balinese dishes becomes a doddle—so to work! More recipes will follow.

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