chopping vegetables

chopping vegetables

for gado-gado served with

sambal and krupuk

The kitchen in our compound is shared by everyone in the extended family. As guests, we also have our own cook, who shops for fresh vegetables and fruit in the morning and prepares a number of small dishes for us either at her home or here. Balinese prefer to eat whenever they're hungry, often alone. This seems strange to me, since I was brought up to sit down with the family for three big meals a day. Our cook prepares a variety of dishes in the morning and leaves them on the kitchen table for us to nibble on. I'm a little concerned about the food sitting out all day at room temperature. But I do like the option of eating when hungry instead of waiting for a big meal. Our little group likes to eat together, so food is served buffet style on a table on the veranda so we can all share. The food is extremely spicy, at least to my taste. Everything is flavored with bumbu, a spice paste made with chilies, ginger and garlic. If it's not spicy enough, there's always the bottle of sambal kecap, chili soy sauce. The basic dishes include gado-gado, steamed vegetables with bumbu kacang, a spicy peanut sauce, nasi campur, boiled rice topped with vegetables, meat and egg, sate, marinated kebabs on lemon grass sticks, and soto, broth with vegetables and meat (which may include unusual ingredients such as tripe). Chopped coconut and coconut milk is used in many dishes. Snacks include krupuk, huge, puffy, crispy crackers, and fresh fruit, either whole or as rambak, a spicy salad. Even though Bali is an ocean island, fresh fish is too expensive for poor people, so goiter is endemic, due to a lack of iodine. "Our Foundation used to give the villagers iodized salt," Robin tells me, "but in Indonesia salt labeled iodized often is not." On my list of items she asked me to bring from the US: iodized salt.