Book Review: Balinese Cookbook

By Wombat | February 27th, 2006 | 4 Comments »

I adore cooking and especially Asian cuisine, and, when I saw this book review by Andrew Charles, I just had to share it with you. ‘Feast of Flavours from the Balinese Kitchen’, will be gracing my bookshelf in the near future.

Cook-friendly book celebrates Balinese specialties
Andrew Charles, Contributor, Canggu, Bali

Feast of Flavours from the Balinese Kitchen
Heinz von Holzen
Marshall Cavendish Cuisine, 2005
118 pp.

This latest book from the extraordinarily accomplished chef, Heinz von Holzen, brings a brilliant array of Balinese recipes to add to those provided in his two earlier books. It seems not so long ago that I reviewed Bali Unveiled: The Secrets of Balinese Cuisine, but now we have his latest publication: Feast of Flavours from the Balinese Kitchen, which he describes as a “step-by-step culinary adventure”.

Anyone who lives in Bali, and a great many visitors also, will know of the author’s restaurant, Bumbu Bali, in Tanjung Benoa. It is one of very few restaurants in Bali offering authentic Balinese food, and if you think it strange that Bali has such a small number of Balinese restaurants, I should explain that the majority of Balinese cooking is done in the home.

When local people want to eat out, they generally opt for basic Indonesian-style food, and this might include satay, nasi goreng, nasi campur or even Padang cuisine from West Sumatra. Admittedly, there are some warung babi guling, small eateries where one can obtain spit-roasted pork, but the sort of food described in Feast of Flavours would be very hard to find.

What comes through very clearly is that von Holzen is very enthusiastic about what he does, and this enthusiasm shows in his restaurant, his cooking school, his writing and in his photography.

After Bali Unveiled, which focused upon the connection between culture and food, I wouldn’t have thought there could be many more recipes — but I was very wrong on that score.

Feast of Flavours contains details of how to prepare 42 new amazing dishes from soups to vegetable and salad items, and from seafood, meat and poultry to rice, noodles and desserts. Von Holzen told me that many of the new recipes are based upon what he teaches in his cooking classes, so they include a lot of basic techniques that are also common to other cuisines.

Two whole pages are devoted to cooking techniques, and this is very helpful for the novice cook. One might think that a former chef from the Grand Hyatt would assume that everyone knows how to blanch, parboil, steam, poach and deep-fry, and would thus gloss over these details but not so. Here, we have a writer who cares enough for his readers to explain everything in detail — including the fact that stir-frying, although popular in Asia, is not very widely used in Bali because the wood fires that most Balinese use do not generate a sufficiently high temperature.

Early on in the book, we are given instructions on how to prepare some basic spice pastes that are essential ingredients in many of the recipes. Some of these look a little complicated, but it is possible to make these and then freeze them for future use in much the same way that a Western cook might store a variety of stock mixtures.

Feast of Flavours also contains descriptions and advice on cooking utensils so we know that we can use a stone mortar and pestle to grind spices or, if we are not so energetic, a food-processor/grinder is an easy alternative.
Perhaps the most vital utensils are the measuring spoons, ladles and scales, because getting the quantities correct is of the utmost importance. With this in mind, von Holzen devotes a page to translating our local metric measures into their Imperial and American equivalents. I have copied the page and stuck it on my kitchen wall so the next time I try to follow an American recipe or try to use a Betty Crocker Instant Cake Mix, I will know what is meant by a cup or a tablespoon.

So, on to the recipes. These are all entirely “idiot-proof” and, as with Bali Unveiled, I tried a few myself.

Jukut Siap, or chicken soup with vegetables and eggs, looked interesting although it was fairly time-consuming but, if I had prepared the stock beforehand, it would have been a lot faster. I was happy to see a recipe for acar (pickled vegetables) — and this was easy, but you need to plan in advance, as it takes at least 24 hours for the rice vinegar to penetrate the vegetables.

A nice vegetarian snack is the Steamed Shiitake Mushrooms in Banana Leaf, but I must admit to omitting the terasi (dried prawn paste), as I hate it!

For something a bit more exotic, there is the fascinating Lobster Braised in Coconut Milk. I haven’t tried this one yet because it calls for four lobsters, and plunging these unfortunate live animals, head first, into a boiling court bouillon is not my idea of fun. The Balinese Lamb Stew looks good; most local people would use goat meat because there are no sheep in Bali and lamb has to be imported.

One dish I have to mention, because it is just superb, is Ayam Pelalah, shredded chicken with chilies and lime. Some of the top hotel restaurants in Bali serve this at very high prices but, for less than the cost of a dinner for two, you can buy this book and learn how to cook it for yourself.

Overall, this is an excellent book and, whether you are a keen cook or just a kitchen-dabbler, it will be a great addition to your culinary library.

Feast of Flavours from the Balinese Kitchen will soon be available in all major bookstores throughout Indonesia at Rp. 140,000. It is also available in Singapore for S$22.50.