Baru di Bali

1. Babi Guling / Suckling Pig

   Babi Guling is the most iconic and famous dish from Bali. You can find Babi Guling restaurants (or stalls) almost everywhere in Bali, just look for the sign of an impaled pig from rear end to mouth. Babi Guling is made of a whole young pig stuffed with various spices and roll-roasted for 3-4 hours on top of a coconut husk fire. One serving of babi guling usually consists of the dry and crispy skins, diced babi guling meat and the spices from inside the babi guling.

2. Lawar

   Lawar is Babi Guling’s sidekick and is usually served during traditional Bali ceremonies. The main ingredients can be turtle meat, coconut or even mango (huh?), but the spices are of complex ingredients. The main ingredient is chopped into small pieces and then cooked with the spices. I heard one of the ingredients is blood, thus resulting in the red color that lawar usually is. But that is the traditional way, these days you can find the off-white colored lawar that is bloodless for those of you that are adventurous, but not quite ready to try a dish that consists of raw blood. Ngelawar (the skill to make lawar) is carried out proudly because not many Balinese men can do it, because mixing the right ingredients is a very difficult task.

3. Urutan

   Now you might be wondering if suckling pig has its inside stuffed with spices and vegetables, where do the insides go? Do they throw it away? Nah, they make urutan out of it. Urutan is sausage ala Bali made of chopped pork encased within pig’s intestines. Coconut fiber is used to fasten the ends of the intestines and then usually local Balinese would hang the urutan on a tree (to prevent dogs from stealing it) for approximately eight hours before frying and serving it. Rumor has it the drier it gets, the better it tastes.

4. Jukut Ares

   Here in Bali we do eat trees, banana tree for example (even though we don’t eat the leafs). Jukut ares is made of young banana tree mixed with various meats such as (again) pork meat. The young banana tree trunk is chopped and boiled in spicy water resulting in a soup-like culinary experience.

5. Jukut Nangka

   Jukut nangka is young jackfruit soup with coconut milk. Unlike most Balinese food, jukut nangka is not a very spicy soup, in fact it’s mainly salty. The soup is boiled for many hours, causing the soup to be concentrated, i.e. very salty but also very tasty. The jukut nangka is served in medium size slices and with a lot of kuah (soup).

6. Sate Lilit

   Sate lilit is made of seafood, minced to a paste like state before being put back together around the katik sate (satay stick) creating an interesting seafood taste. As most of Balinese food, sate lilit is also hot and spicy because its spices are made of birds-eye chilies. The sour taste comes from lime leaves and lime juice mixed in the spices. A lot will agree if we say this is the best there is, perhaps the finest tasting satay in the world.

7. Rujak Kuah Pindang

   Rujak is Balinese fruit salad, usually it consists of unripe mango, jilama, pineapple, cucumber, ambarella and star fruit (it can be any unripe fruit really...) sliced to thin pieces. The special sauce for rujak is called bumbu rujak; this gives a sweet sour and spicy fruit taste. The bumbu rujak consists of coconut sugar, tamarind (asem), shrimp paste (terasi), salt, small green and red chilis. Another type of rujak, that even most Indonesians outside of Bali don’t know of, is rujak kuah pindang. Pindang is a kind of fish, and the Kuah pindang means the broth of the fish that comes from the boiled fish. So yeah, if you haven’t tried rujak kuah pindang before, you should be prepared to taste a mixture of many different tastes all at once.

8. Plecing Kangkung

   Kangkung is the Indonesian word for swamp cabbage, a very common vegetable consumed by locals. Swamp cabbages are hand-picked and sliced to small pieces, then boiled. The plecing kangkung is served with very spicy and hot sauce made of chili, shrimp paste, peanuts and lime juice. The fact that most girls like plecing kangkung (and rujak) is still a mystery yet to be solved.

9. Tum

   Tum is made of various meats minced to very very small pieces mixed with spices and encased with banana leaf then steamed for two hours. Tum is served to accompany nasi, we have to peel the banana leaf first before we can enjoy the spicy tum (of course lah, did you think you were going to actually eat the banana leaf?)

10. Ayam Betutu

    Ayam betutu is made of a whole chicken stuffed with spices and cassava leafs. Originally, the method of roasting the chicken was to wrap it with banana and coconut leaves, put it inside a hole in the dirt and then fire is set on top of the hole for 6-7 hours. But if you go to a Balinese restaurant today, don’t expect to see them using this method. After all, it’s 2008. There is also a different version: Bebek Betutu. In this dish the chicken is replaced by duck.

++ BONUS - Arak & Tuak

Arak is the wine of Bali, made from distilled Tuak. It’s the most common alcoholic beverage you can find in the villages of Bali. Arak is very strong, looks like clear water, smells like... rubbing alcohol and it doesn’t taste good. Drinking pure arak is a challenge for people, but for less of a challenged, people usually mix arak with other liquors such as brem (wine made of rice) and soft drinks. You’ll find that these days many restaurants and clubs use arak in their cocktails.

Tuak is a signature beverage from Bali made from the sap of flower buds of many kinds of palms. The taste depends on how long the tuak has been kept. Tuak manis (sweet tuak) is the kind of tuak that is fresh from the palm tree; it tastes sweet and has less alcohol. Drinking a lot of Tuak manis has been said to cause many stomach problems such as flatulence and diarrhea. The tuak wayah is called wayah (old) because it’s kept for some time before it’s consumed, like wine, the longer you store it the better it tastes.