Dear People,
Among my nearly daily realizations about Balinese life is one belief that I have held for a long, long time. Here it is: Breakfast food is highly overrated.
I can already hear the collective roar of outrage of a large number of you as you rush to defend your omelets, pancakes, benedicts and home fries. You should stop right now. You are not defending breakfast, you are defending brunch. This is silly really because since it is served at around lunchtime and is only a once-a-week thing, it qualifies more as a holiday meal and as such is subject to different rules. Plus, most of you die-hard brunchers out there are also guilty of slinging back a liter of coffee and a poptart as you rush to work in the morning. Can we really call that breakfast or even food?
(I would also like to add that crepes and smoked salmon, two of the most blessed foods in existence, are not really breakfast food, despite being served at breakfast time a lot. In reality, they are only served at breakfast time because if there is to be any order and reason in the universe, these items must be available at any time of the day)
In Bali, there is no such thing as breakfast food. There is just...food.
No matter what time of the day or night, the things a Balinese person eats are basically the same. There is always a mound of rice and there is always something fried('Goreng' in Indonesian). Most of the time there is nothing but fried food with rice. The standard Bali meal is Nasi Champur, which is basically said pile of steamed rice with a combination of other items such as little bits of fried chicken on the bone, a fried piece of sausage, some fried noodles perhaps, a vegetable (maybe long beans) fried with spices, and some sambal, also fried in oil. If there does happen to be something not fried, it is nearly always full of sugar. A good amount of the time, it is both fried and sweet.
Each morning the restaurant staff roll in with their little wax paper packages of nasi champur. They then buy some extras from the guy on the street who comes to the restaurant every day with a basket of food balanced on his head. He sells little baggies of fried banana coated in coconut, fried banana fritters, sweet little baby jackfruit, rice flour goo with fried coconut and palm sugar, and a number of other items that I have yet to sample.
At lunch or dinner time, the staff meal is usually delicious and again, always goreng! We have tasty vegetables in a variety of shapes and flavors. There is Urap (sectioned long bean with a spice mixture), Cap Cay (a chinese dish with any vegetables on hand and a sweetish sauce), and some others without names of their own. These dishes are wok fried but I'm not counting that as fried because it doesn't count if it hasn't been completely submerged in reused oil.
Then there are the main dishes. Fried chicken is a standard. They use all the parts of the bird that haven't been saved for guests. Obviously this is cheap, but also it has more nooks and crannies for hot oil retention. Then there is the fried, salted sardine dish, the fried pork bits dish, the battered and fried shrimp dish, and the ever healthy tofu and tempe deep fried to within an inch of recognition. Not to mention the sambals and sauces which are also generally, you guessed it, fried.
I can't tell why they do this. Is it laziness? Is it that they would really love to bake but the oven is broken? My host says that part of the reason the Balinese fry so much of their food is that this partially preserves it by removing a lot of the water content. This way they can leave it out in the heat for hours and not worry to much about food poisoning. That is generally what happens to the staff meal anyway. It is left in a bowl or two on the counter and whenever the mood strikes, the staff can scoop some rice and some grub and have at it. There is not a lot of ceremony when it comes to eating. The food is wolfed down as fast as possible and sometimes in really awkward positions. I have come across staff members horking down food while perched amongst the trash cans in the back, sitting on the empty kerosene tank, and one cook keeps squatting in a corner facing a sink.
The other day they made pepis for the staff meal. Pepis are a typical example of Balinese food. Chunks of fish are mixed with a spicy and complex paste and then enclosed in a banana leaf. Clearly this would be a good time to steam, bake or grill (in fact, the pepis we serve the customers are grilled). The bartender heard we were having pepis and sent me to tell the cooks not to fry them. I arrived just as they were emerging from the bubbling oil. Not only that, but the paste is made by grinding and then sauteing ingredients with a half cup of oil!
Sometimes you just want something different, something not fried. That is when I go to Ibu Oka's restaurant and have an order of, reportedly, the best suckling pig in the world. This is such a refreshing change from all the goreng, goreng, goreng! Six or seven pieces of the most delicious, fat jacketed pork is served on a bed of steamed rice, with some Balinese vegetables and topped with a nice healthy slab of the sweet, crispy pig skin. I tuck in and thank shiva that I have been given a brief respite from all that unhealthy fried food.
To save my arteries, I have taken to doing the following things. 1) I eat one major meal a day in the restaurant. Amazingly unhealthy fried deliciousness. 2) Outside the restaurant I have a diet that consists almost entirely of fruit, with the odd beer thrown in. Let me tell you, when you are living off fruit and water half the time, one beer goes a long way! 3) I exercise. I have been going running through the rice fields in the mornings or at sunset. The farmers are so friendly once they recover from the shock of a sweaty, brightly clad white dude tearing at them through the tall grass (I think that basically they would be less surprised if a stegosaurus happened to lumber by. I'm not going to say I don't enjoy the attention. It is great to experience being a minority without ever having to deal with racism in the host country. All the Balinese do is try to charge us too much, but far be it from me to begrudge them this. We can usually afford it.). I've also been playing soccer once a week in the neighboring village.
My meal/exercise plan provides me with good health in the midst of a potential arterial time bomb, (Don't worry Mom, I haven't lost too much weight) but it also provides me with direct knowledge of the secret to happiness. Eat fat-laden fried food in moderation and lots of natural sugar! 2.5 million smiling Balinese can't be wrong...can they?
Take care,
Alex
Breakfast in Bali. Just look at that beautiful grease.
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