Balinese Cooking Class

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Today I did my first cooking class of the trip. I am not in love with Indonesian food but thought it would be a fun experience anyway. I ended up taking the class at a restaurant called Cafe Bali Gaia. The class was comprised of me and two other girls from Newcastle, England. We made a TON of food, the menu included (and you will see my rating from 1 (never will attempt to try and re-create) to 5 (will go to the asian market and buy all sauces and try to make at home):

- Soup Balinese (noodles and broth were very good, minced up chicken rolled into balls not so good) I will give this a 3
- Pepes (Fish mixed with Balinese sauce and wrapped in a banana leaf) fun to cook but totally gross. Didnt help that the fish sat out for at least 5 hours before we cooked it and it is like 90 degrees everyday. YUCK - 1
- Yellow rice flavoured with saffron (saffron is really pricey if you dont know, it is the most expensive herb / food in the world per ounce so there was not any saffron in the dish. BUT the rice was yellow, so they call it saffron, go figure) - 3
- Nasi Goreng (Fried rice) - 5 - I really like their version of fried rice, it has egg, chicken, bok choy, carrot, cabbage and sweet peppers and a TON of sauces that stink but taste delicious once cooked like fish and oyster sauce.
- Bakmi Goreng (Fried Noodle) - 4 - Exactly like fried rice only with noodles. It has been my favorite dish here but I think we used too much chili sauce so it gets a 4.
- Gado - Gado (salad with tofu and tempe which is even more gross than tofu in my opinion) - 1 - the peanut sauce is a 5 though. I have only used Peanut Butter to make peanut sauce at home...this was the real deal, we squished up all of the peanuts in a mortar and pestle. Very tasty.
- Dadar Gulung - (Pancakes with palm sugar and grated coconut) - 5 - I love their pancakes here, they are like crepes so you could wrap them around anything and I would be happy. Palm sugar is also lovely. It is made from the palms of a coconut tree and looks like brown sugar.

During yoga today I was doing my triangle pose looking at a guy at the very top of a palm tree cutting down coconuts, kind of fun.

Okay so here is a little diddy on the food market. I have been to a food market in Asia prior to this trip and was a little disgusted but more intrigued by the fish in the barrels, dead frogs, tropical fruits and veggies etc BUT this market is nasty. I know I have been eating this food everyday but the dead fish in gelotanous water in bucket totally did me in. The girls I was with are both of Indian decent and they said this was much dirtier than markets they had been to in India...mmmm, ready for dinner yet?

I did eat a delicious little fruit that is a cousin of the lychee (I usually only have lychees in my martinis). Also I saw a bucket of live eels and learned that they live in the water in the rice fields, cant wait to try one of those one day.

So that was most of my day today...of course I did fit in a yoga class and pool time too. Another day in lovely Bali.

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Photos

Flowers
These flowers are used everywhere, including the baths at the spa

Making Peanut Sauce
Making peanut sauce from scratch, no peanut butter