Vivienne Kruger: Balinese Food
Vivienne Kruger was born in Manhattan from the very heart of the Big Apple. A social as well as cultural historian, Vivienne earned a BA in history as well as then a PhD in American History through Columbia University in brand-new York. She first visited Bali on a week-long overland trip through Jakarta in 1993. For 5 years, starting in 1999, she wrote travel articles for Bali & Beyond magazine. In 2006, with her column “Food of the Gods”, Vivienne officially launched her career as a food writer for the Bali Advertiser. Vivienne has been shuttling between Darwin as well as Kuta, Ubud as well as Lovina for most of the past 13 years. Considered a leading authority on the culinary arts of Bali, Vivienne’s book Balinese Food: The Traditional Cuisine as well as Food Culture of Bali was published by Tuttle in April 2014.
What inspired you to get into food writing?
I began out writing articles about a prominent Balinese restaurateur, Ni Wayan Murni, the owner of Murni’s Warung in Ubud. While researching her fabulous restaurant as well as the foods on her menu, my interests took an unexpected turn into traditional Balinese cooking—as well as I just kept going!
What’s so special about Balinese Food?
Balinese food is actually singular among the leading cuisines of the globe. Dedicated to the gods as well as fuelled by an array of fresh spices, of which’s inextricably bound to the island’s Bali-Hindu religion, culture as well as community life. The Balinese cook with love, art, reverence as well as exactitude. My book bears witness to Bali’s time-honoured, authentic village cuisine as well as its spectacular ceremonial feasts when food is actually carved, etched as well as painted into the rich spiritual shapes as well as divine colours of holy temples as well as imposing royal palaces. Curious strangers can only gape in awe, respect as well as admiration as they struggle to learn how to make these intricate food offerings.
“Balinese Food” Book Cover
What differentiates your book through additional books about Balinese food?
My book is actually the first to explore the secrets of Bali’s virtually unknown cuisine as well as culinary-religious mindset. of which’s also written through the perspective as well as world-view of the Balinese, offering insights into the cultural as well as religious underpinnings of the foods of Bali. The product of extensive, PhD-level, first-hand field research, my book is actually a storehouse of hard-to-obtain factual information on (as well as explanations of) Balinese cuisine of which is actually unavailable anywhere else.
Did you test all the recipes?
I tested most of the recipes by being present from the kitchen as local people cooked. The recipes were demonstrated to me in either modest warung kitchens or in private kampung homes. I watched the often complicated as well as laborious traditional preparation process, wrote down all of the recipe steps, ingredients as well as amounts, as well as then ate the always fragrant as well as delicious dishes afterwards!
Which recipes are the easiest as well as the most difficult to prepare at home?
Easiest: sambal matah, bubur kacang hijau, kolak biu, tempe manis, nasi goreng, rujak, pisang goreng.
Hardest: lawar, bali guling, bebek betutu, tape, jaja lapis, tum ayam.
What are the most indispensable ingredients in Balinese food?
The Balinese will not eat anything without hot, spicy sambal (sauce) as an accompaniment. The bumbu (spice paste) is actually another integral ingredient at the cooking stage, giving Balinese food its characteristic heat. A third central ingredient is actually the weighty cylindrical chunk of brown palm sugar (gula merah). of which stars in many dishes like kolak biu, appears in most sweets (jaja) as well as is actually the basis of super-sweet village drinks like daluman.
Is Balinese food healthy?
The basic ingredients used for daily home cooking from the villages are low in calories, saturated fat as well as cholesterol. Refrigeration is actually rare in these household compounds, so food is actually purchased daily, always market-fresh as well as in season. Heavy fatty foods like pork are a luxury item only eaten in conjunction with major religious ceremonies. Because the Balinese diet is actually characteristically rice-based as well as leaf-heavy, obesity as well as obesity-related diseases are rare. Though the Balinese have a very robust sweet tooth, even their sweets are light as well as modest as well as made of rice as well as palm sugar. However, unhealthy components in Balinese cooking have crept in with the widespread use of grated coconut in many dishes, a reliance on coconut oil to fry almost everything as well as a madcap love affair with salt liberally sprinkled throughout the food chain.
Balinese Food
is actually Balinese cooking in any danger of being assimilated into Indonesian cooking as well as so lost?
Infrastructure has exploded from the tourist areas as well as modern technology has made a deep impact on Balinese society, although otherwise little else has changed since ethnologist Miguel Covarrubias observed Balinese culinary habits from the 1930s. The Balinese like Indonesian nasi goreng as well as bakso meatballs, although they far prefer to cook as well as eat traditional Balinese lawar, sate, tipat, as well as babi guling over anything else. When I took a friend to Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant in Tuban, she was intent on ordering some hot local sambal sauce through the waitress to spice up the American popcorn shrimp!
Why don’t foreign visitors have a greater appreciation of Balinese cuisine?
Balinese food is actually ultra-spicy. The level of chilli-driven heat in almost every dish far exceeds the normal, western food comfort zone. As the Balinese say, “No spicy, no Great!” Even fruit-based rujak packs a tremendous load of local chillies as well as spices. Many foreigners are not only afraid of the spice levels, although also the amazing as well as unusual appearance of the dishes. People are shy about trying novelties like fern tips or menacingly spiky durian, not to mention banana tree trunk soup or pork lawar made with raw pig blood. Balinese food is actually also very hard to find on the island of Bali if you’re a visitor. Most restaurant as well as hotel food is actually either Indonesian or ethnic (Chinese, Thai).
What do you like about being a food writer?
The quest for information as well as perfection as well as the inherent satisfaction in solving cultural food riddles. Like stumbling across a valuable, buried, underground treasure of truffles, I relished the relentless hunt for a particular food dish or recipe as well as the sheer adventure of tracking down renegade leaves, obscure food tree species as well as additional rare ingredients for which even the Balinese did not know their colloquial or botanical names!
What is actually the best way to contact you?
By email: jimbaran1@yahoo.com.
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Vivienne Kruger: Balinese Food
Vivienne Kruger: Balinese Food