A Goodbye Party and a Mountain of Rice

Tim's colleagues held a lovely going-away lunch for us this week.  The main dish at the lunch was tumpeng, a traditional Javanese ceremonial/celebratory dish featuring a large cone-shaped mountain of rice surrounded by a variety of meat and veggie dishes (tempe, stuffed chilis, sambal eggs, and omelette, among many other things in our case).  The cone can be regular white rice (nasi putih), but more often it's more fancily prepared with coconut milk for richness and turmeric for the pretty yellow color, like we had:

 

(please note that it is also decorated with shrimp and quail eggs)

The cone of rice mimics Indonesia's mountains and is usually served at ceremonies/events to show gratitude. 

The guest of honor gets the top slice of the cone, and from what I've seen, a VIP also typically cuts the top off ceremonially.   Tim got cutting duties (although he was instructed to hand over the precious top slice to me, along with a full plate of food, mwa ha ha!):

Here we are, in front of the tumpeng and other goodies (and yes, this is an iPhone photo of a Polaroid, well, Fuji, photo):

And here is Tim and I with his colleagues, who are an awesome bunch.  They have been nothing but welcoming, helpful, friendly and sweet to us, making our 2 years here go pretty smoothly!  Thank you guys!!

(we thought this looked a bit like a wedding photo, but they insisted that we be front and center, which required us sitting)

Cooking, Balinese Style

Here is the second half of our culinary experience at Lobong (the first being the market tour).  My second time taking this class was not a disappointment- just as interesting, hands-on and delicious as last time!  Pretty sure Martha enjoyed it, too... asking lots of questions, learning about life on Bali...

As we did last time I cooked here, we got to see Pak Sang Made's mother making the coconut oil from fresh coconuts, as she does weekly:

Our mise en place, including chilis, shallots and garlic (the Indonesian holy trinity), fresh galangal and turmeric root, peanuts, lemongrass, tomato, ginger, tamarind, and long beans, among other fresh ingredients:

Martha implements her signature hand gesture in case anyone was planning to take a photo during the initial ingredient explanation by the Chef:

Teacher's pet helps out with the very involved, multi-step, over-a-wood-fire Balinese rice making process (this is not just tossing the rice and water into the rice cooker, my friends):

Chopping the holy trinity... look at those knife skillz:

Chef explaining the importance of and ingredients in the essential Balinese spice paste, the base gede:

Martha's responsibility was the curry sauce for the chicken, and she took it very seriously:

Mine was the peanut sauce:

Martha using the mush-and-twist method of getting the spiced minced chicken sate onto the skewer for sate lilit ayam:

And Pak Sang Made helping out with the grilling of said sate... smoking up the whole place:

Dessert time... a Balinese crepe filled with a delicious palm sugar and coconut filling:

And the finished products!  Sate lilit ayam and peanut sauce (base sate):

Kare ayam (braised chicken leg in coconut curry sauce) and dadar gulung (Balinese crepe filled with palm sugar syrup and grated coconut): 

Jukut urab (mixed veggies [fern tips, long beans, red beans] salad with grated coconut and garlic chili dressing) and sambal ulek (tomato and chili sambal):

Balinese rice with sweet potato and fried shallots:

Martha admiring our work:

But before we eat, an offering/cangansari must be made:

Pak Sang Made's mother is in charge of the offerings, which are placed all around the family compound several times a day:

After the offering, our meal was plated (pretty fancily, I might add) and we got to eat... all of it was pretty awesome, but I am partial to the salad, the sambal and the sate:

Rice Harvesting and Ducks Herding

After checking out the beautiful rice terraces at Tegalalang, we drove by these farmers hand-harvesting rice, which was pretty cool.  I hadn't seen it up close yet, and I don't think the girls had either. 

 

Apparently harvesting occurs when the rice plants are a meter tall and turning yellow (check out this link for a brief description of the steps in growing rice on Bali and this link for a more in-depth description):

 

Women traditionally do the harvesting on Bali, cutting down the stalks with a small hand knife, thrashing the stalks in a bag to shake loose the grains of rice, and then tossing the rice in woven palm baskets to shake out rocks and bugs (I think... unless they're dehusking the rice on site?): 

Here's a little slideshow of the women tossing the rice grains in the baskets:

 

Afterwards, the rice is carried out of the field for dehusking:

I just liked these palm trees all in a row:

 

A few meters down the road in another rice paddy we caught sight of this gaggle of ducks (geese?) being herded along the barrier walls separating the wet paddies:

Singapore Trip: The Food

The apartment where we stayed was also, conveniently, walking distance to lots of great hawker stands.  Singapore is known for its hawker centers (street food stands moved inside for cleanliness purposes), which serve up a mix of different foods from different cultures, plus some dishes native to Singapore itself.  People in Singapore are obsessed with food and everybody has strong opinions about the best place to their favorite dish.  

Maxwell Road Hawker Centre, where the people like to wear striped shirts, apparently.

We hit up one of the most well-known hawker centers, the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre, where we tried out, among other things, the famous Tian Tian Chicken Rice, a super simple but fragrant and delicious dish, the in-high-demand porridge at Zhen Zhen porridge (the line was about 45 minutes long for this breakfast treat of rice porridge, eggs, and a zillion different toppings), and amazing fresh-squeezed fresh fruit juices (Tim had sugarcane and dragonfruit, I had apple/carrot/ginger).

Tian Tian chicken rice with chili sauce and porky fried noodles.

Lots and lots of chickens hanging in the window.

Mmmm... porridge.

We also hit up a nearby 24-hour Muslim food court right by the apartment for some crispy, chewy roti and silky, rich curry (goat and chicken... mmmm).

 The following day we treated ourselves to a Singaporean dish, fish head curry, at Muthu's in Little India.  Served alongside some other other Indian favorites (paneer and peas, spicy goat, naan) on banana leaf plates.  So good...

Fish heads, fish heads, roly poly fish heads.

Digging in; eating off banana leaf plates.

Finally, we took a mini-road trip to the East Coast Seafood Centre, right on the water in view of hundreds of ships heading to and from Singapore's massive port.  

Hundreds of boats floating out behind Mr. Ben and Mr. Ben's wife.

Tim, pretending to be a crab.

We ordered the chilli crab at Jumbo Seafood.  

Singaporean chilli crab is quite easily the messiest dish I've ever eaten: quartered jumbo crabs floating in a chilli-laden tomato and egg sauce that you eat using an ineffectual combination of lobster crackers, chopsticks, tiny seafood forks and your hands to pull out the tender crab, then sop up the sauce with tiny steamed and/or fried buns. 

Bibs required.

 It makes Maryland-style crabs look neat and dainty.