Bumbu Ayam Bali [Balinese Spice Base for Poultry]

As we all know, Balinese cuisine is famous around the world. To be honest, I have never eaten home-made Balinese cuisine. I always had one at restaurants and it was always good. I ate Balinese chicken, Balinese seafood soup, Balinese beef braised but I never really understood what so Balinese about it? Does it requires a particular spices that only grows in Bali? Why do they call it Balinese this, Balinese that? doesn't each recipe has their own particular name? It remained a mystery for me until lately one of my beautiful friends lends me her awesome Balinese Cuisine recipes book. 

The book explained how the culture and the nature in Bali island effect their cuisine. The culture of Bali is as complex as their recipes. I think this is what make their culture and cuisines so special. I found out that in Balinese cuisine, they have base recipes for each type of meat; beef or pork, poultry and seafood. Most of the ingredients for the base recipes are the same. It requires tons of shallots, big red chillies and other spices.

Today I made the spice mix for poultry, seafood and meat. I kid you not, I have never spent so much for spices before just to make spice mix.  The amount of the ingredients for the recipes was way more than what I had in my storage. Just for the chillies, it costed me around 60$!.. Well chillies are expensive here where I live, that doesn't help. It was worth it tho, I got around 500gr of spices for each kind. I separate them into 50gr balls and freeze them. Which is very practical, I will take a ball of two each time I want to cook something with Balinese taste.

Ingredients:

50 gr Thai chillies,
225 gr shallots, peeled,
125 gr garlic,
50 gr kencur (lesser galangal root) peeled,
60 gr Laos (galangal) peeled,
125 gr fresh tumeric root, peeled,
100 gr candlenuts,
50 gr Indonesian palm sugar,
150 ml coconut oil,
2 stalk lemon grass, bruised,
3 salam leaves,
250 ml water,
¾ tbp salt

Cooking steps:

1. Put thai chillies, shallots, garlic, kencur, laos, tumeric, and candlenuts into a food processor and process it into a soft paste.

2. On a wok, preheat the coconut oil and sauté the pasted ingredients, bruised lemongrass, salam leaves on medium heat until it changes color.
3. Add water, salt and palm sugar and continue cooking until the mix turns into thick paste,
4. Once the mix are ready, set aside and let it cool down. It will make around 500 gr of spice mix. Separate it into small balls of 50gr or 100 gr, freeze it. It will be ready whenever you need it :)

Happy cooking!!