This Sunday is my me-time day, and what is a me-time without eating your fav food? This is the exact question that inspired today's recipe. One of my fav food is fried stuff. I know, I know, its not very healthy, but what can I say, I love it. Fried food is my definitely sinful delights!

I noticed that I have not yet uploaded my version of the classic nasi goreng altho I cook it at least one a month and my favorite topping is fried salty anchovies (teri goreng). I remember whenever we were having nasi goreng back at my parents home, there were always two batches of nasi goreng : one with ketjap manis for the fanatic ketjap lovers like me, my bro and my dad, and one without ketjap manis for the incomprehensible group of people who doesn’t like ketjap manis, like my mom. As a ketjap enthusiast, I can only take a classic nasi goreng seriously when ketjap manis is involved. It is what makes the nasi goreng looks darker and tempting.

My paternal grand-aunt is totally the champion of steam cooking. I regret that I didn't learn much from her especially on wrapping food with banana leaves for steaming (I also suck at wrapping Christmas presents). Banana leaves are used a lot in Indonesian recipes as wrappers, especially for recipes with steaming and grilling methods, we call it pepes. It does do a very good job as neat wrappers, it also allows the heat to penetrate and cook the ingredients inside properly yet at the same time keeps the delicious juices in. Plus, it gives the contents with a slight grassy aroma which I find very nice. If green color has smell and taste, it must be like that. 

Today i'm cooking Tum Ayam, another popular Balinese recipe made out of ground chicken. The spices used in this recipe were quite a lot which made it very flavorful and rich. I am sure you can make a vegetarian version of it by using white tofu instead of ground chicken. I might try it one day. 

This recipe is the follow up of the previous recipe. Lemper is flavored rice with fillings and wrapped in banana leaves. Usually the filling is chicken meat but this time I am trying to be creative and mix two recipes in one: recipe for the real lemper rice and Balinese spice for the meat filling (yeah because I have it in my fridge and I cant wait to use it.. ihihihihii..).

As you have guessed, for the following post will be about Balinese spice... hihihihi.. The pic above contains more or less the type of the ingredients I used for the spice mix. I used more than triple the amount of what shown on the pic tho. You see that I have two kind of chillies? The big one is not spicy. It has the smell and the taste of Thai chilli but not the hotness, which is perfect so I can have big amount of paste with chilli flavour without burning my tongue off.

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.