FOOD & CULTURE IN BALI

Food is culture 

Food is a vital part of the Balinese life and culture, and is seen throughout the village in many different forms. Women play the role of daily cooking at home and all food preparation are usually fresh daily. They prepared the food daily for the whole family, for an offering, but if there is a big festive perhaps a wedding or temple ceremony of gathering, the man have the task of preparing the offering made of meat starting from livestock, to butchering, to cooking.

All the activities will start from the market. Daily, the traditional market is start early, where the buyers and vendors are typically women. It is a colorful sample of the village’s livelihood. The produces is coming fresh daily from all over the island. The vegetables come from mountain area and fish from beach area. There are stall brimming with produce meats, fresh fish, spices, fruit, supplies for cooking, fresh flower, or even cloth. Amidst all the activity the ritual of bargaining prevails,

Back home, in the southern part of the compound is the kitchen and the traditional layout on the far left will have a water vessel and fire pit of firewood hanging above. The fire pit serves as a traditional stove made with mud and bricks, with one inlet for the firewood, and three outlets on top for heating and cooking. Around the kitchen, all the spices is grow, ginger, turmeric, lemongrass, and so on to make easier to get all spices from the ingredient.

The local way of cooking is unique and therefore dictates the type of utensil used. Although Balinise food are a dynamic mix of flavor, the tool are quite simple, and most of them are made from natural materials, such as stone to grind the spices and the meats, clay pots to cook and mix in, bamboo weaving to strain and steam things. Cutting boards are made from thick slices of waru tree trunks and coconut shell scoops with bamboo handle serve to ladle or scoop liquids

Daily meals are prepared once a day in the morning and will be set up for the day to be eaten for lunch and dinner. The whole meal revolves around white steamed rice or sometimes rice steamed with chopped sweet potato. A common vegetables fare is tumis(sautéed vegetable in a light broth), or soup (hand mixed vegetables with coconut and spices) or lawar.

The meat or fish is commonly cooked with basa gede, a signature bumbu (spices taste). Base gede is a basic spice paste that each household can use in many different dishes. The recipe is made had fresh turmeric root, shallot, garlic, ginger, greater and lesser galangal, lombok chiles, candlenuts, white and black pepper, coriander, nutmeg, cloves, sesame seeds, and cumin ground together until almost smooth in this stone mortar and pestle and then fried with a tiny bit of fermented shrimp paste. Once base gede is prepared that can use to season a number of different dishes.

When the food is ready, Balinese will offer small sampling set on small squares of banana leaves of the daily cooking to thank to the god and lower spirit called Mesaiban. Mesaiban is the daily gesture of putting small offering around the family temple and house. They are set at high level for the gods and ancestor and low for lower spirit. When everything is done, everyone will come to the kitchen and have their meals.