A spice-packed food adventure through Bali

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. If there’s one thing to learn from the rich and fascinating Balinese cuisine is their approach to flavour–vibrant, punchy and textural. Fish massaged with spices, minced meat wound around lemongrass stick, soup made with banana stems and little rice dumplings that spurt liquid palm sugar - bold flavours define most of the food of this small Indonesian island east of Java.

Bebek betutu–a whole duck stuffed with spices and slow roasted for several hours marked my official initiation into the rich and varied cuisine of Bali. This slow-cooking makes the meat exceptionally tender and the spices to deeply infuse the duck. “Duck meat is considered auspicious and so bebek betutu is a dish reserved for special occasions.

A whole duck is stuffed with spices before being wrapped in palm leaves and cooked on coal," says chef Luh Suyasni, of the luxury retreat Amankila where I tasted the dish during dinner. The matriarch maintains a vegetable patch at the resort where she grows her own water spinach, long beans, bok choy, chillies, herbs and papaya. The dinner on the beach also included gule kambing a fragrant, coconut-based lamb curry.

The super soft meat and flavourful curry felt familiar, but not entirely so. Let me explain. Balinese cuisine uses many familiar ingredients such as white peppercorns and coriander seeds for fragrance, different varieties of chilies for vibrant heat and coconut to add a hint of sweetness to the thick, glossy curries.

But then there’s also candlenut a relative of macadamia nuts which adds a rich texture and also helps tenderise meat. The nuts are always roasted before being added to the spice blend. There’s also shrimp paste which lends an umami edge to the dishes.