One of my favorite jalan jalans involves walking all the way from my room in the heart of Ubud to one of the outer hotels that has a ridge walk. The first part of the jalan is very pleasant as there are a lot of street vendors and tourists walking around to people watch. As you move towards the end of the first half of the jalan I also walk through the Ubud Market that always has interesting merchandise to ogle. If you get really lucky you will also stumble into the middle of a ceremony procession where the villagers are all clad in white, a Balinese barong dance with children trying to raise money by dressing up as a hairy dragon/monster with a gong, or something else that that when you see it you think to yourself “only in Bali.”
The second half of the jalan is a beautiful ridge walk on the outskirts of town. The elevation of the ridge climbs about 1500 feet and is on the top of a mountain with two rivers on either side. At some points the width of the mountain at the top is only about 5 yards across. The trial is about 1 mile long and finishes in another village. The most amazing thing about the entire trip is that the whole path has been paved by god only knows who.
The jalan takes about an hour and never gets old. I guess that’s the beauty of a jalan jalan in Bali, you always see something differently when you don’t have anywhere to be. See the pictures below.
There is something terribly rewarding about baking your own bread and pastry that I felt was missing from my life before I started doing it. Not to sound too philosophical, but baking is difficult and time consuming so it seems like the first thing that we can eliminate from daily routines and outsource to the supermarket. I have found that the experience for waiting for dough to rise, whisking egg whites for a cake (and the pleasure of being able to hold a bowl upside down and not have them fall out), and rolling your own pasta to be extremely rewarding and truly makes your appreciate the effort that goes into such products. The quality of the goods is almost unparalleled as well; handmade spinach pasta, sweet potato gnocchi, in-house fermented sourdough are all some of the finest I have ever had. Knowing that I made them myself is even better.
My teacher goes by the name of Guskartika. Although he speaks very little English (and I very little Indonesian) we get along great and he is patient enough to allow me to make mistakes. He has no problem watching me struggle to separate 20 egg yolks from their whites or how to properly roll the delicate gnocchi into the correct shape using a fork. Apparently, all things considered, I am quite the bagus (good) latihan (student) of the pastry and I am moving along very well. Although I have barely scratched the surface, I am lucky enough to be working in a kitchen that services 5 restaurants and has a very diverse menu of breads, pastry, and desserts. Everyday after I finish my shift I write down pages of notes and diagrams of what I learned so that I am able to have a detailed overview of what I have done for when I try to do it myself.
However, with all that being said, the best part of this project is the people that work on the movie. The catering base camp also serves as a central location for people to hang out when they have time off or to grab a snack, so I hear it all from everyone and the troubles that they are going through and how crazy it is to make a movie. The executive producer is also a Harvard man hailing from Dunster House, so I have had a few conversations with him about times in Cambridge. One of my other favorite things is to be hanging out in the catering area between meal services and have people spring special requests on us and to see if we are fulfill their needs. Some are simple like a diet coke (coke zero was a little harder) and an espresso machine. However, some people (cough cough the stars and directors) ask for completely separate meals, ice cream, and my personal favorite—a kind of bleu cheese that is only produced in Vermont.
Below are the pictures of one of our Mexican inspired buffets that we did for lunch. It was a Mexican fiesta with all of the works—quesadillas, guacamole, Cuban black beans, and a Mexican Mole.
Next post: things that I think are interesting on the movie set.
Back to Bangkok…
We flew to Bangkok for one reason: to eat Thai food and learn the nuisances of the recipes we have at our restaurant, Siam Sally. I can promise you that the three of us did not get cheated. It is actually pretty funny—we had dozens of meals at restaurants and in the street markets, but only really tried the 4 main dishes in our restaurant that we felt needed the most work and fine tuning: Pad Thai, Tom Kha Gai, Sum Tom, and some weird mushroom dish I cannot really remember the name of.
We landed at 7:40 pm, went to the hotel, dumped our bags out and went straight the lobby to try the Sum Tom. The restaurant was nice and we ended up ordering about 3-4 dishes and were writing down reminders in small books and making mental notes on how everything tasted. After the first dinner we hopped into a cab and went to a hole in the wall called “Jay-Fai.” Jay-Fai is not a hard place to miss as you are walking down a crowded street in Bangkok; most noodle shops charge 20-40 Baht ($1) for their noodle dishes. Jay Fai charges 250-400 Baht and there is a line out the door. The restaurant has absolutely zero décor and the tables are plastic lawn furniture. However, after tasting the food (which in my opinion was the best of the week, even outdoing the Peninsula), my doubts were wiped away. The prawns were the size of golf balls and the herbs and veggies in their soup stocks were fresh and bountiful.
Woke up, ate the room service continental breakfast and were out the door to go to the big 10 story tall shopping center called MBK (mentioned in the first post). At the top of MBK there is a huge food court with over 60 vendors. I know what you readers are thinking, why the hell would we go to a food court in Bangkok to try Thai food? I was also skeptical at first, and I guess the only answer is that all food courts are not created equally. The entire complex takes tokens so that the vendor stalls you get food from do not have to deal with cash. The average token sale was around 40 Baht per person. When we went to the cashier and asked for 800 Baht ($17) worth of tokens for food the lady looked at us with a look of disgust and confusion and handed us a large cup of tokens. Typical Americans.
I cannot even count how many dishes we had there, but to give you some perspective, we were there for over 2 hours. If I would have to give a ballpark figure, I would say 13 dishes. This food court is where I discovered my favorite Thai dessert of all time, “NahmKai Sai.” Nahm Kai Sai is shaved ice with coconut milk, pandanus leaves, and a variety of “tidbits” that included jellied fruits, nuts, etc. See the picture below sothat you can see all of the lovely and colorful ingredients that you can throw in this dessert. It is basically like a creamy snow cone with natural candy in it. I had about 6 the entire trip.
The food court and the first day were the most memorable experiences of the trip. It is pretty funny when you look back at vacations like this—we ate at the Mandarin Oriental and the Peninsula as well, but the experience did not resonate as strongly with me in comparison to the street markets. Bangkok is also a strange town, as you get very very bored after about 3 days. There is really nothing to do there besides shopping and eating. We hopped on the plane and started preparing for the big catering project that we are doing. I arrived back home the same body weight! I guess it is because we walked a lot and Thai food is a lot of fish and stocks...not a lot of saturated fat.
Next post: Monuments in Bangkok, and what I have been doing with myself.
Part II talks about our adventures in the markets and eating copious amounts of Thai food. Part III will show some of the touristy stuff we did. Stay tuned.
The problem: finding herbs and spices that are not available in Bali or cannot be imported in a quality suitable enough for serving. The Solution: Grow them yourself. I recently took a visit to the 7-acre plot of land deep in the hills of central Bali to find BGF’s small farming operation. After putting on clogging boots and a long sleeves we ventured deep into the jungle that also was cleared in small areas to plant herbs, spices, and various other edible plants. We were greeted by the land’s only Farmer, Ketut Sadeg, who was known as the “man cow” of the village. His job was to plant all of the plants and care for the land—he only ate leaves and plants that came from the farm and ran around the hillside planting the vegetables. Everyone else in the village said that they have never seen him sit down to eat a real meal because he lives solely off of the wild fauna. He carried a sickle and wore a traditional Balinese sarong, a grey Henley, rubber boots, and a 1980s era Santa hat (see picture, it was quite the sight).
"Driving as a tourist"
"Tourists often comment that the roads in Bali seem a madhouse, and this frightens people away from driving. Most local people in Bali have never had a driving lesson. They don’t need to, as you can get your driving license without taking a test (but its cheaper if they take the test). The road skills people have, are earned by ploughing headfirst into traffic, and muscling their way through, like everyone else is doing. This can be a hard concept to learn, putting the western idea of ‘road rules’ aside, and taking up a ‘law of the jungle’ approach, but that’s how it is."
