Bali Part One: Sam Goes Nuts For Sambal!

I recently went to Bali for a week of pure bliss, full of foods to sanctify the senses and set you in a whirlwind of YUMMM, with beverages of Fruity cocktails, tea’s, Balinese coffees and icy cold frappes to make you scream for more to quench your thirst. So my next three pieces will be a tribute to my adventures in Bali. This week the focus will be on the fierce food of Bali, next week will centre on the decadent drinks the island has to offer and the last will discuss the culture of Balinese food and its future. But let us begin with the most important of them all… the food!

The Balinese have a magical way of making ingredients attribute all their best qualities to a dish through the auspicious use of sour, sweet, salty and chilli. The food takes your mouth on a fantastical journey of flavour, enriched in a delicious discovery of exotic pizazz and heat.

My food experiences in Bali were beyond brilliant, while catering to the Western palette and toning down the spice I still found the Indonesian cuisine a heated play-by-play of sweet and sour.

The Casaluna cooking school was the icing to the cake. A morning in the markets tiptoeing around vibrantly decorated stalls full of fresh pineapples and variety upon variety of bananas, bouquets of lemongrass and coriander, mountains of limes and spice stalls peppering the isles, jam-packed with everything from nutmeg to vanilla pods. An ecstasy of colour bombards your eyes, and an edging on sickening smell that floods the nose. It’s a minefield for those in search of fresh, unique ingredients – a destination of deliciousness just waiting to be transformed and it’s cheap too!

Making it through the stench (with the aid of clove scented wax- which works really well to quickly sooth the stomach, don’t ask me how but it works) we headed straight into the kitchen to use our newly bought ingredients.

We made pastes for curries, grated coconut for salads, and prepped veg for dishes such as Mie Goreng. But I was there to learn one thing – how to make Sambal, this was the delicious condiment that had been served with every meal I had eaten in Bali, the first time it awakened my Western palette in a whoosh of BAM. To me, it was a succinct representation of the Balinese cuisine.

Here's a quick method;
The ingredients are made up of what we would call French eschalots, garlic, chili, shrimp paste, oil, sea salt, and chili (in case you don’t have enough).

Fry off the paste with some salt in oil, add the shallots and garlic, add the chili and cook for 10 seconds and serve in bowl. Easy.

Its hot, spicy, fragrant, sour, sweet and zangy. It ads heat and tang to any dish and heightens the flavours common in Balinese cookery. Even a meal of rice and sambal being enough for your everyday Balinese person, not to mention myself.


The food in Bali is underrated in its finesse, authenticity and overall quality. Staying in the city of Ubud I was overwhelmed with the innate passion locals had for their food and their way of life and I was so happy to have a taste of it in their cookery. It’s no France or Italy but neither countries could awaken my palette half as much as the Balinese did.

The ingredients, the setting, the passion, the hospitality was an inspiration to any lover of food. I have two words for you Bali:

Terima kasih (thank you).

By Samantha Coutts