For the last week, we have been on a mission to return to our favorite places to eat and to find some new gems. I had forgotten some of what makes Indonesian food so good.

Thankfully, we both love street food. Of all the street foods, bakso tops my list. Bakso is as much about the situation as it is about the actual dish. It’s a clear meatball soup with rice noodles and other ingredients that vary from one place to another. It is served at a stand, from the back of a motorbike or out of a pushcart. It can be served with rice, an egg, wontons, and fried onions. Squeeze bottles are always on hand with sweet soy sauce and hot sauce. The key, though, is the sambal, a firey salsa that people here eat by the spoonful. For me, about a quarter of a teaspoon of sambal in my bakso means an unbelievable hotness that is as spicy as I can stand. I have to ration my tiny bottled sweet tea, while I sweat and gulp my way through my bowl of bakso. Yum!

We found an awesome new nasi campur place with Elizabeth and Cooper. It’s called Makan (“food”) Yuk. Nasi campur is a meal that has many different dishes served with white rice. All of the dishes are on display and customers make their choices while the proprietor piles up a plate. It’s different every time and there are twenty or more choices like tempe, perkadels (like latkes), whole fish, noodles, curries, corn cakes, grilled fish or chicken, beef rending, steamed vegetables, fried chicken, pulled pork and on and on. At Makan Yuk they handed each of us our plate and a little card with the price for our plate. Mine was 21,000 rupiah which is less than $2.50.

Cooper wanted to try babi guling, a traditional pork dish. We walked into a place with a picture of a pig on the front and asked if they were serving babi guling. A little old woman set about preparing plates without another word, but with a big smile. Each plate had about six different styles of pork with white rice. I love the culture of preparing many styles of dish from one type of food and serving them all together.

 

One lovely new twist in our food experience here is that we can now get nasi bankus (rice to go) out at The paragliding launch. Our friend Wayan who sells food and drinks on launch can bring the best nasi bankus if we text her before she comes. It is a banana leaf cone filled with rice, chicken satay, peanuts, beans, fish, and other good stuff. Delicious!

Then, there is always Susie’s home cooking right at our place. She makes all the normal Indonesian dishes really well and we are perfectly happy to eat here at home. This time, we definitely want to try Susie’s ayam betutu, which is a dish with chicken cooked eight ways. We have to order it a day in advance, so we’ll save it for a special occasion.

Anyway, the culinary action has been excellent. We are looking forward to more.