Balinese water spinach (kangkung)

Balinese water spinach (kangkung)
Originally uploaded by Trapped In A Suit.

Then we made kangkung pelecing, a spinach with a tomato sambal, a separate raw sambal (shallots, chillis, torch ginger, shrimp paste, ginger, lemongrass, oil, and lime leaves), and a salad.

Black rice pudding was prepared at one stage, though frankly I do not remember learning how to do it.

It was all good, though more of a demonstration than a class, as I suppose many cooking classes are. Everything was done with a slurp of this and a dash of that, and really, what the class gives you is some insight into the ingredients, the mode of preparation, certain timings, a technique or two (grinding using the shallow mortars and pestles; wrapping and steaming using banana leaves) and most importantly, the opportunity to eat the result over lunch and taste the appropriate balance of flavours.

It is washed down with homemade brem (rice wine, good stuff, unlike the utterly foul tuak: palm beer), which I suppose many visitors would not otherwise get around to trying. Bali