Author De Neefe tells of a life in Bali, with recipes

Bruce Emond The Jakarta Post Jakarta

Amid the flurry of preparations for the opening of Janet De Neefe and her husband Ketut's first restaurant, Lilies, in Ubud, Bali, 1987, an employee stepped forward with a sheet of paper in his hand.

It was a local government edict about what should be served up to foreign tourists -- potatoes, boiled food -- and what should not ("the tourist does not like chili").

"Bland" was written in big letters across the top.

Today a resident of Bali for almost 20 years, the proprietor of two successful restaurants, Indus, and Casa Luna, and an instructor in Balinese cookery classes, Australian-born De Neefe begs to differ when it comes to holding back on the spice shaker in deference to supposedly more delicate Western palates.

"You can just knock out some of the smaller chilies if you really have to. Just leave out the bird's-eye chilies, but don't do anything to the ginger and fragrant spices," she said from her home in Bali.

"Look at Thailand, they just cook it the way they like it."

De Neefe put down in writing her experiences in mastering Balinese cuisine and as an expatriate adapting to life in a different culture in 2003's Fragrant Rice (Flamingo/HarperCollins).

There is the initial fear that it might be yet another of the mortifying self-absorbed "stranger in a strange land" treatises, an incredulous examination of the lack of mod cons in the mythical land of gently swaying tropical palms and smiling but inscrutable natives.

Thankfully, it is not the above but more along the lines of the engaging works by expatriate artists and others from the 1930s: From her opening description of her arrival in Indonesia as a teenager on a family holiday in 1974, De Neefe reveals a natural, graceful writing style and an obvious love for her adopted homeland (the book is subtitled "my continuing love affair with Bali -- a taste of passion, marriage and food").

She wittily recounts her personal learning curve with cultural blunders after she married Ketut in the early 1980s, but she also provides eloquent descriptions of the culture of Bali and, of course, her love for food. A respectful work, it never treat its subject with an untoward, fawning reverence.

"I was always one of those kids who was in the kitchen, baking Pavlovas," said De Neefe, whose mother was of Maltese descent. "I think you grow up with a passion for food, it's in your blood. Those were the days, when you went to your granny's house and the food was wonderful, done from the heart, not from a packet."

Fragrant Rice is about a love of food, for sure, and includes many recipes, but it could hardly be categorized as a basic how- to cookbook.

"It's a bit of this, a bit of that," acknowledged De Neefe, who is also one of the organizers of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. "The thing was that I originally wanted to do a cookbook. In 1985, I started to record recipes, and along the way I started to realize that I was also delving into the culture. It was like unraveling a mystery, and I realized in the process that you can't write a cookbook without delving into the culture."

Teaching about cooking helped her mentally file her experiences over the years.

"In cooking classes I would recount a story, and people would say, 'You have to put that in the book as well'. Not just food, but in making herbal poultices and medicine. So it grew into my life in Bali, with recipes. It had a life of its own."

With careful use of spices such as garlic, ginger, chilies, turmeric and coriander, but without as much coconut milk in other regional cuisines, Balinese food is a full-on experience for culinary adventurers up to the task.

"It's slightly sharper, more pungent: It's like a kecak dance, it's really got guts. There's no dilly-dallying, but it's vital, like a shot of energy. But there are also the more subtle dishes."

De Neefe said home was where the heart of Balinese cuisine was really found.

"You should try it in a home, preferably in my home! And you would have to get a granny to go out there," she said about setting up Balinese restaurants in foreign countries.

She said her own palate had been fine tuned to the subtleties of flavors over the years -- "I'm a bit of a pain to go out to restaurants with now " -- and she remains captivated by the venerated place of food in society, especially in sharing it with others and the care that still goes into cooking in the home.

But she is not a stodgy purist, refusing to change with the times. She believes Lilies was the first restaurant in Bali to fuse local with Western cuisine and encourages people to experiment, but the mixing process has to be handled with care.

"The danger is confusion. Some things just don't go together classically, or some flavors, like fish and kencur (resurrection lily). You can play around with ingredients as long as it is delicate, but some things are best left alone. If I see a menu with four or five different things in it, I think that it just can't work."

She is heartened by the development in warung (sidewalk food stalls) in Bali -- "it's still a warung, but a bit brighter and cleaner" -- and that Indonesians are starting to appreciate their food more.

"It's becoming more exciting all the time, and I think the locals are catering more for locals. It's growing as the locals come to realize that they have a cuisine that is delicious. They're realizing it's great food."

www.casalunabali.com