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Snacking as a Way of Life
Fast food Bali style is an essential part of the daily diet

Although they eat meals only twice a day, the Balinese are always snacking. Women rush from the family compound into the street the minute a passing food vendor twangs the metal chime on his puscart; men stop off at their local warung shop for a coffee on the way home from the paddy fields, while school children cannot resist crisp fried crackers (krupuk) or a plate of rujak, sliced sour fruit with a sweet and pungent sauce.

The warung is more than just a place to have a snack, buy a packet of clove-scented kretek cigarettes, a box of mosquito coils or a small bag of laundry soap, it is somewhere to meet friends and a major focal point of the village. Often with walls of woven bamboo strips and a packed dirt of cement floor, most warung consist simply of a large table crammed with merchandise and a long wooden bench set in front.

Lined up along the front of the table are bottles of local soft drink, beer and plastic bottles of mineral water. Among the confusing and colorful jumble of enameled basing piled with packets, screw-top plastic jars, bunches of bananas and perhaps a pile of fruits for making rujak, there are innumerable options for a quick snack: salted peanuts, all kinds of cookies and cakes, sweet bread rolls, candies and krupuk.

Rickety looking stalls, little more than a simple cart on bicycle wheels, painted in primary colors, with a plastic or glass display case on top, are found everywhere in Bali. Generally operated by non-Balinese, these mobile food stalls do a roaring trade serving jus one dish. Mie bakso (meat-ball and noodle soup), tahu goreng (deep-fried stuffed bean curd), boiled mung beans in a sweet sauce and brightly colored concoctions os syrup and fruits are favorites provided by the mobile vendors.

Most markets have a cluster of very rudimentary food stalls consisting of a trestle table, benches and a plastic canopy to provide some shade. Market food stalls generally offer non-Balinese food: popular items are noodle soups, such as soto Madura, Javanese style sate and martabak, fried savory pancakes that are Indian in origin.

If you're fortunate, there may be a stall selling a range of Balinese food: ask for nasi campur (literally mixed rice) and you'll be given a bowl of rice with perhaps a few shreds of fried chicken, a leaf-wrapped bundle of finely chopped seasonings and meat, some steamed vegetables with shredded savory coconut, fried peanuts, a ladleful of coconut milk sauce, a sprinkle of crisp-fried shallots and a dollop of spicy hot ground chili paste (sambal).

On market days in smaller villages, or daily in major towns, there's sure to be a stall selling the over-popular be guling celeng, better known by its Indonesian name, babi guling. Order a plate of this and you'll get a little succulent spit-roasted pork; slices of a couple of types of sausage made with the intestine stuffed with finely chopped pieces of highly seasoned meat; some spiced coconut milk sauce; lawar, a complex mixture of seasonings, steamed vegetable and a little raw pounded pork and pig's blood, and a couple of crisp pieces of pork crackling made from the skin. All this goes with steamed rice and often a vegetable dish made from young jackfruit or nangka.

The Balinese aren't likely to be surprised to see tourist stopping to snack at a warung, to have a bowl of noodles from a pushcart or to enjoy a quick meal in the market. After all, everyone's got to eat and even foreigners can’t be expected to wait for several hours until the next meal without having a little something to kept them going.

Copyright by The Food of Bali, Authentic Recipes from the Island of the Gods

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