cooking in bali...

Thank you very much for all your lovely comments on my last post. I've still got that lovely Bali calm...even my children are saying I've gone all zen!

I mentioned that one of the fabulous things I did when I wasn't writing last week was go to a cooking class at the Casa Luna Cooking School in Ubud...famous apparently...now I know why.

Like the whole writing experience, the cooking didn't let us down either.

We were whisked off to a place that was less a school, more an oasis in the hustle and bustle of downtown Ubud...

 a balinese mortar and pestle weighs between 16-20 kilos and is made of volcanic rock

The school is run by the legendary Janet de Neefe, author of Fragrant Rice (I now have a signed copy!) and owner of several wonderful Bali eating places. I may or may not have sampled a few desserts at Indus just up the road from the hotel :)

We helped make the spice pastes. The lovely staff took over when needed otherwise it would have been two hours in the making, not the 20 minutes it was!

We cooked Chicken Curry, wok fried eggplant, tofu fritters, bean and coconut salad (that was impossible to stop eating), spicy anchovy and coconut sambal, and sago pudding.

 our fantastic and very funny cooking teacher Udeh (not sure if that's how you spell it)

I haven't asked for permission to publish any of the recipes sorry, but I'll surely be trying some of them out this weekend.

I’ll let you know how I go. 

In the meantime, you have a top weekend. You deserve it :)

all images: a tranquil townhouse