Nasi campur (mixed rice) consists of an ever-changing village smorgasbord of meats, vegetables, tofu, tempe, fish and eggs served with Bali’s most pleasurable and iconic food—fluffy steamed white rice. The most common meal found throughout the entire Indonesian archipelago, nasi campur is both the basic daily meal and the solid snacking backbone of the island of the gods. Nasi campur ’s mandatory white rice base shares a supple banana leaf with smaller pre-prepared companion side dishes like fried chicken, highly spiced pork, preserved salted eggs, a potato, anchovies (ikan teri), bean sprouts, steamed vegetables with shredded coconut, kangkung, jackfruit curry, sweet crunchy tempe (tempe manis), tofu fritters and fried peanuts doused with coconut milk gravy. Nasi campur Bali is different from nasi campur Java as it includes all the Balinese favorites. A homespun Balinese village product, local nasi campur is normally finished and dressed with peanuts, krupuk and sambal garnishes.
There are many types of nasi campur in Bali as each village and each warung boasts its own specialty. Balinese nasi campur typically includes such staple plate presentation ingredients as rice, chicken, egg, satay, tempe and vegetables to form a creative harmony from that day’s available fresh food materials. Vegetarian nasi campur can include curried tempe, jukut nangka (young jackfruit) and serejele (fermented soybeans fried with spices). Serejele (jele is Balinese for soya) is a specialty of the Blahbatuh area of Gianyar regency. The dish is only popular in Gianyar. You can buy the fermented soybeans in a plastic bag in the market, bring them home and fry them with chili and salt or other spices or eat the beans directly; they have a malty taste. Serejele is normally eaten with rice, like a vegetable. Warung nasi (rice stall) sellers confidently scoop a large mound of rice out of a big basket and toss on two or three mini-dishes, sambal (spicy chili paste) and crisp-fried shallots according to customer preference and pocketbook to create nasi bungkus (simplified nasi campur packed in a banana leaf to go).
The nexus between food and culture is inescapable. Indigenous, informal traveling village warung offer age-old, grassroots, compound kitchen cuisine delivered in a uniquely Balinese-Indonesian way. Older women stake their territory and their small wooden tables and blackened pots of food under the village banyan tree, a meeting spot at the center of town, in the mornings and late afternoons. Here they sell ancient family versions of steamed white rice, pungent fish, spicy meats, sambal, bubur ayam (home-made chicken porridge) and creamy, soft-boiled rice porridges steeped with barbecued chicken, roasted coconut milk, turmeric, lemongrass and salam leaves. Nomadic warung women balance home-prepared foods, plates and plastic buckets on an upturned table on their heads as they track the local crowds to village cockfights, temple festivals and supernatural Barong-Rangda theatrical performances. A traveling warung woman in Kuta Beach-Tuban bears a heavy glass and wood case on her head, plying a beachside route offering fried lumpia spring rolls. She uses a knife to cut the lumpia rolls into small pieces for individual customers and then sprinkles very tiny green chilies on each serving. Her clients are mainly local Balinese and the other beach sellers.
In order to supplement their husband’s income, many local village women carve out a part-time business selling local foods to local people. They balance an scuffed, slotted plastic tub on their heads with paper-wrapped triangular packets of nasi campur or fried rice, fried fritter desserts, krupuk crackers, slices of watermelon or other fruits, Balinese jaja cakes (sticky, sweet, rice-based treats) or rujak. These ladies can be seen in all small villages. They will suddenly sashay out of a side lane to look for likely sales among young boys constructing giant fanged ogoh-ogoh monsters for the pre-Nyepi Day parade. New walking warung women may have to traipse three or four miles a day to sell all their goods until they establish a set route and a loyal clientele. Locals get to know their regular dagang, traders or vendors who carry their wares. These ladies often only have to spend a few hours walking until all their food is sold as drivers, children and passersby stop them. Village customers like to stay with the proven sellers, where they already know what the food tastes like and the quality. Enterprising old ladies get permission from entertainment groups to sell soda, beer and mosquito repellent at tourist- oriented dance performances at Pura Dalem and other temples in and around Ubud. They know the performance schedule and know when to come. As they have done for decades, the ibu balance their selected goods on round, dented metal tubs atop their heads for ease and portability.
Denpasar enjoys an even broader range of snacks and opportunities. Sellers from islands throughout the archipelago come to set up food stands on busy eat streets like Jl. Teuku Umar. The cuisine offered depends on the background of the stall owner. Food merchants from Madura run busy nighttime warung to peddle popular goat satay to homesick Madurese immigrants. Food sellers from Java outnumber other nationalities in the Denpasar night markets, offering Javanese-style spicy nasi campur, while the Chinese cook flat noodle dishes and the Balinese specialize in their native lawar, ayam betutu or babi guling.
Transmigrated cooks from West Sumatra bring yet another hot and spicy culinary journey with them to Bali. It is said that whenever “three people of West Sumatran origin meet anywhere in the world, a Padang-style restaurant will be set up!” Padang, the provincial capital of West Sumatra, is the birthplace of Indonesia’s most popular regional cuisine. In every town and city across the archipelago, there is a rumah makan Padang restaurant serving home-cooked Padang food. A large variety of different foods forming a multilevel, stepped pyramid of neatly displayed dishes, is stacked up on shelves in the shop window. The plates are piled high with conical food portions largely containing an array of animal entrail specialties and highly flavored boiled vegetables, such as cabbage. Padang food is the most popular cuisine of the largely Muslim Minangkabau people of West Sumatra: protein comes from beef, water buffalo, goat, lamb, poultry and fish (not pork). Almost all parts of the animal are used and are sold in Padang restaurants, leavened with rich coconut milk for taste and inflamed with hot chilies. Curry sauces with coconut milk and spices further disguise dishes such as fried beef lung and delicacies made from the ribs, tongue, tail, liver, brain, bone marrow, spleen, intestine, cartilage, foot tendons and skin of the animals.
Customers choose from the dishes displayed in the window, and all food is served family-style with the various selected dishes being brought to the table on small plates, accompanied by hot steamed rice. The price is determined by the number of plates and what is eaten. Tasty beef rendang —tender brown meat cooked with coconut oil and coconut milk—is the signature food of the Padang region. Rendang reigns supreme among homesick West Sumatran sons separated from their mothers who provision them with a parting gift of portions of classic rendang -for-the-road. Slow cooked in a thick, spicy, coconut milk sauce made from shallots, garlic, red chilies, turmeric, ginger, galangal, coriander, kaffir lime leaves, turmeric leaves and lemongrass stalks, this magnificent food can be kept for a long time and becomes better when reheated. Traditional rendang has no sauce when it is done. It must be stirred frequently and laboriously while cooking until the sauce is totally absorbed by the meat. Sometimes it is subsequently dried in the sun. Because of the preparation process, the meat is always a dark brown in color. Coconut milk is a widely used element in Padang cooking. Food purveyors in far from home Denpasar reconstruct their classic Sumatran mild coconut milk soup, with its seductive coconut aroma.
Chefs