Episode 5 Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey

'I'm two thirds of the way through my journey of discovery

'through the Far East, and to date, I've been far from disappointed.

'The street food in particular, which is so prevalent wherever I go, is fantastic.

'Even things that look ordinary take on a new life and seem to be revealed to me all over again,

'but now I've landed in Sri Lanka and I know I'm going to find things to amaze and delight me.'

These are the iconic images of Sri Lankan fishing, to be found in most travel brochures,

but there's another sort which is altogether different.

I was privileged to go out with a local fishing community

in an oruwa, the traditional Sri Lankan outrigger.

And what brilliant fun it turned out to be.

I know I'll have fun telling the fishermen of Padstow how successful

this curious system is, jumping into the water to stop the fish darting out of the open end of the net.

But the catch was good and we took a couple of these handsome parua fish back to cook the local way.

Ranjani, a fisherman's wife, chops the fish into good sized chunks using this strange upturned blade.

Then with some vinegar, water and a fair bit of turmeric, she sets it to stew.

This dish is going to be layered with a sort of currified ratatouille that she makes in a separate pan

using seasoned red onions, whole green chillies, seeds and all,

some sliced garlic and ginger, all softened in coconut oil.

I thought it was interesting to see her mix all the dry seasoning

by hand before she began to fry it in another bowl.

The tomatoes she put in towards the end so they wouldn't break up too much.

When it's all cooked through, it's served on a large plate

with alternate layers of fish pieces and vegetables.

It's eaten with Sri Lankan red rice, which is highly nutritious, just simply boiled.

The whole family dip in from the one dish and of course,

you have to use your fingers and your right hand, never the left.

I'd learnt already about this important piece of etiquette.

It seems your left hand is retained for washing.

Samoud, I just wondered if you could tell them that I've had a memorable day today.

From the very first when we went out this morning,

I didn't have much hope that we were gonna get the fish.

But just watching them working, and watching the camaraderie and the way they all joined together.

And then watching this curry, it's just been a really fabulous, memorable day to me.

-Would you tell them?

-Yep, yep.

HE TRANSLATES

Thank you very much.

At the moment, I'm in the city of Galle,

which is south of the capital, Colombo.

And it's a place which has a strong colonial atmosphere.

The Portuguese were the people who first turned the place

into a major important town and they built their fort here.

'But then the Dutch took over and their influence is still very strongly felt.

'Everyone who comes here visits the ramparts and stares out across all the years of history.

'But it's in the evening when, for me, the place really comes alive,

'and I can go in search of local street cuisine.'

The centre, Galle, is a good place to see the famous and incredibly cheap dishes of the country.

These are hoppers, a pancake made with a fermented batter of rice flour, coconut milk

and a dash of palm toddy, an alcoholic mixture which makes them slightly sour.

They're cooked in individual cast iron woks, and a popular breakfast dish.

Now this is the most famous street food of Sri Lanka, kothu roti.

You can hear the clatter of it being made all over the town.

First of all they fry up some diced cabbage

and add leeks, eggs, chillies, salt and a mixture of curry leaves.

Now it's stirred around to cook out the egg.

This is really a poor person's dish, but it's now becoming very popular

with everyone else as well, especially those who stay out at night.

This is chopped up roti bread and then a curry sauce, a bit more salt,

and then he prepares for his culinary tattoo.

As you walk down the street, you hear this Gatling gun clatter.

Then he puts in some chunks of curried chicken which he breaks up and then it's done.

All that's needed is lime juice.

This is the sort of dish that would give the doner kebab a run for its money in Britain.

This is a tea garden, and I remember as a boy

being fascinated by pictures of exotic ladies dressed in costume,

picking green leaves, and thought, how does that relate to those dark brown flakes inside the packet?

But of course, once they're dried, they, like all leaves, turn black.

This is what this island is renowned for.

I'm told there is no subject that these laughing, chatting women don't discuss.

Conversation and gossip is the force that gets the tea picked here.

It was Thomas Lipton who had the idea of growing tea here when it was called Ceylon.

He owned the equivalent of modern day supermarkets in the late 1800s and was very forward thinking.

And he hit on this great idea of sort of promoting his shops in Glasgow, where he came from.

He got a load of pigs and just herded them through the centre of Glasgow.

And they were well-fed looking pigs, and they had this slogan on their backs saying,

"I'm off to Thomas Lipton's, the best shop for Irish bacon."

'Just to the East of Galle is the delightful island of Taprobane.

'The original owner said, "It's the one spot which by its sublime beauty

'"would fulfil my dreams and hold me there for life."

'It's now owned by Geoffrey Dobbs.'

I think it's the first time I've had to wade to somebody's house!

Haha! Oh, it's fabulous.

This house was built in the 1920s by a person called Count de Mornay.

He came here with Sir Thomas Lipton, sort of built this sort of rather fantastical house here.

Unbelievable. And what does it feel like to have your own island, then?

Well, sometimes I can't really believe it, you know, sometimes I pinch myself.

But when I wake up every morning and I look out to the South Pole...

-Nothing in between...

-Nothing between here and the South Pole.

Geoffrey was here when the tsunami struck and it was very nearly a paradise lost.

I was swimming in the sea, just on the other side of the island.

And I experienced a very strong current.

And, you know, there was none of this big wave which everybody... well, not in Weligama,

but then I looked at the island and I was about 18 foot higher.

So I thought, "Well, there's something very wrong at the moment."

And then I was taken across the island and I landed up over there,

between a palm tree and the top of that house,

clinging on to one of these oruwas, which are these native outrigging boats.

And for five minutes, I just hung on for dear life.

And then this whole bay, which is the second biggest bay in Sri Lanka, just emptied of water.

I mean, I go diving quite a lot, and I could see dive sites,

I could have walked out to dive sites if I wanted to.

-Unbelievable.

-The tsunami's very brutal.

It either killed you or left you alive. And I was lucky to be left alive.

Well, all I can say is I admire your British understatement, saying you were lucky, you know.

He asked if I'd like to stay for lunch. I was hoping he would.

Just tell me what's what here, then, Geoffrey, the curries?

-OK, well this is a tamarind fish curry and the fish used is swordfish.

-Uh-huh.

This is a pineapple curry, which is a favourite of mine.

-I had that last night. Lovely, that.

-It's wonderful.

-Yeah.

-Then we've got some fried freshwater prawns.

-They're as big as lobsters!

-And then some snake gourd curry here.

-I've seen those in the market.

-Yeah, they're very long and thin.

These look absolutely delicious.

Don't they just?

So tell me about Sri Lankan food, what it means to you, and why isn't it better known?

I always find that odd, that you only eat Sri Lankan food in Sri Lanka.

There are no restaurants, anywhere in the world you go to, you never seem...

I mean, I often look for Sri Lankan restaurants and I can never find any.

So I think it's one of these great hidden cuisines which is just waiting to be found out.

And I think this is sort of a mixture between Thai food and Indian food.

I mean, they use a lot of coconut in their cooking here.

It's either fish or vegetable-based mostly, and there's a market about

100 yards off the island where my chefs go to.

And you just see what's the catch of the day and come home and cook it.

If there's one ingredient I would single out as being an emblem

of Sri Lankan cuisine, then it would be the coconut.

It's in virtually everything, and the oil is produced

by the ton at coconut oil factories like this one in Galle.

I came here with Siboda, my interpreter, to see for myself how it was done.

David's just asked me to have a go at this, you know, and I refused,

cos, as he well knows, I'm accident prone and I'd lose probably at least three fingers.

-At least!

-I mean, look how close to his hand it goes.

Just ask him, if he doesn't mind, has he ever had an accident with the knife?

HE TRANSLATES

-No, never.

-Never?

-Ah, right.

"Even in the rainy days, I am doing this thing, no any accidents."

Wow, unbelievable. Looks so dangerous.

So strong!

'Once they've been smashed open, they're dried over the husks of other coconuts.

'And it's this process, I suspect, that will make you either love coconut oil or hate it,

'because you can really taste the smokiness in it.'

All this machinery would have been here when Ceylon was painted pink on my school atlas,

and here, they're squeezing the coconut flesh to extract that essential oil.

And that smoky coconut taste and aroma is all-pervading in most dishes and in the air.

-Can I taste a bit?

-Yeah, yeah.

That's lovely. It's got a great taste.

Yeah, it is, it is.

-And it's good for your hair.

-Really?

-How you feel?

-Well, it's very nice. What's it good for, though?

Well, it's good for the dandruff.

Yeah.

And it works on the white hair.

-Gets rid of white hair?

-Yeah.

-So...

-And for the stress.

And for stress? Wonderful.

I was just leaving and I just saw this up here, and apparently it was painted by the owner's son.

I think it's really good, it's very succinct. In picture one,

you've got a coconut farmer, and this geezer's come along

and said, "I'll give you all this money for your coconut trees."

In picture two, another guy's come along and said, "I want to buy your farm."

In picture three, he's built houses on it.

And there's his wife saying, "Go off to the market and buy some coconuts."

And there he is in the market, and the price of coconuts has gone right up, and he's going, "No!"

Well, this is a coconut dhal with tomato and curry leaves.

While making this, it's a very, very comforting dish.

I mean, all over the Indian subcontinent, you get dhals, and they're really designed

to be a sort of foil, a nice, bland foil to some hot curry.

But it's sort of, like, really reassuring food, and at the time I'm cooking this,

the civil war in Sri Lanka is at a particularly vicious and nasty stage.

And I think, well, wherever we've been, almost wherever we've been

in South East Asia and in the subcontinent, there's been political trouble.

And I sometimes think that people might feel I'm a bit naive, there I am talking about

cooking when people are dying and all that sort of thing.

But really what I believe is the sort of affirmation of food,

its power to bring people together.

And the fact that food is all about good times, even if there's terrible things going on all around you.

Well, that's what I think, anyway. I put pandan leaves in now.

I hope supermarkets will soon stock these, because it's such a good taste for curry.

Now, coconut milk.

Pandan leaves and coconut, that's Sri Lanka.

Well, a dhal is one thing. Well, that's just basically pulses boiled up with water.

But what makes it totally special is the tarka, and that's what you stir in at the end.

Basically you just fry, in this case, garlic and onion in coconut oil,

and then add things like curry leaves, mustard seeds, cumin, more chilli, cinnamon,

just throw it into the dhal at the last minute, it just makes it light up.

Fresh curry leaves, another emblem of Sri Lankan cuisine,

then dried chilli, and nothing gets made here without cinnamon, the place is famous for it.

Give that all a bit of a stir.

It's smelling like a spice shop.

Now some cumin seeds, the very stuff of dhals.

Now mustard seed and ground coriander seeds.

Grinding brings out the flavour and thickens the sauce. Finally, chopped tomatoes.

Well, this is about the most elaborate tarka I know.

Normally it's just some hot oil and spices thrown in at the last minute.

But I think that says a lot about Sri Lankan cuisine, it is very exotic.

And now it's the bit I like, adding the tarka to the cooked lentils, the dhal.

Tarka basically means hot spiced oil.

Well, all it needs now is a bit of salt.

Stir that in and that's it.

It smells wonderful.

This is one of those dishes that I cook over and over again at home.

All you need is flatbread and a cold beer.

The next morning, I went to Colombo.

There'd been an attack on the town the night before.

'Two small Tamil Tiger planes were shot down and crashed into various buildings.

'For the people living in the capital, this was not particularly unusual.

'There were soldiers everywhere and they didn't like a camera around.

'We were told to put our camera away, but we told them

'we're only interested in the food here, not military installations.

'The fish sellers that stand on the roadside weren't short of business,

'with superb mud crabs and wild freshwater prawns as big as lobsters from the lagoons.'

Which brings me to this place, a Tamil restaurant, the New Yarl eating house, south of the city.

It's famous for its chilli crab.

It had an atmosphere of a working man's club.

I say that because there wasn't a woman to be seen.

I got the feeling that this was the Sri Lankan equivalent of us men finishing work and going to the pub,

except that there was no alcohol here, but plenty of chilli crabs.

The cooks live over the kitchen, which is one of the most rudimentary places I've ever set eyes on.

To make this dish, they start off by chopping loads of garlic, red onions - always red onions -

and pandan leaves, cooked in coconut oil, of course.

Then they put in fennel and cumin seeds and what looks like a bucketload of chilli powder.

They do like it hot here. It's let down with a drop of water, and now the crab.

Blue swimmer crabs, chopped up to take on the flavour of those spices.

This is a far cry from our neat little shells packed with brown

and white crab meat and eaten with salad and brown bread and butter.

I got chatting to a young local chap called Savin, a journalist.

I have to give you this, because it's got the roe.

-The roe.

-And I think anyone who knows crab, the roe is the stuff.

That is unbelievable.

I mean that, just that little bit of chilli just brings the sweetness out, it's so sweet.

I mean, these are beautiful crabs, great flavour.

I don't think I've tasted better.

You're quite a sort of smart geezer, really,

Savin, but I mean, would sort of people like you, well educated, come to a restaurant like this?

It is a bit strange. I mean, I discovered this about a year ago.

-Yeah.

-And it's not that common for people, I mean for Colombo people, to come in and eat here.

-Yeah.

-I mean, you will see in the evenings a fair string of BMWs

-pull up, pull their shutters down and ask for the takeaway.

-Right.

And the crab is taken, wrapped up and thrown into the car.

Not commonly do people sort of come in and sit down, depending... Younger people will, though.

Savin, as you know, I'm a bit of a chef, cos your mother knew all about my dog, Chalkie.

She spent a bit of time in England, like I did.

She followed you in your adventures to France.

And the first thing she said when she heard that I was doing a bit

of filming with Rick Stein, she asked, "How's the dog?"

-And we learnt that...

-Aah!

Well, that's the thing about food, you see, it's a great uniter all round the world.

But when I leave, what impressions do you think I should take with me

about the food of Sri Lanka?

The food is incredibly diverse.

The Sri Lankan food encompasses this, it encompasses the whole range of South Indian breads,

idlies and dhosas, as well as Muslim. Muslims are a large part of the population.

Their food is somewhat distinct - biryanis...plus the range of Sri Lankan food.

-And, well, you're a seafood chef as far as I knew it.

-Yeah, absolutely.

And Sri Lanka is a great place for seafood.

And while Thai food and Malaysian food are sometimes more famous,

the message any Sri Lankan would want you to come away with

is that Sri Lankan food, on its day, is as good as anything.

I mean, it can go toe to toe with any other cuisine in Asia.

It really can, I mean, I believe it can, anyway.

Do you know something? He's right.

I suppose I'm a country boy at heart, because I grew up

on a farm in Oxfordshire and I know something about cows and milking.

I love the sweet smell of them in the early morning when they come to be milked,

but this is something way out of my experience.

These are water buffalo.

We were strongly warned to be respectful and keep our distance.

That's fine, but I wanted to see this, because one of the things

I found on my journey here was a thick, creamy curd, made with water buffalo milk.

I'm a little nervous and speaking in slightly hushed tones. I feel a bit like David Attenborough,

because these water buffaloes are very dangerous.

They kill more people in African game reserves than all the lions around.

And I have to keep a hushed voice and move very gently,

because if they're disturbed at all, A, they might charge,

but B, they won't give up their milk.

But I just feel so privileged.

I mean, this is like a time immemorial scene behind me.

You know, blow all those sort of modern milking parlours, this is the real thing.

And, of course, this is buffalo milk that makes mozzarella, but here, it makes the most fantastic curd

which you eat with what they call treacle, but which is actually a palm syrup,

which is totally wonderful.

And why are they so aggressive before milking and calm afterwards?

Ah, right. Before the milking,

over the night time, the little one cannot go near the mother.

So they're full of milk, so when we take off the milk, after the milking, she feel relaxed.

-So she might be in some discomfort before?

-Yeah.

Full up with milk.

-Yeah, that's the thing, yeah.

-Ah, got it. That's lovely.

Real life always gets in the way of pastoral bliss.

Saboud has just told me that the biggest threat to this buffalo farming are cattle rustlers.

Apparently in the last six months, the farmer has lost ten water buffaloes.

And these rustlers are really skilled, because they're very aggressive,

these water buffaloes, but they know how to, even the most aggressive, get them into a truck

and despatch them within about five minutes and then sell them as meat.

Buffalo meat fetches a really good price.

But the other thing is, the local police,

because there's so much money in the buffaloes, are susceptible to bribes.

So they just let them go straight through, into Colombo, I guess.

'I was so intrigued, with this curd, I had to see how the farmer's wife made it.'

She gently heats up fresh milk.

I can remember my mother doing something very similar with fresh cow's milk,

except she was making junket, which as a young boy, I loved.

This uses a culture, which she takes from the previous day's batch,

and that goes to work straight away on the warm milk.

And it sets as it cools in these shallow earthenware dishes, so it becomes more like a yoghurt, really.

I love this so much, especially as they serve it with treacle.

That's the sap of the kittle palm.

It's the perfect Far Eastern equivalent of the famous Greek breakfast, yoghurt and honey.

I came this morning to see and be part of this rural idyll, and it was a delight.

But then I went away with a heavy heart, having been told

about the rustling and butchering of the animals to make a quick buck.

If the police turn a blind eye, then scenes like this could well be a distant memory,

and the world would definitely be sadder for it.

This is a first for me, and it's a spice I've used all the time I've been cooking.

But I've never seen it in its raw state before.

It's cinnamon.

It was more important than tea here, a spice that everyone wanted.

Countries went to war over it.

I suppose "inconsequential" would be the way I'd describe watching that.

It's a lovely smell, but to think that one of the world's most important spices,

certainly the most important spice in Sri Lanka, cinnamon, should be down to,

well, something I probably did as a little boy, whittling a stick.

In fact, the bit we cook with is the soft inner bark.

I imagine that's incredibly difficult to do.

I could never master it.

He's trying to get them off in one long sort of roll, and apparently,

there's five grades and the tighter the roll, the higher the grade.

Grade one is just as tight as your little finger and it just gets

ever bigger to grade five, which is just a bit bigger than your thumb.

I mean, this is wonderful.

As a cook, I've been using cinnamon for about 40 years, I suppose,

just taking it out of a jar and snipping a bit off.

I never realised there was so much skill going into packing these lengths of cinnamon,

apparently three and a half feet long, as tightly as possible.

To celebrate this great spice, I thought I'd cook a cashew nut curry back at home.

So I'm making Sri Lankan roasted curry powder.

Now, you can buy it quite easily, but I do think it's really special to make it, because when you roast

those seeds, which are cardamom, cumin, coriander, cloves,

fennel, fenugreek, black peppercorns, and black mustard seeds,

when you roast them, you just accentuate the aromatic qualities of them.

In addition to that, I'm gonna add a couple of other ingredients, some cinnamon.

Every Sri Lankan curry has cinnamon in it.

And now some Kashmiri chillies, yeah, I'm gonna roast those too.

And finally, and quite interestingly, about a tablespoon of rice.

The reason I'm doing that is because the rice, when it gets all ground up,

acts a bit like flour and will thicken anything that you stir this curry powder into.

That's just getting very, very hot and smelling absolutely aromatic in the extreme.

That's fine. Now, the next thing to do is to grind all that up.

Finding something to lift the pan off.

So, I use a coffee grinder for this.

Incidentally, you can use it for spice after you've used it for coffee,

but I wouldn't suggest using coffee again after that,

cos your coffee will always taste of coriander!

Not very good with these machines.

This roasted curry powder has got such a depth of flavour,

but for this dish, I'm going to really accentuate the cinnamon.

And now some chopped garlic.

So we've got some grated ginger, hot green chillies, lemongrass, turmeric powder,

my lovely roasted Sri Lankan curry powder, pandan leaves,

a whole tin of coconut milk,

and of course, very important, curry leaves, so let's go with those.

I let them soften down and wilt into the sauce.

Fresh curry leaves are essential - completely disregard the dried ones.

Now some stick beans cut in half, good bite-size pieces. And next, cashews.

Of course, over in Sri Lanka, they have fresh cashew nuts,

which are absolutely delicious, but I was so keen on the dish, I love cashew nuts anyway,

terribly fattening, of course, that I just thought, well, I had to make it myself over here

and just soaking them, which worked perfectly, just to soften them a little bit.

That was palm sugar I put in, and for the sharp element, the juice of a lime.

Again, the laws of sweet, sour, spicy and salty apply to all of South East Asia.

And finally, the salt.

You don't need meat in this sort of dish.

Curries like this are substantial enough and the backbone of Sri Lankan cuisine.

In fact, Sri Lanka is heaven for vegetarians.

One of the best places to try them is this hotel just outside Colombo. It's quite famous.

In fact, David Lean chose it as one of the locations for Bridge on the River Kwai.

The chef here, Chef Publis, is a celebrity in his own right.

He has his own television cookery show and they film it on the beach,

so I thought, what a good idea, an opportunity to learn from the master.

So, here we are out on the beach, about to cook some devilled prawns.

But the best laid plans of mice and men, it's too windy.

They wouldn't dream of cooking out here if it was as windy as that,

and I'm reminded of the good old days.

I think it was Keith Floyd who first started cooking outdoors.

Every time he'd be cooking outdoors, normally, there'd be too much wind,

or you'd get crows coming and dive bombing, trying to nick the prawns, all that sort of stuff.

And it just looked so silly, but I just thought

it was such a lovely beach, it would be a nice thing to do.

But no, it's not to be, so we're going to have to move everything back to the kitchen.

So, how do you like to cook the seafood, generally?

Generally, seafood, not long life.

-Yeah.

-Two, three minutes. Cooked.

-Yeah.

-You know, prawns? Not hard.

-Just short time.

-Yeah, the short time.

I agree entirely.

Prawns should never be overcooked.

OK, he starts off by frying red onions.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen a common or garden ordinary white onion here at all.

Then pandan leaves, cinnamon, garlic, dried chilli, salt,

and some finely chopped tomato.

Now these plump prawns, which have been coated in powdered turmeric.

They go in and get stir fried and tossed around with everything else.

And as Chef Publis says, they shouldn't be cooked for too long.

Right, now some larger pieces of onion,

because they have to have a crunch, and fresh green peppers.

They look like chillies, but they're not.

Again, these have to be crunchy on the palate. Finally, quartered whole tomatoes.

Well, this is a really simple dish and I'm quite enthusiastic about it,

because I've recently been doing a lot of dishes where they've been using chilli paste, curry pastes,

and here, everything is just simple ingredients.

And of course, it's all very quick to cook, which is absolutely right for prawns.

I'm particularly keen on these capsicums that he's using in there, because I haven't seen that before.

I mean, it's either chilli or nothing, so having a few pepper tastes in there will be really nice.

And of course, chef doesn't forget the juice of a lime.

Chef Publis, is this typical of Sri Lankan cooking?

This is typical Sri Lankan cooking, yes.

-I taste? You taste?

-Yes, please.

-Yes, you?

-Oh, no, you taste first.

-Ah, OK.

Oh, that looks good.

Can I try one?

Best, really taste.

-You try them.

-Yeah, love to.

Thank you very much.

-Best. Very good.

-Thank you.

This is classy food, cooked in less than ten minutes,

and chef Publis presents it with a bit of nouvelle panache.

And how long have you been cooking for, chef?

53 years working in this hotel.

1956, I joined this hotel.

Well, I tell you, the food here is the best hotel food I've had probably on my whole trip.

-Last night...

-Thank you, thank you.

..I had some of the best curries I've ever tasted.

Yeah, thank you, sir, thank you.

And this ain't bad, too.

Yeah.

My visit to Sri Lanka was all too short, and once again,

it was time to move on, this time to Bali in Indonesia.

I've just arrived in Bali and this is Kuta Beach.

It's lovely, just enormously long white sand,

and for the Australians, this is like Magaluf or Benidorm.

I love Australia.

I love everything about it, but the one problem is it's rather far away from everywhere else.

So Bali, and Kuta Beach in particular, is the closest foreign place for them.

And so I think that, more than anything, was why the bomb in 2002 was such an enormous shock.

Of course, there were many British fatalities too, but the reason why it was such

a shock to the world is that Bali is such a beautiful place,

and the Balinese are amongst the most peace-loving people on earth.

OK, admission time. When I saw that wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific,

I thought that haunting song, Bali Ha'i, was about the island of Bali.

And funnily enough, I still do,

because it evokes a type of paradise that we all strive for in our minds.

And although 50 years on, I know that the island in that famous song

was an entirely different place, the sentiment is still the same.

But my reason for being here is for the special food, and it doesn't come more special than this.

I'm told this wall is called Aling Aling, and it's actually designed

to suck in all the bad spirits that strangers might be bringing into the compound.

And there's well over 30 people living here, so it's essential

to sort of rid unknown people of bad thoughts.

I must say, I could do with one of those at the entrance to the restaurant.

'Out of all the places I've been to on my odyssey, Bali is the most spiritual.

'Even the process of cooking the pig is blessed.'

That is fabulous. I just know, looking at that, that I will never

taste more succulent or crispy crackling and pork in my life.

And watching it, I just thought, when I was setting out on this journey to South East Asia,

that this is the sort of thing I was thinking of.

Wood fire, whole pig, rather hot and sweaty, lovely aromas.

I mean this barbi-gooling is it, barbi means pig and gooling means tumbling or rolling.

I mean, his skill is marvellous, I'm just watching him just dampening down the flames, cos of course,

pork is very fatty and it could just all flare up.

And it sort of reminds me more than anything of Tudor England, the roast beef of England,

where some guy like this would be right up to the spit, turning it

and getting incredibly hot, as indeed he is, just to see that the thing was cooked perfectly.

There's no part of life, it seems to me,

that's exempt from a religious offering or two, even making the stuffing.

It's made with shrimp paste, galangal, salam leaves, coriander and chillies.

-Can I try?

-Yeah.

That's very nice. Wow!

-Very hot.

-Very hot?

-Oh!

What he's doing here is cutting one leg off and using that as an offering to the Gods.

And it's quite usual in Bali to offer a bit of food to the Gods before you yourself eat.

It's just an insurance policy, really.

What I'm learning about Balinese culture is incredible intermingling of religion and food.

I mean, this is almost like a religious ceremony in itself.

And it's a new sort of dimension to food to me, the sort of religiousness of it.

But just thinking, imagine in the Church of England, if you went into church

and you had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding as part of the ceremony.

I'd be in there every Sunday.

Look how thin that crackling is.

People in the past have asked me why I don't make a series on vegetarian food.

Well, it's because of this!

I feel with a lot of cookery programmes, myself included, that it's too much about the recipes,

Some of this goes in, some of that, stir fry, steam, whatever, and not enough about appetite, about hunger,

about the absolute anticipation of watching that pig being cooked

over that smoky fire and the realisation that the skin

was gonna get ever crisper and ever more delicious.

So, here's to appetite.

And to me, at the moment, I'm thinking this will be about 10 on the Richter scale.

Oh, excuse me, that is the best bit of crackling I've ever tasted.

You can taste the smoke in there.

Actually, they smoke it over coffee wood to give it really, really dense, aromatic quality.

And I can taste it in there, it's delicious.

Gosh, it was good.

The meat was moist and succulent and the stuffing,

well, it went really well, although it was searingly hot.

If you're a coffee lover and you think you've tried everything,

a visit to Bali can come up with a few surprises.

There's a coffee here that practically defies description.

Well, this is a civet cat, and what I'm giving him to eat

is what he eats all the time, which is coffee beans.

Some very bright Balinese person worked out that if

the entire diet of a civet cat was coffee beans, then they must know a thing or two about the coffee bean.

And indeed they do, because they always select

only the very best beans and they reject the acidic ones or the overripe ones.

And then, well, out they come as, erm, civet cat poo.

And this Balinese person noticed that actually, the coffee bean is only partly digested.

This is the husk, and inside, the bean is retained in its perfect form.

So, don't think that drinking Balinese coffee

from, um, civet cat poo might taste of anything.

It only tastes of pure beans, and it is the best coffee known to man and also the most expensive.

Once they're collected, the beans are roasted and ground in the same way as any other coffee bean.

I spoke to the cat's owner, who knew all about the subtleties of cat poo coffee.

The civet cat is very clever.

They smell that coffee is different.

So, the best bean, it has different smell.

So, no human that can do it, and no computer that can do it.

They have very good nose, and then they smell different, and then they ate it.

But they didn't bite it, they just swallowed the bean. They ate the skin only.

So it's very clever animal.

So we think we've got these people that can judge coffee

and wine and everything like that, but a simple little civet cat can do a better job.

-Yeah. Haha!

-I love it.

Civet cat make a good business right now!

Well, I suppose this is the Chateau Petrus of coffee.

I mean, up to £50 a cup, poo poo coffee.

It's smelling good.

Astounding.

I kid you not, it's delicious.

That evening, I went to a place called Lebih in the south of the island.

It was by chance that we happened to pass by on the way back

to our hotel, and we noticed the fishing boats coming in.

In keeping with tradition, prayers and offerings are always being made

to ensure the safety and success of any enterprise.

This beach is renowned for its fishing, and looks unusual because it's made from volcanic black sand.

Apparently, this is a really good catch. I must say, I love the look of these fish.

They're really colourful.

I don't quite know, obviously, what species they are, but they look like

snappers and porgies, and because of their colour, I should think they're probably coral fish.

I'm told this is the best of the lot, it's called a crazy fish.

I should think they'll fetch some really good money in the swanky hotels up and down the coast.

Personally, there's some nice little satay restaurants round the corner,

so I'm hoping I'll get some of these for supper.

'I went with my interpreter Doui to a hut on the beach,

'where a young woman split open our Crazy Fish,

'smeared the insides with a paste made with, as far as I could tell,

'lime juice, fish sauce, galangal, turmeric - fresh turmeric, I think - and chilli.

'It worked really well and of course, this is by far the best way to cook them,

'just charcoal grilled.

'Actually, I've tried this at home with a bass over a barbeque, and it's really good.'

Crazy fish of Bali.

'She also gave us a spicy sambal, which is a sort of pickle.

'I think this had been fried in coconut oil.

'It was mainly chillies, shrimp paste and onions.'

It's delicious, this fish, absolutely.

It's firm, firm texture.

-Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

-Beautiful.

-Have you ever tried this fish before?

-Crazy fish?

No, no. But what do you think?

Well, I like it. It's delicious.

Worth every penny of the four quid that it cost for the both of them.

Yeah, true.

The director will now say, "How much would that cost in your restaurant?"

To which I'd reply, "Go away."

-75 quid.

-Yes, thank you, David.

I was really taken with the produce on offer at my hotel, which I found out came from

their own organic vegetable garden and grown by their gardener Sageeta.

'The village and pastures are part of the foothills of Mount Agung,

'a volcano, and the island's most holy mountain.

'This makes the soil very fertile and perfect for growing rice

'and a huge variety of herbs and vegetables.

'I was invited up to Sageeta's village to meet his family and join them for a traditional meal.'

This is my house.

It's a lovely house.

Welcome to my house.

-Hello.

-This is my father-in-law.

Very nice to meet you.

This is my mother-in-law, with my niece and the third son, our son.

-How do you do?

-The sister-in-law, our sister-in-law.

-Ah, great, good.

'Sageeta's wife is making a bubur masak, which, to you and me, is a sort of porridge made with

'freshly squeezed coconut milk, salam leaves, which are pandan leaves,

'ginger, lemongrass and water. It's a popular Indonesian dish and a daily favourite for many.

'You can buy it at any market or street stall, but I'm about to taste

'a freshly made, home cooked one, and to go with it, Sageeta's wife makes a spicy peanut paste.

'She grinds together a mixture of fried shallots, garlic and chilli

'on this traditional mortar and pestle, made out of volcanic rock.

'Plenty of that in Bali.'

-CHANTING IN BACKGROUND

-What's that?

-That is Hindu people,

we pray three times in the day.

In the morning at 6 o'clock, in the midday and in the afternoons also, in the afternoon, around 6 o'clock.

I see, it's very atmospheric.

'The rugged texture of the volcanic stone helps to grind down

'even troublesome ingredients like peanuts.'

I've got a particular affinity to this bubur because I virtually have what is called congee.

It's the same thing all over South East Asia, it's like rice porridge. I always have it for breakfast.

Some of the other members of the crew laugh at me and have eggs and bacon and stuff, but I love it.

And particularly if you've had one too many beers the night before, it's quite settling.

And actually, you can have it just with this peanut sauce,

but you can add chilli and lots of other little bits and bits.

Deep fried onion, something with a bit of crunch.

Occasionally, I like half a boiled egg on top.

So, how often would you eat bubur, then?

Er, bubur, it's an important food for me in Bali.

-Yeah.

-We get it for breakfast.

-For breakfast.

-For the breakfast, yes.

-Most days, would you have?

-Er, no, sometimes we change.

-OK.

'The spicy peanut paste is now transferred to a pan

'and loosened with enough water to bring together the flavours of the peanuts, garlic and chillies.

'Pastes or sambals like this accompany every dish in this part of the world.

'The pan is then placed on the heat and infused with even more

'aromatic ingredients, like kaffir lime leaves and lemongrass.

'Before serving, Sageeta squeezes in the juice of half a lime.'

Now, we are ready to eating.

First, we put the bubur...

-RAIN FALLING IN BACKGROUND

-Just as well we're under the roof!

Sageeta is a great believer in the medicinal properties of food.

He's even created a special diet for his wife.

To go with the bubur, he serves chicken stock followed by the aromatic peanut paste.

Now for some additional ingredients.

Cooked chicken pieces, sliced celery herb, which I'm told has many medicinal qualities,

fresh shoots from broad beans and slices of shallow fried aubergines,

which give any dish a touch of luxury.

The whole thing is crowned with a final sprinkling of fried shallots.

Well, I must say, this knocks all the hotel congees...buburs, buburs?

-Bubur?

-Bubur.

..buburs I've had into a cocked hat. It's just, I mean, it's the perfect way to break your fast.

It's just gentle, it's fragrant, it's sort of...

It's easy on you. And I guarantee if I was to take that home and give it to a nutritionist and say,

"What do you think of that?", they'd have said, "There's everything you could want."

The Balinese have been eating it for centuries.

No wonder they're so happy and healthy.

A little further East on the island, they hold

regular ceremonial gatherings, unique only to that region.

It's something which engages the entire community,

because the preparation is very labour intensive.

Everything is carefully controlled, right down to the balance of flavours.

Well, nothing, I think, could emphasise more the importance of food and religion

than this community ceremony, which is called a megibung.

And this is a banjar hall, and banjar is just the local community.

And what they're preparing here is a lawar.

There's satays going on over there, there's rice further over,

sambals over there, but this lawar interests me.

It's like, I suppose you could describe it as a salad, but it's actually

a mixture of...I've just taken down a few of the salad ingredients.

Long beans, star fruit leaf, fern leaf.

But it's a mixture also of pork.

Now, there's cooked pork meat in there and pork skin,

but raw pork blood.

And that guy in the stripe there is hired by the village because he's an expert in mixing the lawar,

not only in the way he does it, but also in the quantities of everything.

I've just had a word with him, and I said, "Well, how come that there's raw pork blood? Do you not cook it?"

And he said, "No, no, because it's mixed with the sambal and the chilli cooks the raw blood."

But also, you have to drink plenty of this with it,

which is tua, which also helps the digestion of that raw pork blood.

-Karumba!

-Jan, jan.

"Jan" means good, according to the head man around here, Nada.

Megibung is the name of how we are eating together.

And this all preparation, it is in conjunction with all of the ceremonial feast.

Whatever ceremony that we would like to have,

all of the members of the community will prepare this type of food.

So you always eat when you have a ceremony?

Yes. Exactly. And then the way of how we are eating it, Megibung...

Megibung.

-..there will be one plate of rice...

-Yeah.

..that will be enough for eight people.

It must be eight.

The reasons why eight, because of eight representing of the eight

-cardinal points which is representing the character of the Almighty God.

-Wow.

Community in this country is just everything.

'So much so, that they never move.

'They belong to their banjar, which can be as many as 30 families, and that's it for life.

'The megibung lunch was finally ready, and everyone sat down and began tucking in.'

One thing I've really learnt about being here is just how important food is to everybody.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere

where it's such an absolutely central part of life.

And that's the way food should be in my view, so I'm very, very happy

to have witnessed it, feel very privileged to be sitting down

with these excellent people, eating this, well, actually, very, very nice...

What's it called? Mega...?

-Megibung.

-Megibung.

THEY ALL APPLAUD

'I don't really like to spend too long away from the sea, but I was surprised that

'the fishermen here came from Java, so I was told by Heinz Von Hultzon, a chef who's made his life here.'

How come the Balinese aren't fishing here? Why is it the Javanese?

The Balinese are not explorers. Evil spirit, all the bad things

lives out in the ocean, so the ashes of the dead, they go out onto the beach.

The people, they try to stay away.

Probably 75% of the Balinese can't even swim.

Heinz was here to buy fish for his restaurant,

but typically of the Swiss, he was awfully hard to please.

That looks really nice, Heinz.

This is fantastic. This is what we want every day, just caught, clear eyes.

-Yeah.

-The slime is still on, the meat is firm, the fish still has rigor mortis.

-Yeah.

-That's the way we wanna buy them.

So many people, they come and look at the gills.

-Gills, they can change colour within half an hour. This one already dark.

-Yeah.

If you would have seen these gills half an hour ago, they would be a lot redder.

That does look nice. These look nice and fresh. What are these?

That's a russ. We don't want.

-We better don't talk about.

-Why?

-They're no good eating. The meat is brown, it's a grass-eating fish.

It's like russ in the UK, only good for fish soup.

Now this again, on the contrary, this is what you want.

Cuttlefish, that looks almost alive!

-It is still alive. Look at this, when you touch, you see when you touch it, you see the pigment?

-Yeah, yeah.

-How they still change the colour?

-That's a lovely fish.

-You know what's good about this one?

You don't even need to cook them, you just warm 'em.

Get them like this, they stay so juicy and tender, so soft.

-Coral trout, there.

-No good for grilling.

-Ah ha.

-It's good for Chinese cooking, for steaming.

You poach them, whatever, but all our fish comes off the charcoal, so this one gets very tough very often.

What sort of worries me is there's just no ice. I suppose it's money.

But then again, there's an extremely high turnover.

-Yeah.

-But I agree what you say. That's why we're so particular about it.

'His restaurant is called Boombu Bali,

'after the famous Balinese curry paste, which is so important here.'

It's a mix of red chillies, garlic, shallots, fresh turmeric, ginger,

candle nuts, tomatoes, coriander seeds, dried shrimp powder and salt.

And then, what he does is to mince the whole lot up in a butcher's mincing machine.

Then he puts in kaffir lime leaves, a twist of lemongrass, coconut oil and tamarind juice, and then water,

and then he puts that on the heat to cook.

So, this spice mix we're making here, how important is that?

Well, that's the ultimate in Balinese cooking. Boombu is a marinade.

This particular one is for fish.

We do another one for chicken, we do another for beef and for vegetables

and the basic spice base for pork, duck or lamb. That's the ultimate.

So, having marinated his fish with boombu, he fries the paste and adds fish stock.

He's also chucked in kaffir lime leaves and some more lemongrass.

Once it's hot enough, it's time to put in the fish, bite sized chunks

of grouper, and then the prawns, with their covering of boombu paste.

He cooks things very quickly, and then, in with the coconut milk,

and then, thin strips of cuttlefish, or indeed, squid.

And that goes in right at the end, because he's right,

it doesn't have to cook, it just needs to warm through and it's ready.

The hard work is creating the boombu, the rest takes less than a minute.

Heinz is quite philosophical about living here.

'He explained to me what it was that he felt had got into his mind and made him go native.

'He said the Balinese live for today and no-one seems to stress about what will happen tomorrow.'

There's a spirit which you can feel. This is Bali, you know, and this is why I think so many people come here.

That's why I will never get off this island.

People, they have natural respect for each other.

What is very good in Bali, everything has a positive side.

The karma, the spirit of Bali's so good.

Look at the guys over there, bringing in the boats.

They might have five fish.

He's happy. You know, people have an accident here, they say, "Look, what a bad accident he had,"

they say, "Well, he's still alive.

"He only broke a foot, he could have broken his neck as well."

They see in everything something good.

This is what is very special about Bali and the Balinese people,

and that's why I think so many people keep coming back to Bali.

Being grateful. You know, how often do you find this missing in Western

societies, where the people actually respect each other?

They're grateful, they're happy and this is what is unique in Bali, people respect each other.

They're positive. You come as a foreigner, they approach you, they look at you as something positive.

Well, Heinz, I thoroughly agree with you.

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