Bounties of herbs and vegetables, fiery sambals, rich spices and the freshest seafood are just some of the things that make Balinese cuisine so tasty. Some of my favourite dishes during my travels in Indonesia were from Bali with dishes like Babi Guling (roast suckling pig) and Ikan Bakar (grilled fish). The food here is the confluence of many different cultural influences; indigenous and Hindu traditions, influences from other Indonesian regional cuisines and Middle-Eastern, Indian and Chinese influences. It’s an exciting cuisine that’s well worth learning more about, and whilst you can definitely eat your way around Bali, taking a cooking class is a sure way to increase your culinary knowledge.
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What Bali Cooking Class Should I Do?
Bali cooking classes are available all over the island to suit every kind of traveller. Generally, they include a market tour and teach you the classics. But, if you’re craving a more specialised experience or find yourself over in East Bali consider taking a cooking class at Alila Manggis. The hotel offers a variety of cooking classes from ones that include farming for seasonal ingredients to ones all about Jamu, the Indonesian ‘Elixir of Life’. Our choice was the “Catch and Cook” Seafood Adventure, which included a traditional Balinese fishing experience, followed by a seafood cooking class.
When choosing your Balinese cooking class, you want to pay attention to the dishes they include. Typically you’ll be making dishes like Bumbu Bali (Balinese Spice Paste), maybe some Sate Ayam (Chicken Sate) and Nasi/Mie Goreng (Fried Rice/Noodles). However, if you want a slightly more niche experience like a cooking class that revolves around Balinese seafood AND includes a fishing class then you’ll want to pay a visit to Alila Manggis and try out their “Catch and Cook” Seafood Adventure. That’s what we did and here are our thoughts.
What’s It Like at Alila Manggis?
- The resort is situated in Manggis, a small coastal town that’s rarely untouched by the tourism that you see in Ubud or Seminyak.
- You can watch the fisherman heading out in the morning in the traditional boats.
- There’s a black sand beach!
- It’s perfect if you want to visit Pura Luhur Lempuyang, also known as the Gates of Heaven.
Coming to Alila Manggis felt like a breath of fresh air after the busy streets of Seminyak and Ubud. The resort is so tranquil it’s like as soon as you arrive a zen feeling washes over your body. The hotel seems geared to people wanting meditation retreats or a romantic couples holiday so you can expect things like a beachside spa and free tai chi classes.
The restaurant is also so spacious, in a shaded but open-air building looking out over the lush, green gardens and the blue sea. The food is more expensive than other options in Bali, but many of the ingredients they use are grown on-site in their organic farm. The food sometimes seems to cater more to Western palates with the spiciness being toned down. But, the chef explained that when you take the cooking class you’re getting the real deal and you can make the food as spicy and flavourful as you want.
What Cooking Classes Are Offered at Alila Manggis?
Alila Manggis offers five different culinary experiences, ranging from 1 hour to 5 hours long. All of the classes take place in their stunning open-air restaurant. Here’s a quick overview of their offerings, but if you want to know more than you can contact them via the details below.
Balinese Cuisine and Market Tour | 7:30 am to 1:30 pm | IDR 1,350,000 / £75 / $90
- This experience begins with a tour of one of the busiest markets in East Bali where you’ll learn about traditional ingredients. Following this, you’ll head back to Alila to begin the cooking classes with dishes such as Bumbu Bali and Sate Ayam (Chicken Sate).
Cooking in the Organic Garden | 9:30 am to 2:00 pm | IDR 1,200,000 / £67 / $80
- Here you’ll learn about sustainable farming techniques and collect seasonal ingredients from the restaurant’s organic farm. After, you’ll begin the cooking class with dishes like Sambal Matah (Balinese Salsa) and Sate Lilit Babi (Pork Sate on Lemongrass).
“Catch and Cook” A Seafood Adventure | 7:30 am to 10:30 am and 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm | IDR 1,500,000 / £83 / $100
- This one is a 2-parter. You venture out in the morning on a traditional Balinese fishing boat to catch fish the old-school Bali way. All the fish you catch will be served for lunch or used in the cooking class if they’re big. Then, after resting the cooking class begins in the late afternoon where you’ll make dishes like Kare Ikan Dan Udang (Fish and Prawn Curry) and Pepes Ikan (Fish Wrapped in Banana Leaf).
Local Authentic Spices | 2 to 3 hours | IDR 750,000 / £41 / $50
- This class is for when you don’t have enough time for a full day of cooking. During this, the chef will talk you through Balinese spices, before you learn how to make a variety of sambals. With sambals made, you can then enjoy a lunch of meat or fish, prepared with your sambals.
Indonesian Elixir of Life – Jamu Class | 1 to 2 hours | IDR 550,000 / £30 / $37
- Jamu is a traditional herbal drink made from natural ingredients like tamarind, turmeric, honey, ginger and lime. In this class, you’ll learn all about the traditional Balinese herbal beverage before making your own and feeling the healing effects flow through you.
What’s Cooking?
We chose the “Catch and Cook” Experience so the day was all about fish. Here are the dishes we made during our cooking class:
- Nasi Putih (Rice) – Literally meaning white rice, although this one had a few extra aromatic seasonings.
- Bumbu Bali – The spice paste of Bali with 12+ ingredients.
- Fish Sate on Lemongrass (Sate Lilit Ikan) – Fish mixed with spices, moulded round lemongrass sticks and grilled.
- Fish Wrapped in Banana Leaf (Pepes Ikan) – Chunks of spiced fish, wrapped in banana leaves and barbecued.
- Spiced Fish Parcel (Tum Be Pasih) – Fish mixed with seasonings, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed.
- Fish and Prawn Curry (Kare Ikan Dan Udang) – A Bumbu Bali-spiced coconut curry with fish and prawns.
- Balinese Salad (Urab Campur) – A mixed vegetable salad in shrimp paste, coconut and Bumbu Bali dressing.
But, before we start cooking we’ve got to get catching.
Part 1: Fishing on the Open Sea
We started off the day after a tasty breakfast at 7:30 am with a car ride to the local beach, where fishermen were coming in and out on their traditional Balinese boats. We had our own boat and with the help of our captain and resident fisherman we set out to catch our own horde of fish.
I tried out using the classic fishing rod, but honestly doing it the Bali way and holding the line in your hands felt a lot easier. The fish’s bites weren’t too strong, so it felt easier to feel the vibrations up the line than with the rod. We had six rods and lines out on the water and honestly, we caught a pretty good mass of fish. Check it out. I’m not 100% sure about the names of the fish but the red ones are red snappers.
We spent about 2 and a half hours on the water before we headed back to Alila Manggis.
Lunch
So, the fish we caught were a bit too small for the cooking class. I think they knew we’d only catch baby fish because when I asked about catching ones like mahi-mahi, they said we had to leave a lot earlier in the morning and the rods are different. But, what this did mean was that we had a bunch of fish that was going spare and so the kitchen offered to cook it up for us for lunch, all-inclusive of the “Catch and Cook” experience.
The smaller fish were deep-fried and the larger ones were saved for dinner, where they’d grill them for us. The fish was served with 3 different sauces, a tomatoey sambal, an onion relish of sorts and a spicier sambal. We just paid for the rice and the side salad. The deep-fried fish were super crunchy and you could pretty much eat them whole.
After lunch, we had time to relax by the pool, have a nap or head to the spa before the cooking class at 4 pm.
Part 2: Our Bali Cooking Class
Time for the main event: learning how to cook Balinese food. We met up with the executive chef of Alila Manggis who had previously worked for 12 years as the executive chef at the Alila Villas in Uluwatu. So, this guy knows his stuff when it comes to Balinese cuisine and it was great to learn about the different ingredients and techniques from him. Also, he was aided by a super smiley, enthusiastic and passionate assistant who helped us throughout with the cooking.
1 – Making Bumbu Bali – The Spice Paste of Bali
First things first, we’ve got to make a spice paste and this one was used in pretty much all of the dishes. The Bumbu Bali had a bunch of different ingredients like garlic, chilli, kencur root (ginger family), tamarind and shrimp paste to name a few.
We chopped and ground the ingredients until smooth with a cobek and ulekan, the Indonesian mortar and pestle until a smooth paste was reached.
After we simmered the Bumbu Bali with some water, lemongrass and a salam leaf – kind of like the Indonesian equivalent of the bay leaf in terms of use but the taste is completely different. And with that, our Bumbu Bali was ready to use throughout the rest of the dishes!
2 – Fish Sate on Lemongrass (Sate Lilit Ikan)
Next up was the fish sate and this was pretty quick and easy to make. We mixed our Bumbu Bali with fish and prawn mince and some seasonings like palm sugar, roasted shrimp and garlic before forming it around lemongrass sticks. The sate would later be grilled on the barbecue just before serving.
The finished product was really flavourful – a charred, spicy fish kebab. But the best part, the Bumbu Bali, really came through with aromas of kencur, turmeric, galangal and nutmeg. It was like the fish kebab was just a vessel for consuming Bumbu Bali.
3 – Spiced Fish Parcel (Tum Be Pasih)
The next dish was similar to the fish sate, but instead, the mixture was wrapped into little banana leaf parcels and steamed. We mixed chopped fish with our Bumbu Bali and a few extra ingredients like lemon basil and coconut. Then, we learned how to wrap the banana leaf parcel into a special shape, ready to be steamed.
After the steaming, the resulting dish had a meatball-like almost springy texture with the subtle flavour of the fish and an aroma of warm spices coming through.
4 – Fish Wrapped in Banana Leaf (Pepes Ikan)
Another kind of fish and banana leaf preparation, however, this one has a lot more ingredients. I think this one might have been my favourite as it’s using chunks of fish rather than minced pieces.
First, we made a marinade using all kinds of herbs and seasonings like tamarind, pungent roasted shrimp paste, lemon basil and lemongrass. We laid the fish to rest in the marinade for 4 hours, but with TV magic it only took 10 minutes.
Then we put the fish with all of the aromatic marinade in the centre of a banana leaf and wrapped it up, securing the ends with bamboo sticks. These would be grilled later.
They ended up tasting quite spicy and very fragrant with the flavours of turmeric and galangal. Because the fish was kept whole and the herbs were only sliced, you got a lot of different textures and each of their individual flavours came through.
5 – Balinese Fish and Prawn Curry (Kare Ikan Dan Udang)
By now, we’ve got a decent amount of food but it’s time to move on to the main dish – a really simple and quick curry. We started by frying off the Bumbu Bali until fragrant and then adding in the fish and prawns. Next in was the coconut milk and some aromatics like lemongrass which we then reduced slightly. After, we added eggplants followed by some bok choy and the curry was done.
The curry had a subtle spicing from the Bumbu Bali, with coconut being the main flavour. But, the best part was the large chunks of freshly caught fish and juicy prawns.
6 – Balinese Salad (Urab Campur)
Finally, rounding up the savoury dishes is a fresh and nourishing salad of Balinese mixed vegetables. First, we made a dressing using Bumbu Bali, roasted shrimp paste, coconut and fried garlic and shallots. This sauce was to go over our assortment of blanched vegetables that were seasonal to Bali like cassava leaf, long bean, spinach and fern tips. We also added some beans and a few squeezes of a Bali lime.
Eating this salad felt like it was doing something good to your body, with the wide variety of textures from the different vegetables. But the dressing didn’t sacrifice on flavour, it was full of creamy and coconutty but full of Bumbu Bali with an underlying sweetness but also a sourness coming from the Bali limes.
7 – Coconut and Palm Sugar Pancakes (Dadar)
And now onto the dessert! We made a pancake batter and added green colouring extracted from pandan leaf. Next, we reduced palm sugar in water to make a syrup and added grated coconut to make a filling for our pancakes. Then, we got on to frying the green pancakes, allowed them to cool, filled them with the coconut mixture and rolled them up into spring roll shapes.
The pancakes were a nice and light way to end the absolute feast of fish we had. The pancakes themselves were so soft and fluffy and inside was a sweet, caramel-like sauce with a slight coconutty crunch.
Our Feast
We ate all the dishes together in one big feast. The kitchen also cooked up more of the fish we caught earlier that day. The smaller fish came fried similar to lunchtime and the larger one grilled and drizzled in a moreish butter sauce.
Booking the Class
It seems like the Alila Manggis website is still in the process of being updated so you can’t book all of the offered experiences there just yet. However, they have a 24-hour WhatsApp service which you can book different cooking classes through.
Simply contact Alila Manggis at +62 811-3808-159 on WhatsApp to reserve your cooking class.
As a reminder, here are the classes offered:
- Balinese Cuisine and Market Tour | 7:30 am to 1:30 pm | IDR 1,350,000 / £75 / $90
- Cooking in the Organic Garden | 9:30 am to 2:00 pm | IDR 1,200,000 / £67 / $80
- “Catch and Cook” A Seafood Adventure | 7:30 am to 10:30 am and 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm | IDR 1,500,000 / £83 / $100 – This is what we did.
- Local Authentic Spices | 2 to 3 hours | IDR 750,000 / £41 / $50
- Indonesian Elixir of Life – Jamu Class | 1 to 2 hours | IDR 550,000 / £30 / $37
Thanks for reading about our experience with a Cooking Class in Bali at Alila Manggis!
If you want more Bali content and you’re interested in fine dining, check out our review of Room 4 Dessert!
