Spice island

It's easy to be seduced by Bali. In most corners of this intensely coloured island, lush with hot pink and purple blossoms and cool-green terraced rice fields, there's a spread of elegant Western-style restaurants: French, Italian, Indian, modern Thai, even Spanish. And there is no shortage of upscale Indonesian-esque eating: prettily presented versions of favourites such as nasi goreng (fried rice), fried chicken and nasi campur (a mix of small dishes set around a mound of rice).

But there's more to Bali than borrowed dishes. Just as language and religion differ between the tiny, fan-shaped, Hindu island and its Muslim-dominated big brother, Java, Balinese food has its own personality. "Balinese flavours are like music, a stream running over stones," says Penny Williams, an Australian chef working at one of the island's luxury resorts. "Javanese tastes are like a pounding river."

Also in Ubud, expatriate Australian Janet De Neefe takes visitors into the heart of Balinese food culture through her Casa Luna cooking school. Standing at a table spread with leaves, roots and spices, she explains the bumbu - the spice pastes that form the basis of Balinese cooking. We pound and sniff nubbly sticks of tabiabun (a Balinese long pepper), delicate, almost lemony torch-ginger petals and the medicinally astringent kencur - a gnarly tuber that resembles galangal. We are warned against snacking on too many macadamia-like candlenuts. They are a common Balinese laxative.

It's here I learn about bebek betutu, a smoky duck specialty smeared in shrimp paste, tamarind and palm sugar. A whole bird is stuffed with herbs including staghorn, cumin leaves and daun salam (a subtly flavoured Indonesian leaf), then steamed. It's rolled into a palm-leaf sheath and buried under a cone of slow-burning rice husks. Using a similar technique to a Maori hangi, or ground oven, it will smoke and bake for up to 11 hours.

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