A few months ago, I headed to Bali with my family and met up with my mother-in-law there for a lovely holiday. As Bali is a cheap, overseas tropical playground for Australians, there are tons of western conveniences and experiences there if that is what you are looking for but I was determined to get a “off the beaten track” view of the island. We stayed part of our time in the mountains near Ubud and the rest of the time just north of Seminyak near the ocean but both of our freestanding villas were away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Kuta. Our villa in Ubud was in the jungle overlooking rice paddies and we were stared at by villagers as we were the only foreigners in town and I loved it. I wanted to be away from the touristy bits for at least part of the time.
Every morning at both villas, we were served gorgeous tropical fruits. Made (pronounced ma-day), the cook at the villa in Ubud, would take her time to make a beautiful creation every morning and I absolutely loved it. We had mangoes, pineapple, mangosteen, papaya, rambutan, salak (snakeskin fruit) and lady finger bananas. Salak was the only fruit I’d never seen or heard of. It is a sort of triangular, brown fruit that feels like it’s covered in snakeskin, complete with scales. Unlike all the other fruits mentioned, salak isn’t juicy or squishy but sweet and crunchy with an almost chalky mouth feel. It tastes a lot like lychee or rambutan but denser and with a totally different texture.
There was this other fruit too, wish I remembered the name, a small brown and round fruit that is probably related to longans. It was lighter than a longan but had one or two little black seeds inside that were very bitter so I’d pop them in my mouth and search for the seed or else it would ruin the sweetness that was happening from the soft flesh! Very intriguing stuff.
The artistry of fruit every morning was such pure luxury and I was in awe of the talent of creating such a pretty plate for us everyday.
Desperately Seeking Crab 