Filming last week’s episode of Street Food Chef in Bali took me up into Ubud, one of the best places to try a whole range of different local island eats – from ceremonial feasting dishes right through to family recipes and breakfast street snacks.
When you think of Ubud’s most famous dishes what probably springs to mind is babi guling. But it’also home to the other major player of the slow-cooked scene: betutu.
Betutu comes one of two ways: with ayam (chicken) or bebek (duck) My favourite is bebek betutu, because the kampung (free range) ducks on the island here are so full of flavor, and slow heat really brings out the best in them.
Traditionally, betutu is a bit of a commitment. You could say it’s a poster child for Indonesia’s version of Slow Food. It involves stuffing a whole kampung duck with fresh cassava leaves and marinating it – inside and out – with lots of fiery bumbu gede (the ‘mother’ spice paste in Balinese cuisine, which I’ve blogged about before). The duck is then wrapped in banana leaves and finished by being encased in another layer, either made with the hard outer sheaf of the coconut flower, or even betel nut bark, to create a kind of Mexican tamale-type parcel.
The parcel is then buried underground and cooked in the heat of smouldering rice husks, which keep their heat for hours and hours. The length of time the underground cook-off goes for varies – some people say 5 hours, in which case you’d get off lightly, and others swear it should be 8, or even 12 hours.
(On the plus side, no fancy equipment is needed. You can literally bang up an underground cooking pit perfect for betutu in your backyard. Which is exactly what the Balinese do.)
Either way, the duck comes out almost blackened – not burnt, just dark from the spice paste – and while it’s not the prettiest of pictures, the flavor is out of this world.
The recipe I’m giving you today doesn’t involve digging a hole in your backyard, or even trying to figure out how to wrap a whole duck with banana leaves and husks (you know, the type of thing you’ve just got lying around your kitchen.)
It’s actually a pretty special recipe, one of a kind, you could say. What makes it unique is that it includes quite a few regional fresh leaves mixed into the betutu paste, something that I haven’t seen before. If you can’t find some of these leaves at your local Asian wet market, then you could omit them. But do try, because as I’ve said before, if you find a really good Asian specialty grocer or vendor at your local wet market that can help you source this kind of thing, it makes all the difference to the end result.
What we’re doing today is like a pot-roast version, a one-pot wonder, right on the stove. The key is to get your hands on the very best free range duck you can – it doesn’t have to be fat and plump – just full of flavor.
Take your time to get the spice paste right. If you can’t be bothered to pound it all by hand with a mortar and pestle, you can cheat a little and whizz it through to a food processor. But don’t blend it to a very smooth paste, you want to leave quite a bit of texture.
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