The Cooking Class That Changed How We Eat at Home

At 7 a.m., the Ubud market is already loud. Women sit behind towers of shallots, mounds of fresh turmeric the color of a traffic cone, bundles of lemongrass and bright red bird’s eye chilies, while motorbikes edge around them and tiny offerings of flowers and rice smoke on the steps. Our teacher, Wayan, walked through it all like it was her kitchen, which in a way it is. She picked up a knob of galangal, snapped it, and held it under my nose. “Smell,” she said. “This is the beginning of everything.”

I had booked the class with two friends on our last full day in Bali, mostly as a way to keep eating. I didn’t expect it to change how I cook. But more than a year later, there is a jar of Wayan’s sambal in my refrigerator in Denver nearly every week, and I still cook with the lessons I learned in her family’s kitchen.

Here’s what the day looked like, what we made, and what to look for if you book a class of your own.

In this story7 sections

1. Morning at the market
2. Into the family compound
3. Base genep: the paste that holds it all together
4. What we cooked
5. How it changed my cooking at home
6. Practical notes for Ubud
7. Bali

Morning at the market

The best Ubud classes start with a market visit, and I’d argue it’s the most valuable part. Wayan taught us to identify the roots and leaves that make Balinese food taste the way it does: three kinds of ginger (regular ginger, galangal and the more medicinal kencur), fresh turmeric, salam leaf, kaffir lime leaves, candlenuts, palm sugar and shrimp paste. She showed us how to choose coconuts by shaking them and why Balinese cooks buy small, fragrant shallots instead of big onions.

She also explained the small woven trays of flowers we had been stepping around all week. Called canang sari, they are offered daily to gods and spirits, and many people in the market were selling them, or the palm leaves and petals to make them. It was the first moment our trip felt less like sightseeing and more like seeing how life actually works in Ubud.

Into the family compound

From the market, a driver took our group of six to a traditional family compound a short ride outside the center. If you haven’t been inside one, the layout is beautiful: a walled cluster of separate pavilions for sleeping, cooking and gathering, arranged around a courtyard, with a family temple in the most sacred corner. Wayan’s grandmother sat on a raised platform folding offerings while we drank sweet ginger tea.

The kitchen was an open-sided pavilion with a long table, a row of stone mortars (called cobek) and a couple of gas burners. Everyone got an apron, a cutting board and a knife. And then we began to chop. And chop.

Base genep: the paste that holds it all together

Almost every Balinese dish starts with base genep, a “complete” spice paste. Wayan’s version had shallots, garlic, galangal, ginger, turmeric, kencur, candlenuts, chilies, coriander seed, black pepper, shrimp paste and palm sugar, all ground together. Many families grind it by hand on stone; we took turns, and the burn in our forearms was real. Then it gets fried in coconut oil until it turns from raw and sharp to deep, sweet and fragrant. That cooking step, she said, is what most foreign recipes forget.

Once we had a big bowl of base genep, the rest of the menu came together quickly. It was the most important lesson of the day: make the paste properly, and you can cook a dozen dishes from it.

Wayan held a knob of galangal under my nose and said, “Smell. This is the beginning of everything.”

Maya Collins

What we cooked

1. Sambal matah. The star. A raw sambal of very thinly sliced shallots, lemongrass, bird’s eye chilies and kaffir lime leaf, squeezed with lime, salted and dressed with warm coconut oil. Bright, crunchy and fierce.
2. Sate lilit. Minced fish mixed with base genep and grated coconut, wrapped by hand around flat lemongrass stalks and grilled over coconut husk charcoal. Much harder to shape than it looks. Mine looked like small clouds.
3. Pepes ikan. Fish fillets rubbed with paste, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, then grilled until the leaf chars.
4. Chicken in coconut curry, made with the paste, lemongrass, salam leaf and coconut milk.
5. Tempeh manis. Fried tempeh tossed in a sticky sweet soy, palm sugar and chili glaze. Dangerous.
6. Gado-gado. Blanched vegetables, tofu and egg under a peanut sauce we pounded ourselves.
7. Dadar gulung. Thin green pandan crepes rolled around coconut cooked with palm sugar, for dessert.

Around 1 p.m., we sat down at a long table under the pavilion roof and ate everything with steamed rice. Wayan’s family joined us for a while, and the grandmother tasted my sambal matah, nodded once and said nothing. I have chosen to take that as high praise.

How it changed my cooking at home

Back in Denver, I didn’t start grinding base genep every night. But three habits stuck:

• I make one big batch of spice paste on Sundays, fry it properly, and freeze it in ice-cube trays. Two cubes and coconut milk make a curry in fifteen minutes.
• I always have a raw sambal in the fridge. Sambal matah keeps a few days and brightens eggs, rice, grilled chicken and even tacos.
• I taste for balance, not heat. Wayan kept asking us, “Enough sweet? Enough sour? Enough salt?” Every dish needed a pinch of palm sugar or a squeeze of lime more than we thought.

Most of the ingredients are easy to find at Asian grocery stores in the US. Fresh turmeric and galangal freeze well. Kencur is harder to track down; Wayan said a little extra ginger is an acceptable substitute, though she didn’t look happy about it.

Practical notes for Ubud

Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from the US to Bali. Most travelers connect through hubs like Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul or Doha into Denpasar (DPS). From the airport, a private driver to Ubud takes about 1 to 1.5 hours depending on traffic and costs roughly $25–35.

Entry: US citizens need a visa on arrival (about $32), which you can buy online in advance as an e-VOA, plus Bali’s tourist levy of about $10 per person, also payable online. Your passport must be valid for at least six months.

When to go: April to October is the drier season, with days in the 80s°F. The wet season brings afternoon downpours, but the classes run all year under covered kitchens.

Money: Indonesia uses the rupiah; roughly 16,000 rupiah equal $1. Carry cash for markets and small warungs.

I came to Ubud for rice terraces and temples, and I loved them. But the thing I brought home was a stone mortar, a bag of palm sugar, and Wayan’s voice asking whether it was sweet enough yet. Take the class. Then go home and cook.