Holy moly, I think I've gained at least 2 kilos today! I am currently reclining on my day bed with the iPad propped on my enormous belly (after all the food we ate at Paon today I should probably have declined afternoon tea .... but they brought DONUTS!).

The day began with our included breakfast (we have a choice of 6), we settled on English with fresh juice, fruit salad with yoghurt, eggs with hash brown, tomato, baked beans and your choice of bacon, sausages or ham plus toast and tea or the famous Bali coffee (I'm not a coffee drinker, but it looks thick and black and syrupy and no amount of milk seems to turn it white! However I've heard it's quite delicious .... as for the coffee that is made by collecting the droppings of a cat ......?).

We were then collected and taken to the Ubud markets to start our Paon Bali Cooking Class and meet up with the lovely Puspa and our fellow students of whom there were 17 (including Lee and myself).

We began with a tour of the markets, below is Puspa showing us the difference between a hat and a steamer (phew, glad I didn't make that rookie mistake).


 

Puspa then introduced us to the various ingredients we would be using for the day, galangal, ginger, turmeric, eschallots, chillies, palm sugar etc.

We then went through the meat and fish sections (call me a coward but all I could think was damn, I really hope we're not eating fish today!).

Next was the fruit and vege sections where I tried my first snake skin which was absolutely delicious and once peeled looked remarkably like a big bulb of garlic.

Our final stop was the menswear section so all the boys could try their ceremonial hats on. Awwww, isn't my boy a handsome devil!

(Lee is bored so has decided to head off for another massage whilst I finish our blog. Quite frankly the prospect of lying on my tummy or having someone massage it fills me with horror ...... I really shouldn't have eaten that darn donut!).

We were then taken to the beautiful home of Puspa and Wayan, it truly is gorgeous - our photos don't do it justice so you really must go and have a look for yourselves. We enjoyed a coffee or refreshing ginger tea (add the honey, it is really delicious) whilst being kitted out in our chefs garb.

It was then all hands on deck to chop, slice and pound our way through a massive number of ingredients. It was very hands on and we got to swap tasks to try different things thank heavens as our first task was to grind the peanuts for the satay sauce, and after yesterday's strenuous activities my arms were quite tired so I was happy to move on and slice the eschallots and garlic.

By the way that little blue circle on my top is one of those stick on mossie repellants recommended by Ilab ..... and now me, I bought a few packs of 10 from the camping section of KMart for $10 before leaving home.

Have you ever seen a mortar and pestle this big before! All the boys had a go before the young sous chef beside Lee had to finish the job off!

Our menu today which we both cooked and consumed, included a fantastic clear mushroom & vegetable soup, coconut & snake bean salad, deep fried Tempe in sweet soy sauce, steamed fish in banana leaves, minced chicken sate, Gado Gado (vegetables with peanut sauce) - below are a few of the dishes for our table of 8 ..... we ate extremely well!

But wait, there's more! Here's the chicken in coconut curry which Maryann from Melbourne is happy to take full credit for lol :

We finished with a gorgeous dessert of boiled banana in palm sugar syrup :

And of course there were plenty of Bintangs on hand to wash it all down.

We both had a fantastic day, and thoroughly recommend the experience.

Now, what's for dinner!


www.paon-bali.com
- The cost is Rp 350 000 per person and Bintangs are Rp 15 000 each.
- Vegetarians are catered for and as Puspa asked about anyone with food allergies I can only assume they are too (although how anyone with a nut allergy survives in any Asian country is beyond me!).
- There are 2 classes per day which includes either lunch or dinner

Source :http://fabulous-destinations.blogspot.com/2011/04/bali-day-2-paon-bali-cooking-class.html