School Bali Field Trip: Tenganan Village Treats: Cerorot and Sumping

First off - this post may not truly express my love of food. Instead, this post is more towards all the aspects I have learnt from my itinerary to Tenganan Villlage. Hey ray, What is Tenganan? So Tenganan is an isolated village - not travel-wise, but it terms of its culture. It is one of the villages in Bali that still highly values local tradition and lived by the Bali Aga people or.. the native Balinese.

For short: they still maintain and perform ancient traditions:  rituals, architecture, marriage, and so forth.

As we enter the village, we headed straight towards the village chief's house. A lovely house with lots of geringsing textiles which are made using the double ikat method.

We are greeted warmly by the village chief and his household members and we are given a basketful of snacks and warm tea. Nice presentation huh?

A basket of Traditional Balinese snack

Now to the food part which everyone loves -  First off is the Cerorot - Looks like a dodol, but it isn't. So the cake consists of two main ingredients: brown sugar and rice. They are then steamed. To eat it, simply push the cerorot to your mouth and let the gooey cake melts into your mouth. Nice.

The second delight was the sumping: which was a steamed rice cake filled with bananas. I loved this one.

It was a nice coffee break with these two Balinese treats. Despite the heat, I can still enjoy these two delicacies due to its deliciousness. Nope. I did not touch the warm sweet tea. It'll drive me crazy.

As we discuss further Balinese tradition - including marriage, religious activities, titles, economy and external influences (maybe.. foodgazette readers won't be highly interested in these topics...) we went back to the bus and saw this unique egg cactus. (kaktus telur) I thought it would be interesting. The tree is real, and the egg truly grows. But this is not.. a chicken egg you know.. the one you can cook? No.