murnis Archives - Murni's in Bali

Work from Bali: Murni’s Houses & Spa The Room Package

murni — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 08:24:45 +0000

Work from Bali

Murni’s Houses & Spa The Room Package

Bedroom.

The Room at Murni’s Houses, Ubud, Bali is on the first floor of a two-storey building.

1 bedroom with a double bed.
Option of air conditioning or open windows.
En suite bathroom – shower, basin and WC.
Veranda with a view of the garden.
Electronic Safe.
Private entrance.
Fans throughout.
Fly screens.
Free Fiber Optik Wi-fi (Biznet) throughout.
Free parking.
Free coffee and tea facilities in the room.
Books.
Mini-bar.
Daily housekeeping.
Laundry.
Transport.
Tours, Activities and Classes.
Spa.
Swimming Pool.
Garden.
Dining area.
24 hour security.
Sleeps up to 2 people.
CHSE Certificate.
Contactless payment and check in.
All staff fully vaccinated.

There is a communicating door if The Room and The Suite are booked together.

Bedroom.

Bathroom.

Veranda.

View.

Breakfast

Western, Vegetarian and Balinese options available.

Meals

Murni’s Warung, the first real restaurant in Ubud, which I founded in 1974, is only 5 minutes’ walk and we can deliver meals to your accommodation, if you wish.

Check in and Check Out

Check in: 2 pm.

Check-out: 12 noon.

Pick Up or Drop

You can get a pick up or drop back anywhere, please let me know.

Tours, Classes and Activities

There’s a lot to do in and around Ubud.

You can book any tours, courses or activities (such as photography tours, helicopter tours, chocolate factory tours, cooking classes, Indonesian or Balinese language lessons, Balinese flute lessons, gamelan lessons, white water rafting, elephant safari park trip with a ride on an elephant, Bali Swing, Jungle Buggies, bicycle drive through the villages, climbing a volcano at sunrise, rice paddy trek, bird walks, herbal walk through rice paddies, Ubud walks, tarot reading, Balinese dance classes, batik painting classes, making Balinese offerings, snorkeling or scuba diving or a boat trip to a deserted island). I’ll be happy to do this for you.

Reviews for Murni’s Houses in Magazines, Papers and Books

WORK FROM BALI: MURNI’S HOUSES & SPA THE ROOM PACKAGE

Monthly (31 days, 30 nights): Please enquire with check in and check out dates.

Room only.

Payment in advance and non-refundable.

Email: murni (at) murnis.com

Work from Bali: Murni’s Houses & Spa The Room Package

The post Work from Bali: Murni’s Houses & Spa The Room Package appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Bali scores gastro-points with ‘indescribable’ roast duck

murni — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 04:54:14 +0000

Traditional dish is so good that food critics struggle to describe it

Ian Lloyd Neubauer

Nikkei Asian Review, 28 February 2020

It’s what’s on the inside that counts: A duck is stuffed with the special mix of spices necessary to create the Indonesian delicacy bebek betutu.

UBUD, Indonesia — “No question about it, this is the best pig I have ever had. Absolutely the best. You think even the finest French chef could ever come up with anything as delicious or as beautiful as this?”

When the TV chef Anthony Bourdain uttered these words while filming in Indonesia in 2006, he turned babi guling — Balinese pig roasted on a spit — from a local favorite into a global delicacy.

There is, however, another Balinese dish that rivals or even exceeds babi guling: bebek betutu — roasted leaf-wrapped duck. Richly seasoned with chili, ginger, candlenuts and garlic, this melt-in-your-mouth masterpiece upstages the flavor profiles of China’s Peking duck, France’s confit de canard and every duck dish ever conceived, according to many prominent food judges.

“The duck meat was black and moist and so tender that it fell from the bone with a touch. It was so delicious and entirely unlike anything I had ever eaten,” wrote Sri Owen, the Indonesian food writer credited with introducing her country’s cuisine to the world, after she sampled bebek betutu for the first time in 1962.

Nicholas Jordan, a Sydney-based food writer, voiced similar sentiments after recently discovering the dish in Bali: “It’s one of the few things I’ve eaten in my life that’s so good it’s taken up a mythical status in my mind … something so beyond regular deliciousness it shouldn’t exist without some sort of paranormal ingredient.”

To learn more about bebek betutu I traveled to Ubud, the Balinese spiritual hub made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir “Eat, Pray, Love” and the 2010 film based on the book. Now a booming tourist town with a cosmopolitan dining scene, Ubud has several restaurants that list bebek betutu as a signature dish. Among them is Murni’s, where duck legs are plated with pyramids of yellow rice and a spicy green bean and shredded coconut salad called lawar. With a lightly sweet and herbal finish, the recipe has not been altered since Murni’s opened in 1974.

Indus, a restaurant overlooking a coconut tree-fringed river valley owned by Australian-Indonesian culinary icon Janet DeNeefe, is also known for its bebek betutu, though it must be ordered as a whole bird for two or three people to share.

Aperitif, an extravagant 1920s-style restaurant that cost $2 million to build at the luxury Viceroy Bali resort, offers an East-West interpretation of the dish: duck magret (the boned breast of a duck reared for foie gras) injected with bebek betutu spice mix in place of orange sauce.

But according to Astrid Maharani Prajogo of Good Indonesian Food, a culinary tour company, the best bebek betutu is not found in any restaurant. It is made by specialists who work from home and supply locals with ducks for Hindu ceremonies, celebrations and Sunday roasts.

“There are lots of these duck specialists in Bali,” Prajogo says. “But the one I always take my clients to is Pak Rimpin near the Royal Palace in the center of Ubud. I went there because someone told me his duck was the freshest.”

“They’re all very good at what they do … but with Pak Rimpin, it was his idealism that struck me … his desire to preserve the culinary tradition. He was very keen to open up his kitchen and share his recipe and stories with tourists.” She adds: “It’s also where the royal family of Ubud get their bebek betutu.”

The labyrinthine streets and alleys of Ubud are still semi-deserted at 8 a.m. when I arrive at Rimpin’s home, a traditional Balinese compound with intricately decorated stone gates and Hindu shrines. There I find the specialist at work in a central courtyard kitchen filled with cooking aromas and shards of bouncing light.

Rimpin’s bebek betutu must be ordered at least two days in advance. Normally he cooks between 15 and 20 a day, but today it is relatively quiet; he is making only four, plus an order of duck satay sticks. When I ask his age, he consults quickly with his daughter-in-law Junek, who tells me he is “about 60.” He has been cooking duck “since the 1980s” and learned the craft from an older brother. “I asked him to stop working because he’s getting old and the work is exhausting,” Junek says. “But he won’t listen.”

Rimpin sighs and turns his attention to the four ducks soaking in a pail of water. He chooses one, rinses it dry and starts massaging it with a marinade of coconut oil, fermented shrimp paste, soy sauce and salt. He also adds tamarind paste to the blend to neutralize the naturally unpleasant odor of duck meat.

He then stuffs the bird’s cavity with a handful of bay leaves and bumbu — Balinese for “spice mix” — which in this case also contains sesame seeds, galangal and pepper. “There’s no secret recipe. If people think my bebek betutu tastes good it’s because of the attention to detail. I make them one at a time,” he says, wrapping the bird like a birthday present in betel-nut bark, which contains natural oils to further enhance the flavor.

Next, he takes the package to a room blackened by decades of soot with a series of raised mounds for cooking on the floor. He places the package in a steel wok, covers it with a second wok, rests it on one of the mounds and then covers it with a 30-cm-tall pyramid of rice husks. Finally, he tops the pyramid with a few coconut husks, adds a few squirts of kerosene and sets it alight.

The term “betutu” refers not to the recipe but to the use of rice husks — a time-consuming cooking process that gives the ducks cooked by specialists a robust flavor. The ducks are baked in these medieval-style ovens for a minimum of five hours, although Rimpin cooks his for 12 hours.

“You get this dry roasting effect similar with steaming and braising that commercial kitchens designed 1,000 years later still can’t replicate,” says Will Meyrick, an expatriate chef from Scotland who teaches tourists how to make chicken betutu, a popular variant, at the Canggu Cooking Retreat on the coast. “All the spices and ingredients get broken down into this rich juice and the flavor is amazing.”

Rimpin’s customers normally eat his bebek betutu at home. But I want to taste it straight out of the oven and unwrap my parcel in the middle of his kitchen. As the bark curls open I am struck by an aroma so complex it seems to possess texture.

The meat at the top is golden-yellow from the turmeric and black on the inside from the spice mix. I collect some on a fork, mop up some of the golden juice, and take my first bite. The flavor is so remarkable it speeds my heartbeat for a few moments. As much as I try, I can’t find the words to describe what I am tasting.

“What words would you use to describe the emotion of hearing ‘I love you’ for the first time, or the sensation of the sun on your face after a month of winter rain?” says Jordan. “How do you describe one of the best things you’ve ever eaten?”

Bali scores gastro-points with ‘indescribable’ roast duck

The post Bali scores gastro-points with ‘indescribable’ roast duck appeared first on Murni's in Bali.

Those Were The Days

murni — Mon, 27 May 2019 04:26:43 +0000

Those Were The Days

Why did you come to Bali? We asked Diana Darling to dissect a generation of island refuseniks who made the move more than three decades ago. Images: Oscar Munar. Styling by Angie Anggoro.

The Yak, May 2019

Seated, left to right: Bruce Carpenter Collector and connoisseur of Indonesian tribal art. Cynthia Hardy Muse, businesswoman and co-visionary with her husband John. Amir Rabik Entrepreneur and host to the stars. Jean Howe California-sunshine carrier and co-founder of Threads of Life. Leonard Lueras Writer, publisher, and consumer-researcher for Bintang beer. Standing, far right: Arthur Karvan Founder of the famous Arthur’s club in Sydney; designer of fashion fabrics and boutique residences Standing, left to right, back row: Emerald Starr Chocolate entrepreneur and developer of spiritual resorts in bamboo. Pintor Sirait Sculptor in steel and expert best friend. Milo Fashion designer, devoted son, and celebrity host. William Ingram Co-founder and chronicler of Threads of Life; former computer geek. Ananda Hart Painter and socialite; former Hollywood movie star super-hero. Ian van Wieringen Painter; expert on long-legged beauties.

FOR one thing, we were young. Even so, most of us already had a past. Some of us had recently been in the movies or bereaved or divorced or bankrupt or had just got out of jail. Most of us had been travelling for a while – often rough, sometimes dangerously.

Everyone was good at something, although some hadn’t yet discovered what it was. Everyone was looking for something, even if they didn’t know exactly what it was.

Some were looking for a sort of perpetual high, where the air was always gentle and there was always someone cool down the beach or at the next table, and no one would bother you about who you were or how you spent your days and nights, and if you ran out of money it was easy to make some more, if only enough for the next week.

Some of us were just looking for something to do. Some of us were looking for a cheaper place to do what we were already doing. Some of us were looking for each other. None of us would have said at the time that we were looking for ‘healing’.

We were all sorts of people – actors, scholars, con artists, filmmakers, fashion mavens, lawyers, fortune-tellers, potters, musicians, mystics, chefs, beach bums, heiresses, poseurs, photographers, traders, painters, stockbrokers, surfers, dancers, published and unpublished poets, and publishers, too. Some were good at taking rich people around the archipelago. Everyone had a go at designing something; some made a fortune at it.

John Hardy had legendary success designing jewellery when he teamed up with his wife Cynthia. “He had the ideas, I had a business model,” she once said. Neiman Marcus, a high-end retailer, saw one of his silver key chain ornaments and said, basically, “Can you make us a gazillion of these as earrings?” They did, and John Hardy became a worldwide luxury brand.

Before the late Linda Garland became “the bamboo queen”, she designed nice things for the home, made by Balinese artisans. Her genius lay in persuading rock stars and tycoons that they needed these things. She decorated homes for David Bowie and Sir Richard Branson. Everyone who was important adored her.

And the much-missed Madé Wijaya, né Michael White – who famously arrived in Bali in 1973, having jumped ship and swum ashore in a storm – designed beautiful gardens for resorts and moguls all over Southeast Asia. But his brilliance was his uncanny understanding of Bali.

Each of us had a private Bali, peopled with Balinese friends and families, who gave us a place to live and opened up worlds to us, introduced us to young craftsmen and old sorcerers, took us to holy places, and showed us the way to behave around ‘the gods’. They taught us the gamelan tuning systems and how to carve masks and make them come alive in the dances.

Perhaps we took our Balinese friends on tour to New York or India. We helped with their medical bills, and many put the children of their Balinese families through school. When our Balinese friends died, we went to their house; later we gathered in a corner of the graveyard, smoking kreteks with the gong orchestra.

As expats, we were not nearly as nice to each other as we were to our Balinese friends; but then, unlike the Balinese, life among us was unstructured. Some people were extroverts and threw ‘full moon parties’ where everybody had to wear white.

Others were introverts and avoided foreigners, often irritating other expats by punctuating their speech with Balinese slang.

We used to gather at places like Murni’s, Mak Beng, the Tandjung Sari, the Blue Ocean and Madé’s Warung. We got our mail at the poste restante of the local post office. (The late Shane Sweeney, a seminal expat, once waited for months for an important letter, only to find it filed under “M”, for “Mr.”) We shared tailors and sent each other presents with our driver, if we had one. When we started having children, some expats started schools, and later organic farmer’s markets. All the expat kids had Balinese children’s rites. Madé Wijaya said of the sons of Linda Garland and Amir Rabik that they had full Anak Agung wardrobes.

Snob appeal was varied, depending who you were. For some it was simply a matter of making a pile of money and spending it on building a fabulous house. For others it was having chic Balinese friends – venerable dance masters or priests or artists, or princelings in the government. In some circles, it was cool to be able to read Balinese script or to be treated for black magic. Status symbols also varied. Everyone appreciated heirloom keris and rare Balinese textiles, and a few could wear these things with flair. What you drove, on the other hand, was never a big deal. It was more impressive to have a driver who could negotiate the bureaucracy and possibly wrangle snakes.

Anthropologically, we felt a tribal kinship of oppression under Indonesia’s murky immigration laws; and we were serially polygamous. Our culture prized achievement and gratification. There was no point in being political, because we were foreigners and could be expelled on a whim. But as we got older, people became engaged with problems facing society and the environment, and many expats now work with Balinese in charitable foundations.

Today, as the group shot here shows, the early expats are still sexy. The man-eating divas may have gone vegan, but the fire of life is still blazing.

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