This is not a menu you choose from — it is how food is prepared and shared in Manggarai. Cooking starts early in the morning; the fire is wood, not gas; the ingredients come from the garden, and some dishes take hours.
Around seven or eight dishes are placed on the table at once. Once the table is full, each dish is named for you — what it is, where it grows, why it is cooked this way — and then the table is yours.
Free-range chicken smoked for eight hours over a low wood fire. The smoke does the work — there is no way to speed it up.
Rice cooked inside a length of bamboo with ginger and local spices, holding the moisture and aroma inside.
Black upland rice, grown without irrigation, cooked slowly and finished with fresh shaved coconut. Nutty, deep, a little sweet.
Red rice cooked slowly with herbs, roots and spices from the garden — everyday food that carries more flavour than most.
A clear, warming soup of wild foraged leaves, simmered with chicken or fish. Light and green, straight from around the kitchen.
Pineapple, chili, herbs and spices crushed fresh. Sharp, sweet and hot at the same time.
Chili and spices worked slowly over the fire until smoked, deep and dark. Earthier than the pineapple — two sambals, two moods.
Young green papaya, shredded and fried until light, golden and crisp — the crunch on a table of slow, smoky dishes.