‘I will bring Bali to you’: chefs and a coffee aficionado help you recreate the tastes and smells of the Indonesian holiday island at home

Bali is now open to tourists from China and 18 other countries, although Indonesia’s entry requirements, which include five days’ quarantine, mean few international tourists are expected to visit for now. Thanks to a raft of new books, though, fans of Bali can recreate the island’s flavours and aromas at home.

Cherished Recipes from my Childhood tells the rags-to-riches story, through traditional Balinese recipes, of Wayan Sutariawan, executive chef at the Four Seasons Resort Bali at Sayan, on the outskirts of Ubud, the spiritual capital of the island.

Suta, as he is known, was born in poverty in a small village in east Bali. He did not attend school and slept on the floor with a block of concrete as his pillow.

“I was a free-range village kid,” he muses in the preface, one who spent his days stealing fruit from orchards, flying kites and playing soccer with “no thought of the future”.

When Suta was 11, his father died on a construction site. His mother remarried and gave him away to an aunt who lived in the capital, Denpasar. There, his “free-range” life came to an end. His aunt enrolled him in school and put him to work in the kitchen every afternoon.