Sri Owen, the Indonesian woman attributed with bringing the country'€™s culinary heritage to the global stage, was honored Thursday night at the opening ceremony of the inaugural Ubud Food Festival.

Festival director Janet DeNeefe presented the lifetime achievement award to the 80-year-old culinary expert before around 200 invitees at the ceremony. Sri was pleased with the award, stating that it was the first lifetime achievement award she had ever received.

'€œI am so pleased, very happy [with the award]; if you would get a lifetime achievement award, 80 is the perfect age,'€ she said with a smile.

Sri Owen was born in Padangpanjang, West Sumatra, before the onset of the World War II. She loved cooking from an early age, spending her mornings watching her grandmother preparing intricate regional cuisine in the kitchen. Sri and her family relocated to Java to flee the invading Japanese army and settled in Central Java after Indonesia become a sovereign country.

She studied English at university and became a junior lecturer, when she met her future husband, a visiting lecturer from England. The couple moved to England where Sri pursued a career with the BBC Indonesian Service for nearly two decades before returning to her childhood passion: cooking.

The couple'€™s house soon witnessed sumptuous dinners featuring Indonesian foods and attended by their friends, one of whom later convinced Sri to pen a book. Her 1976 book The Home Book of Indonesian Cookery placed her in the public spotlight in Britain, which has long had a romantic affair with Southeast Asia.

Quadruple bypass surgery in late 2007 did not slow her down and Sri still offers workshops, demonstrations and classes on Indonesian cooking from her kitchen in Wimbledon, southwest London.

'€œThis festival would not be a special one without the presence of Ibu Sri. We are so honored. In fact, it was her first book that fired up my passion for Indonesian foods,'€ DeNeefe said.

Supported by HSBC Bank, the opening ceremony was held at Rondji Restaurant in the lush compound of the Blanco Renaissance Museum. The restaurant was named after the late Balinese wife of the late Spanish master painter Don Antonio Blanco.

The three-day festival, running from June 5-7, will feature an array of captivating events, including Food Forums, where Sri will narrate her journey, actual as well as metaphorical, from a small hill town in West Sumatra to suburban London.

The forums will also see other star speakers, including Bondan Winarno, William Wongso, Dina von Cranach and Will Meyrick, discuss hot topics such as street food, Bali'€™s rice crisis, the country'€™s legendary spices, as well as food as medicine. The chairman of the Codex Alimentarius international food standards commission, Professor FG Winarno, will discuss the cultural importance and health benefits of tempeh, while literary goddess Laksmi Pamuntjak will share her experience of mixing words and mincing sentences to cook”up a delicious story.

Popular

Taiwan raises alert over cancer-causing chemical in Indomie

Resource-scarce Japan gets more trains running on renewables

Bali takes massive economic hit from worst flooding in years