A hundred years ago, the King of Bangli'€™s official chef and food taster set out to create a signature dish that would stand the test of time.

He succeeded with a dish named Ayam Keren. His granddaughter, a princess of the Bangli Royal House, has followed in her grandfather'€™s footsteps by continuing to prepare the dish that takes more than 12 hours to prepare and cook.

The princess, Anak Agung Ayu Sugantini, better known as Bu Ayu, nightly prepares her grandfather'€™s extraordinary dish, which has an aroma so fragrant you feel that you are eating perfume rather than a type of smoked chicken.

The secret of her continued success with the dish, which was once the chosen offering for kings and gods, is her meticulous adherence to the preparation and cooking techniques laid down by her grandfather and subsequently by her mother.

'€œI start preparing the chicken at about 9 p.m., firstly by washing out the cavity with coconut oil and salt. It is then stuffed with a full complement of Balinese herbs and spices, which I grind by hand,'€ said Ayu.

She added that some people who have worked with her and set up their own Ayam Keren businesses use a blender to speed up the spice mixing process and cook the chickens on conventional gas stoves.

'€œAyam Keren prepared that way tastes very different '€” there is no smoke. In Bali, we have a saying: '€˜Tangan Basa'€™, which means that some people'€™s hands have a special quality that make food taste more delicious,'€ said Ayu, who believes in putting her devotion into every chicken she prepares, just as her grandfather did.

Ayu believes that when the spices are mixed in a blender, the magical Tangan Basa element is lost, and the flavors do not have that special something that can only be attained by hand grinding, a process that takes far more time and care.

Parcel of flavor: Anak Agung Ayu Sugantini with the royal dish, Ayam Keren, created by her grandfather more than a century ago for the king of Bangli.

Her grandfather, she said, was the Royal Chef of the warrior kesatria class and the king believed and trusted in him to prepare his food.

'€œSo my grandfather was both a chef and food taster, whose food was known to be safe and delicious. As a taster he was brave and as the Royal Chef he wanted to design special dish: Ayam Keren. It took him six months to develop the recipe, which is the same one I use today,'€ said Ayu.

Her place has been visited by one of Indonesia'€™s best-loved food experts, William Wongso, and an American chef from the Culinary Institute of America.

'€œThe American chef took the recipe, but to cook and prepare Ayam Keren is very difficult and detailed. So he may have the recipe, but he does not have the magic,'€ said Ayu, pointing out that even for her, as an accomplished Ayam Keren chef, creating the dish away from the Bangli Palace where she has lived all her life, is almost impossible.

'€œI have often thought to open a warung specializing in Ayam Keren in Denpasar, but even for me, Ayam Keren is too detailed to cook away from the palace,'€ said Ayu, who takes daily orders for the delicacy that is served during ceremonies and celebrations.

While I was talking to Bu Ayu, one of her customers arrived at the palace to collect his Ayam Keren, ordered two days before. Komang Widiana is a regular customer.

'€œI order Ayam Keren just to eat, it tastes great and the spices are delicious. We have it about once a week and we always order Ayam Keren from Bu Ayu for family celebrations and ceremonies,'€ said the 32-year-old from Bangli.

Widiana said he has never thought to try Ayam Keren prepared by other cooks. '€œBu Ayu'€™s Ayam Keren is the original, so I have never tried buying it from other places. We have been ordering this dish from her all my life,'€ said Widiana.

So delicious is her Ayam Keren that for a time she was sending betel nut-wrapped chicken parcels on order to William Wongso in Jakarta. But the logistics of sending such a tender dish via aircraft proved too difficult.

'€œGetting to the airport with the Ayam Keren to send to Jakarta was so tough, that in the end I just gave up,'€ said Ayu, dusting away charred rice hulls from the hole-in-the-wall oven that is essential to the dish'€™s preparation.

Once the Ayam Keren has been stuffed with herbs including tamarind, palm sugar and turmeric, to name just a few of its many ingredients, it is massaged with coconut oil and wrapped in betel nut leaves, the parcels are placed on a bed of rice hulls and placed in a terracotta oven. The oven is then surrounded by coconut husk coals and more rice hulls are added to cover the oven. For the next 12 hours, with a quick turn-over at 5 a.m., the Ayam Keren is steamed, smoked and roasted until, on opening the betel nut leaves, there rests a meal fit for a King, at a price even commoners can afford.

Fresh from the oven: The richly spiced Ayam Keren is wrapped in betel nut leaves and cooked for 12 hours.

'€” Photos by J.B.Djwan