French toast @ Casa Luna

Back to the familiar territory of the quickly-expanding empire that is Casa Luna (+ Honeymoon Bakery + Honeymoon Guesthouse + Casa Luna Cooking School + Indus restaurant + Bar Luna + an emporium selling giftware, and, by the time I’ve finished writing this, they will have probably opened up a yoga studio or a bookshop too).  They are effective self-promoters.

It is an empire, but it is a locally-owned empire, which doesn’t make it so bad.  Janet de Neef is an Australian woman who went to Ubud, met a Balinese guy, got married, had kids and started opening up guesthouses and bakeries and restaurants etc.  She has written a book called Fragrant Rice, which is about her life, her initiation into the Balinese culture, as well as her love of Balinese food, and it includes recipes.  I own that book, and I have to say that it has helped to bring a little bit of Bali to Timor, as many of the ingredients for Balinese cooking are available in the market in Oecusse.  

The food at Casa Luna is of a distinctively high quality and the owners have a pretty good ethos around using local produce and cooking everything from scratch, which is perhaps why I like it so much.

For breakfast on this particular day I ordered a mixed juice and French toast with yoghurt and palm sugar syrup.  Wade had a strawberry lassie:

The bread is made fresh at the Honeymoon Bakery and the palm sugar syrup is a good example of using a local product instead of importing, say, maple syrup.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the yoghurt was homemade either.  I enjoyed this brekkie, but it was a bit too heavy on the bread.  As you can see, they are really thick slices (but at least it’s not that sugary white sliced crap for a change), and it was a bit light on the “French” aspect - the bread was merely shown the egg batter.  But it wasn’t too bad.

I also ordered a Flores latte, which is like a chai latte, made with tea from Flores:

Again, it’s a good example of using local products – Flores tea, cinnamon, cloves, etc.  There is something in this tea that is overpowering though – I think it’s the cloves.  Maybe they could ease up on the cloves.

But, do you know what I really like?

A little biscuit served with my cuppa.  It is a nice detail that goes a long way.