“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.

“Flying into the Maldives was an amazing experience I will never forget. It was the first time on a plane in my life,” he says.

In 2011, Suta returned to Bali and found work at the Four Seasons, slowly working his way to the top of the food chain. He also helped establish Sokasai, a cooking school and restaurant at the resort with a “no short cuts” philosophy specialising in centuries-old Balinese recipes such as 12-hour roast duck cooked in underground clay ovens and four-hour manually spit-roasted pig.

Three dishes from Sokasai – ikan klengis (barramundi marinated in coconut oil sediment), ayam timbungan (chicken cooked in young bamboo) and bebek betutu (Balinese roast duck) – feature in “Gone But Not Forgotten”, a chapter in Suta’s book. “They are almost impossible to recreate at home but I still included them as they are very special to my heart, and for me, this book would be incomplete if they were missing,” he says.

“If you miss Bali, you can prepare some of these simple dishes at home by following my recipes,” Suta says. “But I hope foreigners can come back to Bali soon and experience our traditional culture and the most important part of our culture – our food.”

Our Bali, Your Bali is the magnum opus of Dean Keddell, a chef from New Zealand who’s lived on the island for 15 years. He is the owner of Ginger Moon and Jackson Lily’s, two restaurants in the once-thriving Seminyak tourist district that have been closed since March of last year.

“When I realised Covid-19 was going to be here for quite a while, I had to do something to help,” Keddell said at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival in October.

“So we travelled to 12 of my staff’s villages in different parts of Bali and their families cooked feasts for us. I felt guilty eating so much good food when so many are going hungry, but it brought lots of joy to all of us. Then we visited 14 warungs – simple family-owned canteens – so when tourists come back to Bali they can go and support them and not just eat at foreign-owned restaurants like my own.”

When Our Bali, Your Bali, which contains 400 pages of recipes, photographs, illustrations, stories and maps hand-drawn by Balinese children, was completed, Keddell approached all the large publishing houses in Australia, who promptly turned him away.

“My sales pitch was always, ‘If you can’t come to Bali, I will bring Bali to you’,” Keddell recalls. “But when they heard the word ‘charity’, they thought I wanted something for free, which was not the case, and it scared them off.”

The project was eventually adopted by Sunday Press, a bespoke publishing company in Melbourne, under a publishing model whereby Keddell paid for the printing cost. Profits are being distributed to Kendall’s staff and five established charities, including the Bali Children’s Foundation.

“Because of this book, we have provided 100,800 meals to vulnerable families, the disabled and elderly people in remote villages in Bali. We also upgraded a school library that’s being used to educate 180 children,” says the foundation’s director, Margaret Barry. “One source of funding can’t fix everything, but Dean’s heroic work has helped bring the spotlight back to Bali, which has a multiplier effect on donations.”

“Coffee waves are very specific things, like the dawn of Starbucks, and until recently they have not been documented in origin countries because all of the power has been assumed by consumer countries. But it is time we start seeing things differently,” says Rodney Glick, a West Australian artist, architect and licensed coffee grader based in Bali, who co-authored the book.

“The new wave is taking place in origin countries like Indonesia and Kenya that have new middle classes who are starting to be aware of their agricultural produce – and with that awareness comes change. Over the last five years, Bali has become an example of this trend, a place with its own energy and coffee stories to share.”

Bali Coffee: Origin’s New Wave takes readers on a voyage through the ages, starting with the bean’s introduction in Indonesia by Dutch and Portuguese colonialists in the 16th century, to 2016, when Indonesians began making waves at the World Barista Championship, to the present day at bustling cafes like Glick’s Seniman Coffee Studio in Ubud.

The book also looks at Bali’s potential as a global coffee tourism destination. “Coffee- producing countries are attracting people interested in coffee and agriculture,” Glick says. “But unlike other origin countries, Bali already has the infrastructure to deal with tourism.

“And because it’s a small island, in 90 minutes you can drive from the beach to highland areas 1,500 metres [4,900 feet] above sea level where coffee is grown, then come down to Ubud and see it being processed. It’s all very manageable.”

The book is available online at afterhoursbooks.com. “It will appeal to coffee enthusiasts, people in the business and people overseas who miss Bali,” says publisher Lans Brahmantyo, “because it captures the nostalgia in the same way that cookbooks do.

“We’re seeing a lot of interest [in] books about Bali right now that are part of the [grass]-roots marketing campaign to bring people back to Bali.”