Bali—the bright, brilliant green emerald in the hot,
fiery heart of the Indonesian archipelago--is graced with
fertile rice fields, lush coconuts and bananas, flourishing
fruit trees, edible wild greens, plentiful fish, and a seductive
natural supply of fragrant herbs and spices. Born and bred
in tropical equatorial abundance, Balinese food evolved into
an energetic cuisine full of exotic aromas, flavors, textures,
and ingredients. It also plays a pivotal role in Balinese
religion, ritual, and society: the Balinese cook in order
to eat, as well as to honor, please, and serve the gods. To
understand Bali’s cuisine, we must appreciate the tripartite
role of food as vital human sustenance, sacrificial offering
to respect the gods and appease the demons, and essential
ritual component of Bali-Hindu religious ceremonies. As with
everything else on Bali, food is inextricably intertwined
with faith: behind high, family compound walls and on bale
banjar pavilions, entire communities make sacred ceremonial
quantities of colored rice, sweet rice cakes, meat-filled
banana leaf offerings, and regulation rows of skewered chicken
satés for the gods (who will absorb the sari, or essence,
of these consecrated temple offerings).
Large-scale ceremonies escalate into large-scale ceremonial
feasts: Bali’s most multifaceted visual, color, and
taste sensations only appear at major celebrations, as the
ingredients are costly and an inordinate amount of preparation
time is required. Exquisitely embellished ritual foods—a
sumptuous spread of Bali’s most spectacular dishes--are
prepared for life cycle rituals (ground-touching ceremonies,
weddings, toothfilings, and cremations), temple anniversaries,
and important holidays like Galungan-Kuningan. The family
and community involved contributes materials and labor, and
the dishes are cooperatively fabricated in the temple kitchen.
There is a strict sexual division of ritual labor throughout
Bali: the preparation of dishes that require sacrificial meats—from
the slaughtering of the animals to the expert, experienced
grinding of the spices (an ancient art), to the winding of
the satés, to the mincing of the turtle and pork dishes--is
strictly a (physically strenuous) male affair. Ceremonial
food is traditionally prepared at night: scores of men from
each household gather at the bale banjar--armed with heavy,
carved Balinese knives (belakas) and cutting boards--to perform
a sacred procedure known as mebat or ngeracik basa (the chopping
of all the ceremonial ingredients). They energetically smash
shallots and garlic cloves, crush spices, and scrape galangal
and turmeric roots for three hours on the evening before a
ceremony. After a few hours of sleep, they return at 1:00
A.M. to butcher and prepare the animal meat (sea turtle, or
penyu, in southern Bali, and pigs in other parts of the island).
Teams of men sit cross-legged on the ground to mix and grind
piles of pre-chopped spices, hand-grate and shred dozens of
freshly roasted coconuts, boil organ meats (to be skewered
and grilled), and prepare blood soup and pork tartare from
3 to 5 A.M. Women cook the rice, prepare vegetables, make
coffee, tea, and rice cake refreshments for guests and helpers,
and plait coconut leaf offerings.
A grand ceremony entails weeks of cooking to prepare food
for 700 or more people (necessitating the slaughter of several
small pigs and the purchase of fifty kilograms of spices!).
Each area has its own (male) ritual cooking specialist who
directs and inspects the work: there is tremendous local variation
(and theological competition) in the preparation of traditional
ritual foods intended for the gods. When men from different
regencies, villages—or even adjacent banjars—prepare
ceremonial foods together, methodological debates arise over
such intricate minutiae as the correct order in which to add
and mix the spices, vegetables, and other lawar ingredients.
Southern Bali has its own, five-dish, coconut, blood, turtle
meat, and spice-driven ritual meal called ebat (meaning “chopped
up”), presented on a banana leaf mat.
Lawar (which means thinly sliced) is Bali’s most famous
festival masterpiece: this cooking style uses different combinations
of shaved and roasted coconut, seasoned coconut milk, egg
omelette, shredded young jackfruit or fern tips, starfruit
leaves, black, white, fresh green, and long pepper, fried
chillies, spice paste, shrimp paste, kaffir lime, palm sugar,
green papaya, garlic, salt, shallots, finely chopped pork
meat, skin, stomach lining, and cartilage, fresh congealed
pig’s blood (set aside after slaughter or available
in small plastic bags in the market), and the closely minced,
cooked innards of sacrificial animals--all of which are mixed
together by hand. This complex, time-consuming, highly perishable
ritual dish is served (with crisp pork crackling) at all large
family or temple religious ceremonies on Bali. Many kinds
and ritually significant colors of lawar accompany Balinese
feasts (white, red, black, green, yellow, and multi-colored)
to represent the eight sacred cardinal points and directions
(each representing a different aspect and symbolic color of
god). Only a ritual food specialist, or the oldest, most ceremonially
seasoned men are allowed to combine the color-coded components:
diced long green beans become green lawar (representing Wisnu),
while turtle or pork strips with young papaya, mango, or coconut
slivers, spices, uncooked animal blood, and pounded raw entrails
yield red lawar (symbolizing Brahma).
Festival cuisine is a holy cult—an inspired higher calling—in
the magical, mystical navel of the world: elaborately executed
bebek betutu (smoked duck), babi guling (sucking pig), gerangasem
siap (grated coconut with fresh chicken blood is drizzled
into this clear chicken soup right before serving), and jukut
ares (banana tree trunk soup) feature prominently on the sacred,
temple-bound menu. The Balinese marshal condiments, bananas,
and coveted coconuts to turn almost anything edible into an
outstanding village delicacy: the tender, harvested core of
the young banana palm stem is thinly sliced and boiled with
spices, meat, duck, or chicken to make a substantial, aromatic
stew. Ceremonial tum is cooked daily in family compounds:
minced parcels of ground pork, duck, chicken, chicken liver
(tum hati ayam), fish, beef, or eel--liberally laced with
shallots, ginger, garlic, kaffir lime leaves, chillies, turmeric,
lesser galangal, salam leaves, sambals, and spice paste--are
steamed in square, pleated, banana leaf purses to create this
classic Balinese ritual dish. Created and conveyed with love,
art, and reverence for the gods—Bali’s food offerings
are purified by white-robed, bell-ringing priests, sprinkled
with holy water, and carried home to be eaten. Nourishment
dances and vacillates between sustenance and sacrifice on
an island of the gods perfectly positioned and protected—and
lost in time--eight secret degrees south of the equator.
