Balinese Food. Vivienne Kruger
quality of the soil and changed the course of the rivers that ran near several mountain villages. Since then, the people have not been able to grow either rice or most kinds of vegetables. Many have to subsist on leaves or what fruit they can grow, as well as ketela (cassava), a root vegetable offering very little nourishment. They also tend a few straggling coffee and cocoa trees and some salak and jackfruit as subsidiary, low-income cash crops.
The Balinese love meat, but pork, beef and chicken are still very expensive food commodities on the island and are mainly reserved for special ritual occasions. The Balinese usually feast on pork during most ceremonial festivities, the preferred “food of the gods.” The Balinese normally consume very little meat in everyday life, usually adding a few tiny morsels of chicken or fish to their rice. Well-born, first caste, high-status Brahman priests (all pedanda are from the top caste) are not allowed to eat meat (cow, bulls or pork) and they also cannot consume food from street sellers or in the market, drink alcohol, or taste consecrated food offerings destined for the gods. (The pedanda are also not allowed to eat the offerings once a temple ceremony finishes, thus ordinary folk always bring the offerings home to eat.) According to I Made Arnila, a lay priest (pemangku) in Lovina, in order to become a high priest, a religious candidate must go through an education process and learn the mantras. As a novitiate, he already has some dietary restrictions: he must meditate and fast (puasa in Bahasa Indonesia) for forty days and forty nights. This meditation and fasting period (no eating and no drinking) takes place right before the ceremony to become a pedanda. Once ordained, a pedanda can “only eat vegetarian food: vegetables (sayur), rice (nasi), and water. It is not possible to eat ikan, telur, sapi, babi, ayam, bebek- no! No Masoko (a popular chicken bouillon flavoring). No coffee, tea or milk—only water.” Dietary rules for pedanda are often subject to modern interpretation and debate. Some Balinese insist that pedanda only eat duck meat or be vegetarian. The pemangku (lay priests) also cannot eat beef (not all are vegetarian, but they are supposed to be). Secular Brahman and Satria caste Balinese are also forbidden to eat beef (beef is never served at a religious ceremony). Wesia (warrior-merchant class aristocrats) and the majority Sudra caste commoners are allowed to eat beef or buffalo but also traditionally choose not to do so.
Numerous animals rummage around or are penned up in the family compound but they are not ordinarily eaten. Cows are more valuable kept alive to plough the rice fields, chickens lay eggs for food and offerings, while pigs are allowed to appreciate in worth, size and girth as future market-bound mercantile investments and ritual food offerings. The Bringkit market in Mengwi district, which operates every Wednesday and Sunday, is Bali’s large central livestock market. Farmers from all over the island travel here to sell their live cattle, pigs, ducks and chickens. Lack of home refrigeration militates against the slaughter of large household animals like cows and pigs by single families or even small family groups. Any animal butchered for food must be small enough for a family to consume in its entirety in one sitting as meat spoils quickly in the heat. Goats are rarely raised domestically because they destroy and overgraze plants and flowers growing around the house. Goat satay is in high demand, however. Saté kambing (goat or lamb) on skewers is normally served with a spicy hot peanut sauce. The Balinese also like to frequent village warung and kaki lima (push cart vendors) for a steaming plate of soto kambing (goat soup) or kambing mekuah (goat or lamb stew in sauce or gravy). Kuah is a sauce, broth or gravy, usually over rice, and mekuah is to do or put, to add the gravy to it. Curries (gulé or gulai) and curried food is popular for quick, convenient meals. Gulé is Balinese for a spicy soup (gulai ayam is chicken curry, gulai kambing is goat or lamb curry). Goats are raised as secondary family home businesses, penned up inside humble tofu factories in Seririt, tethered around drying beachside salt pans in Amed and concealed in bamboo squatter compounds inside Bali Barat National Park.
Balinese food springs out of an intensely religious, intensely poor country and economy. The Balinese are opportunistic eaters. Because they live so close to the hunger line, they take advantage of all possible food sources in their environment and do not waste any part of any animal or creature. They eat what they can find. Traditionally, whenever a village fisherman hauls a turtle out of the water or an egg-laying female is found on the sand, the Balinese will eat it. Other native protein sources include scaled anteater (klesih), large lizards (alu), wild boar, rice paddy birds—from the glatik to the tiny petingan (scaly-breasted Munia)—and porcupines (landak), disguised as a gamey flavored dark meat curry cooked with tamarind. The people of Nusa Lembongan favor large alu (monitor lizards) which run very fast and are difficult to catch; both quick and clever, they climb up the local coconut trees! Once the men catch them, they fry the lizard in oil and mix it with coconut. The oil is kept afterwards to treat wounds. The Balinese also like to hunt, shooting with rifles long-tailed squirrels readily located near their favorite food supply, Bali’s majestic stands of tall coconut trees. Flying foxes (fruit bats) are another indigenous food. The bats are shot or captured with nets. Squirrels and bats, however, do not appear in the traditional markets. Food fondness, satisfaction and loyalty transcend status. When the rich pay premium prices for an expensive meal, they enjoy it. Poor people equally enjoy and crave their humble plate of plump white ketupat rice chunks with tiny sticks of thinly threaded saté kambing.
Dog meat is eaten in most villages throughout Bali. Dogs are privately killed, cooked and consumed at home. If a family wants to eat dog, the husband goes out to the street and selects a stray. He knows which ones belong to neighbors and will avoid these. He hits and kills the dog with a wooden stick, puts it in a plastic bag and carries it home to be cooked. These numerous village dogs often wind up on skewers in small, hidden “RW” (pronounced “airway”) stalls (dog satay warung) in the illicit back lanes of Denpasar. Here, the flesh, which is believed to have medicinal benefit, is discreetly served to homesick ethnic migrants from North Sumatra (Batak), North Sulawesi (Manado) and Timor where black dogs, in particular, are deemed a regional delicacy. Dogs, in fact, are on the chalkboard menu throughout Indonesia. Some Balinese dogs are caught, confined in wooden-slatted crates and exported by overland truck to nearby Java to be eaten. When beaten to death prior to cooking, men consider these dogs to be an aphrodisiac. In traditional Chinese food and medicine cosmology, dog meat is considered a “hot” element, and therefore Chinese martial arts practitioners in Bali will also seek out and eat dog.
Dog meat is not offered or displayed in the traditional Balinese village markets. It is only sold at the specialized dog satay warung. Satay RW food stalls are very popular in Bali, with those in Singaraja and Seririt, right beside the main road, opening at 8 a.m. Some stands now even advertise themselves publicly along the main roads of Sanur, Gianyar, Bangli and Denpasar. Here, RW stands for rawon (a dark-colored black beef soup from Surabaya) or gule (gule is curry or spicy soup in the Balinese language). People will come here every day to eat dog. The main methods of serving and cooking dog are grilled satay with rice and anjing (dog) soup with rice. Dog meat is also spit-roasted (guling) like goat. The preferred part of the dog’s body is the underside. The breast is used for saté anjing. When sizing up the dinner potential of an intended dog victim, the Balinese stand under a nearby ketapang tree and estimate the number of satay sticks that the dog will provide. Small or lean dogs are less of a target.
Many dogs all over Bali fall prey to the meat trade and end up as satay. The RW stalls obtain dog meat by paying people to bring in their own unwanted pets or by capturing stray dogs from the villages. The Balinese are usually paid Rp.50,000–80,000 for selling one dog victim to an RW stall satay seller, although these warung can often find stray dogs and compound pets for as little as Rp.35,000 per animal. Poor families will sell their pets to the dog catcher for as little as Rp.10,000 if the dog has become a nuisance or can no longer be cared for. Some Balinese have turned dog-kidnapping into a major source of income since dogs stolen from neighbors or caught for free on the street represent a 100 percent source of profit. (More affluent Balinese keep imported Rottweilers, Labradors, Dalmatians and other pedigreed breeds as fashionable status symbol house pets but these are too expensive to eat!) RW vendors cannot always obtain the requisite canines. If dog is available, they hang out a buka (open) store sign, if not, a tutup (closed) sign signals customers that the stall is out of supplies.
Dog meat procurers dare not openly steal stray dogs or loose house pets because the owners love them and will kill them if they are caught. More sinister methods have evolved in the form of large-scale persistent rashes of anonymous, nighttime street dog abductions