EVERYDAY LIFE IN BALI

BALINESE COOKING

We have seen that the women are reduced to the routine of cooking the everyday meal, but when it comes to preparing banquet food, it is the men, as is universally the case, who are the great chefs and who alone can prepare the festival dishes of roast suckling pig (be guling) and sea-turtle (penyu) , the cooking of which requires the art of famous specialists.

Few bandjars enjoyed as great a reputation for fine cooking as Belaluan; there the great banquet dishes were prepared most often because the handjar was prosperous, and there lived famous cooks who were always in great demand to officiate at feasts. People spoke with anticipation when Pan Regog or Made directed the preparation of epicurean dishes such as " turtle in four ways " or the delicious sate lembat.

On the road coming from the seaport of Benua we often met men from Belaluan staggering under the weight of a giant turtle flapping its paddles helplessly in space, and then we knew they were preparing for a feast. For days before the banquet of the bandjar four or five stupefied turtles crawled under the platforms of the bale bandjar awaiting the fateful moment when, in the middle of the night, the kulkul would sound to call the men to the gruesome task of sacrificing them.

A sea-turtle possesses a strange reluctance to die and for many hours after the shell is removed and the flaps and head are severed from the body, the viscera continue to pulsate hysterically, the bloody members twitch weirdly on the ground, and the head snaps furiously. The blood of the turtle is carefully collected and thinned with lime juice to prevent coagulation.

By dawn the many cooks and assistants are chopping the skin and meat with heavy chopping axes (blakas) on sections of tree-trunks (talanan) , are grating coconuts, fanning fires, boiling or steaming great quantities of rice, or mashing spices in clay dishes (tjobek) with wooden pestles (pengulakan) .

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