(Apologies for yet another e-mail about killing animals. If you are sensitive to this, skip down to the second part. I've left a gap so you know where it is safe to read from. I hope.)
Dear Hungry Hippos,
As it turns out, it is hard to spit roast a 73lb pig (no pun intended). There are complications in this country that are pretty intense. Hygiene, for example, is a difficult thing to stay perfectly principled about. Transporting a muscular, squirming, screaming pig, from one village to another by motorbike, is another. But let's start at the beginning.
The thought process was simple. Almost every Balinese person I know goes apeshit about Babi Guling. Therefore, a good way to thank the staff was to produce a babi guling feast and invite everyone. Everyone would get their favorite food and I would learn how to cook it. I enlisted experienced help from the bartender at my restaurant. Apparently the guy is an absolute pro when it comes to dispatching swine. My host offered us his gorgeous compound in a nearby village as a venue. I put up some money and labor.
I arrived at the compound at 8am and met Poleng (the bartender) and 6 of his friends from the village. As they got to work setting everything up, Poleng and I got on my scooter and buzzed over to the next town to pick up the pig.
I had never seen a "pig farm" in Bali before. This one was situated in the back of a traditional family compound. It's kind of like entering another gangs' turf for business. Everyone is checking you out, wondering why you are there, where you came from. We passed a grandmother, putting the finishing touches on one of those large wooden shlongs they sell at the markets here. Way in the back was where the pigs were kept in concrete pens.
Frankly, I expected it to be a whole lot dirtier but it was really, really clean. There wasn't a lot of room or much in the way of piggy amenities, but the staff was constantly hosing them off and cleaning dirt out of the pens. The pigs actually seemed...happy.
That is, until three guys dropped down into a cell and threw a beautiful white one into a burlap sack, screaming the entire time. The others all knew what was happening and started to scream too, standing up against the walls of their stalls and trying to bite at the men as they climbed up with their cargo.
It was not pretty.
The pig struggled from within the bag and crapped itself. The men weighed it, took my money, and hauled it off to where the motorbike was parked.
Then, with me driving, Poleng put a plastic bag on his lap and held the squirming, stinky bundle as we drove slowly back to the compound.
I don't know how I feel about relating the rest.
Poleng tied the front and back legs and put a large metal bowl underneath. Then he made a quick thrust with a small knife to the base of the throat, severing the artery and the pig bled out, while I held it down. It was awful.
Then we laid it out in a tray and scalded off the hair. The entrails were removed through the smallest incision possible so that the body would be less likely to split open during roasting. Then we did a remarkable thing. We used everything.
[GAP]
We cleaned the intestines. We minced literally all the offal. We combined it with duck eggs, many spices and some flour and then stuffed us some sausage. The leftover intestines were sectioned, salted and deep fried.
In the meantime, the pig was spitted on a stout hibiscus branch. We stuffed the body cavity with spices and cassava leaves and sowed it up with a thread made out of the stout but flexible part of the banana leaf.
The rig for the spit was formed from sections of banana tree trunk. The banana trunk is like nested corrugated cardboard and it is strong enough to support weight but soft enough to drive a bamboo stake through. We made two 2-foot high walls in this fashion, 6 feet apart and built a fire. The banana trunk is so wet that the fire will singe but not burn it. When the fire was ready, we pushed it to one side and lay the spit with the pig across the two walls. As the spit started to rotate, it sank a bit into the banana trunks that were supporting it. In this way it not only formed its own groove, but the wetness of the trunk lubricated the spit and made it turn more easily. That is Balinese engineering at its finest.
We bathed the pig repeatedly in grated turmeric and water and in just three short hours the skin was beautifully golden and crispy as caramel. Once it started sagging off the spit we knew it was done.
Next to it, on a different spit, we wound the sausage and grilled that too.
Between that, some extras and the huge amount of lawar that the guys made, we had a feast fit for a Balinese King, which is exactly what I wanted to give to the staff to thank them for 6 months of amazing kindness and friendship.
They never showed.
That's not entirely accurate. A decent number of the male staff came (The
managers, a few cooks and the dishwashers) but 100% of the female staff did not.
I was crestfallen. What kept them away? Where did I go wrong? Also, how could twenty people finish off 25 kilograms of slow roasted pork, 10 kilos of sausage, 20 kilos of lawar, and 5 kilos of deep fried fat and offal...plus rice? It was hard to figure.
So I made four of the worlds largest doggie-bags, hung them off various parts of my scooter and drove to Ubud to bring the feast to them at each of the restaurants.
They were all happy to see me and apologized for not showing up.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh, Malu alEC."
That means 'shy'...
Aparently it was too nerve-racking for them to go to their boss's family compound. Too uncomfortable. Too socially strange. Too...American.
It's funny. We generally view equality through the lens of accomplishment. The lawyers would never invite the janitors to their party. The doctors would never invite the orderlies. Here, the women are the pariahs, staying home while the managers whoop it up with the dishwashers. It's a strange brand of egalitarianism. Maybe it is American after all...early American.
My host remarked that the pig was one of the best he had ever had. I did agree and made no effort to be humble because I didn't really cook it. Like everything else here, it was communal effort with me playing a minor role...unless you count the eating part because I played a major role in that.
I learned a ton. I could even replicate it in the states if I had enough time to track down substitute ingredients. I'm sorry I had to kill a pig but if you are going to eat pig, I believe you should be willing to get your hands dirty. Plus, I apologized to her, thanked her, and wasted nothing. That's about as respectful as a predator can be without changing his diet. As I've said before about chickens, if I had to kill one every time I wanted meat...I would eat a lot less meat.
So that's it for Bali. I'm actually finishing this e-mail in the airport in Hong Kong on my way to 'Nam (Things work here...it's weird). I hope you have enjoyed my stories. There are more to come but for now I'm a bit sad and already wish I was back in a place without a starbucks every ten meters and where fewer things made sense.
All the best,
Alex
Dear Hungry Hippos,
As it turns out, it is hard to spit roast a 73lb pig (no pun intended). There are complications in this country that are pretty intense. Hygiene, for example, is a difficult thing to stay perfectly principled about. Transporting a muscular, squirming, screaming pig, from one village to another by motorbike, is another. But let's start at the beginning.
The thought process was simple. Almost every Balinese person I know goes apeshit about Babi Guling. Therefore, a good way to thank the staff was to produce a babi guling feast and invite everyone. Everyone would get their favorite food and I would learn how to cook it. I enlisted experienced help from the bartender at my restaurant. Apparently the guy is an absolute pro when it comes to dispatching swine. My host offered us his gorgeous compound in a nearby village as a venue. I put up some money and labor.
I arrived at the compound at 8am and met Poleng (the bartender) and 6 of his friends from the village. As they got to work setting everything up, Poleng and I got on my scooter and buzzed over to the next town to pick up the pig.
I had never seen a "pig farm" in Bali before. This one was situated in the back of a traditional family compound. It's kind of like entering another gangs' turf for business. Everyone is checking you out, wondering why you are there, where you came from. We passed a grandmother, putting the finishing touches on one of those large wooden shlongs they sell at the markets here. Way in the back was where the pigs were kept in concrete pens.
Frankly, I expected it to be a whole lot dirtier but it was really, really clean. There wasn't a lot of room or much in the way of piggy amenities, but the staff was constantly hosing them off and cleaning dirt out of the pens. The pigs actually seemed...happy.
That is, until three guys dropped down into a cell and threw a beautiful white one into a burlap sack, screaming the entire time. The others all knew what was happening and started to scream too, standing up against the walls of their stalls and trying to bite at the men as they climbed up with their cargo.
It was not pretty.
The pig struggled from within the bag and crapped itself. The men weighed it, took my money, and hauled it off to where the motorbike was parked.
Then, with me driving, Poleng put a plastic bag on his lap and held the squirming, stinky bundle as we drove slowly back to the compound.
I don't know how I feel about relating the rest.
Poleng tied the front and back legs and put a large metal bowl underneath. Then he made a quick thrust with a small knife to the base of the throat, severing the artery and the pig bled out, while I held it down. It was awful.
Then we laid it out in a tray and scalded off the hair. The entrails were removed through the smallest incision possible so that the body would be less likely to split open during roasting. Then we did a remarkable thing. We used everything.
[GAP]
We cleaned the intestines. We minced literally all the offal. We combined it with duck eggs, many spices and some flour and then stuffed us some sausage. The leftover intestines were sectioned, salted and deep fried.
In the meantime, the pig was spitted on a stout hibiscus branch. We stuffed the body cavity with spices and cassava leaves and sowed it up with a thread made out of the stout but flexible part of the banana leaf.
The rig for the spit was formed from sections of banana tree trunk. The banana trunk is like nested corrugated cardboard and it is strong enough to support weight but soft enough to drive a bamboo stake through. We made two 2-foot high walls in this fashion, 6 feet apart and built a fire. The banana trunk is so wet that the fire will singe but not burn it. When the fire was ready, we pushed it to one side and lay the spit with the pig across the two walls. As the spit started to rotate, it sank a bit into the banana trunks that were supporting it. In this way it not only formed its own groove, but the wetness of the trunk lubricated the spit and made it turn more easily. That is Balinese engineering at its finest.
We bathed the pig repeatedly in grated turmeric and water and in just three short hours the skin was beautifully golden and crispy as caramel. Once it started sagging off the spit we knew it was done.
Next to it, on a different spit, we wound the sausage and grilled that too.
Between that, some extras and the huge amount of lawar that the guys made, we had a feast fit for a Balinese King, which is exactly what I wanted to give to the staff to thank them for 6 months of amazing kindness and friendship.
They never showed.
That's not entirely accurate. A decent number of the male staff came (The
managers, a few cooks and the dishwashers) but 100% of the female staff did not.
I was crestfallen. What kept them away? Where did I go wrong? Also, how could twenty people finish off 25 kilograms of slow roasted pork, 10 kilos of sausage, 20 kilos of lawar, and 5 kilos of deep fried fat and offal...plus rice? It was hard to figure.
So I made four of the worlds largest doggie-bags, hung them off various parts of my scooter and drove to Ubud to bring the feast to them at each of the restaurants.
They were all happy to see me and apologized for not showing up.
"Why not?" I asked.
"Oh, Malu alEC."
That means 'shy'...
Aparently it was too nerve-racking for them to go to their boss's family compound. Too uncomfortable. Too socially strange. Too...American.
It's funny. We generally view equality through the lens of accomplishment. The lawyers would never invite the janitors to their party. The doctors would never invite the orderlies. Here, the women are the pariahs, staying home while the managers whoop it up with the dishwashers. It's a strange brand of egalitarianism. Maybe it is American after all...early American.
My host remarked that the pig was one of the best he had ever had. I did agree and made no effort to be humble because I didn't really cook it. Like everything else here, it was communal effort with me playing a minor role...unless you count the eating part because I played a major role in that.
I learned a ton. I could even replicate it in the states if I had enough time to track down substitute ingredients. I'm sorry I had to kill a pig but if you are going to eat pig, I believe you should be willing to get your hands dirty. Plus, I apologized to her, thanked her, and wasted nothing. That's about as respectful as a predator can be without changing his diet. As I've said before about chickens, if I had to kill one every time I wanted meat...I would eat a lot less meat.
So that's it for Bali. I'm actually finishing this e-mail in the airport in Hong Kong on my way to 'Nam (Things work here...it's weird). I hope you have enjoyed my stories. There are more to come but for now I'm a bit sad and already wish I was back in a place without a starbucks every ten meters and where fewer things made sense.
All the best,
Alex
Making Lawar
Getting ready
Grillin'
Grillin' on video
