(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 and cullings. Nocturnal dog catchers on motorcycles resort to mass-poisoning beloved pets to obtain saleable meat supplies. Men toss parcels of meat laced with poison to dogs lounging all over the village streets in the early morning hours. They return one to two hours later with a truck to collect the carcasses. Men also catch stray dogs in Denpasar by motor-bike: one man drives while another sits on the back. They prey on dogs sleeping in the street and toss a lasso made of metal attached to a straight bamboo stick around their necks. The meat of the sad, sorry snatched victims is soon sold in Denpasar as hot smoking satay.
Cruelty, karma and cuisine go hand in hand for dogs in Bali. Dogs are disliked, disrespected and eaten in Bali because of a “primitive belief ” that is still in wide circulation: if a human being is bad (a thief, for example), he will come back in his next lifetime as a dog (the dog “made a mistake” as a human). It is considered a terrible reincarnation to be reborn as a dog (they are evil souls): the buta kalas (negative or evil spirits or demons) are believed to be embodied in the local dogs. To make this a self-fulfilling prophecy, Balinese men customarily rub very hot red chilies onto the gums of young puppies from birth to make them angry and train them to be aggressive. Dogs are also very common targets of personal revenge. If your neighbor does not like you, or he thinks you are doing black magic against him, or your dog is noisy, he will poison your dog. He tosses poisoned bakso meat balls into your house yard, which the dog eats and dies. In deep contrast, the Balinese do not kill, cook or eat cucing (cat). If they accidentally run over a cat on the road, they will stop and make a ceremony for the cat. If they hit a cat and there is no ceremony, it will bring bad luck.
Fortunately, the Balinese usually sustain themselves with other food besides dogs. They also feast on ample amounts of steamed white rice, stir-fried leaves and greens (kangkung) and long green beans (kacang panjang), small portions of fish such
