materials and combinations of fresh, shaved and roasted coconut, seasoned coconut milk, egg omelette, shredded young jackfruit or fern tips, young beans, starfruit leaves, black, white, fresh green and long pepper, fried chilies, spice paste, shrimp paste, kaffir lime, palm sugar, green papaya, garlic, salt, shallots, finely chopped pork meat, skin, stomach lining, entrails and cartilage, fresh congealed pig’s blood (set aside after slaughtering 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 to produce the different types of lawar. This complex, time- consuming, highly perishable ritual dish is served with crisp pork crackling at all large family rituals or temple ceremonies on Bali. It is the first mandatory plan in any ritual cooking activity. The excess of all the rest pales in comparison to the religious requirements placed on the creation of lawar. Many different kinds and ritually significant colors of traditional lawar accompany Balinese feasts to represent the eight sacred cardinal points and directions, each of which symbolizes a different aspect of god with and its associated color. The Balinese make an entire suite—a minimum of five different kinds—of lawar dishes for a festival. Only a ritual food specialist or the oldest, most ceremonially seasoned men are allowed to combine the color-coded components. A coveted complication is the need to add fresh raw pig blood to the lawar. The abundance of spices is believed to prevent and protect against trichinosis from the consumption of raw pork.
Lawar is usually named according to its color, as in lawar merah (red lawar) and lawar putih (white lawar). Red lawar, symbolizing Lord Brahma and the southerly direction, must always contain blood and skinned raw meat. Turtle or pork strips mixed with slivers of young papaya, mango or coconut, spices, uncooked animal blood and pounded raw entrails yield red lawar. If fresh raw pig blood is added to the lawar, the lawar has a pink or red color. Alternately, the Balinese will dry the blood on a table for thirty minutes, cut it up into blocks or pieces, fry it and then add it to the lawar. The lawar will be black in color if it contains this dried, fried pig’s blood. In Gianyar regency, more vegetables are added to red lawar than in other regencies (long beans, in particular, are prominent in chicken lawar). Lawar can also be named according to its ingredients. Lawar mixed with pork is called lawar babi (pork lawar) and lawar which contains young jackfruit is called lawar nangka. White lawar is largely made of coconut meat. It contains raw meat but no blood and represents the north. Yellow lawar, representing the east, is a mixture of red and white lawar. Green lawar, representing Lord Wisnu and the westerly direction, is made of peanut leaf or peanuts, belimbing (starfruit) cloves or diced long green beans, spices, coconut milk and boiled meat. Multicolored lawar, representing Lord Siwa and the center, is a mixture of all the other four colors. A common ingredient in all five types of lawar is roasted coconut.
Ngelawar (lawar making) is a frequent activity on Bali. Formerly, traditional Balinese lawar was only made in conjunction with Galungan feast days, temple anniversaries and customary or religious ceremonies. Lawar can now be made any time, especially to commemorate Indonesia’s national day or for festivities to welcome the New Year. In Tabanan regency, ngelawar is commonly performed by young teenage boys in rural communities. They spontaneously buy an amount of meat, and since it is not a religious event, the exact type of meat and the kind of menu that is required is more flexible. Financed by high priests, lucky hamlets will slaughter a pig and employ it to make Bali’s favorite pork lawar delicacy. The meat is also processed into other types of lawar, grilled dishes, satay and local specialties. The young men make auspicious cones of rice, Manila duck lawar, grilled fish, young banana trunk soup and assorted fresh cakes (jaja). Seated face to face megibung style on bamboo mats, the boys are dressed in temple attire as they chop the ingredients into slivers with traditional cleavers on tree trunk cutting boards. Endless rows of smoking satays on thin sticks will also be fanned and grilled on braziers on the ground to cheer up the workers. This traditional food festival also celebrates the anniversary of the founding of the village youth club. Staged at the local hamlet hall, the joyous annual December event, replete with family atmosphere, celebrates the end of the old year and welcomes in the new one. Traditional Balinese dances are performed and the rice cone is ceremonially cut.
Specialty lawar abounds in Bali. The exotic hallmark of lawar embung, a traditional recipe from Tabanan, is sliced fresh young bamboo mixed with peanuts, peanut leaf and meat. Today’s increasingly urbanized Balinese, however, no longer relish eating bamboo (embung) and recall the difficulties of cutting down the tree and slicing it, and thus lawar embung is a village rarity nowadays. Apart from ceremonies, various kinds of lawar, including jackfruit, can be sampled at local babi guling warung. Spicy red hot padamare lawar is a combination of many kinds of lawar together (padam means to put out a fire; it also means fiery red or scarlet). This very heavily peppered lawar recreates the historical taste of original Balinese food, uncorrupted by the introduction of chilies in the sixteenth century and other culinary concessions to the modern age. Negara regency boasts its own Balinese recipe for chicken lawar in which young coconut is the core ingredient.
To process the coconut, villagers pour out the water, scrape the soft skin from inside the shell, boil it in water and then press out the excess water by hand. The resulting material is chopped into small pieces and combined with a spice paste mixture (bumbu), onions and a small free-range boiled Balinese chicken. The Balinese draw daily on their ancient heritage and religious culinary imagination to create superb dishes geared towards the gods.
Vegetables (sayur) are eagerly recruited into festival culinary service. Vegetable and fruit dishes, such as fried winged beans (botor), bean sprouts with crushed peanuts and grated coconuts dyed a reverential yellow with turmeric, are an integral part of Bali’s festival cuisine. Vegetarian lawar is made with ferns, egg and long green beans mixed with grated coconut, shallots, garlic cloves, red chilies, small hot green chilies, kaffir lime, salt and bumbu spice paste.
Elaborately executed bebek betutu (whole smoked duck), babi guling (suckling pig) and jukut ares (classic banana tree trunk soup) also feature prominently on the temple-bound menu. The Balinese marshal condiments, oddments, bananas and coconuts to turn almost anything edible into an outstanding village delicacy. The tender harvested core of a young banana palm stem, resembling a crunchy, rounded piece of bamboo with tiny holes, is very thinly sliced and boiled with spices, minced meat (pork or beef), duck (wings, legs and head) or chicken to make jukut ares, a substantial aromatic stew composed of young banana tree trunk and meat. Banana pods (the flower buds) can be used instead. (Stems from the mature banana plants are only used as pig food on Bali.) The resulting dish will be called serosop. Ares (which means the pith of the banana plant) is typically served at large ritual feasts and to family and neighbors who assisted in cooking, making offerings and arranging the ceremonies.
Ceremonial tum is cooked daily in many family compounds for Bali’s ceremonies. Tum are 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, chilies, turmeric, lesser galangal, salam leaves, sambal and spice paste. Tum starts out similarly to saté lilit but it contains no grated coconut or palm sugar. The pasty mixtures are packed into triangular, pleated banana leaf purses or corn husks to create this classic Balinese ritual dish. The purses are sealed with either a sharp banana stick, a sharpened coconut leaf rib used specially for fastening leaf-wrapped packages or, more usually, with a tiny bamboo stick called a semat. Shaped to look like a holy mountain peak, they are then steamed. Chicken or fish tum is also prepared as an occasional, everyday food for lunch or dinner. Created and conveyed with love, art and reverence for the gods, Bali’s temple-bound food offerings are purified by white-robed, bell-ringing high priests, sprinkled with holy water and then carried home to be eaten. Nourishment dances and vacillates between sustenance and sacrifice on an island of the gods perfectly positioned and protected eight degrees south of the equator.
Red Pork Lawar with Blood
LAWAR MERAH (BAHASA INDONESIA), OR LAWAR BARAK (BALINESE)
In this holy covenant between god, man and food, lawar is the undisputed high priest of festival cuisine. Each different lawar dish is impossibly time-consuming and complex in its creation and preparation, offering deeply
