the spices, from the winding of the satays to the mincing of the turtle and pork dishes, is strictly a male responsibility because it is physically strenuous work. Ritual food is traditionally prepared at night as it has to be ready in the morning for ceremonies which often begin at dawn. Scores of men from each household gather at the bale banjar armed with large cleaver-like Balinese knives (belaka) and cutting boards to perform a sacred procedure known as mebat or ngeracik basa, the chopping of all the ceremonial ingredients. The spices are presented to them in woven coconut leaf baskets. The teams of men sit crosslegged on the ground on coconut leaf mats in two long rows facing each other, their chopping boards in between. Clad in traditional sarongs and sashes and wearing large antique silver or gold rings embedded with magical stones and potent protective powers, they mix and grind piles of pre-chopped spices. The men energetically smash shallots and garlic cloves, crush spices, scrape galangal and turmeric roots and hand-grate and shred dozens of freshly roasted coconuts for three hours on the evening before a ceremony. The tektek-tek sound of their knives on the cutting boards can be heard far away. This sound is an inescapable part of Balinese village life. When the spices are prepared and ready, the men go home for a few hours of sleep and return at 1 a.m. to butcher and prepare the animal meat—a whole sea turtle (penyu) in southern Bali, ducks or pigs in other parts of the island. The men boil organ meats to be skewered and grilled and prepare blood soup and pork tartare from 3 to 5 a.m. A jug of arak is often passed around to enliven the proceedings. Women are only allowed to wash salad ingredients, fry onions and assist with other basic preparation chores. They also cook the rice, prepare vegetables, make coffee, tea and rice cake refreshments for guests and helpers, and plait hundreds of coconut leaf offerings.
The megibung ritual (megibung means having a meal together), a cultural feast of epic proportions, is still carried out in Bali, as largely unchanged customary practices continue to take precedence over modernity. The traditional megibung food feast originated in the eighteenth century during the time of the Karangasem kingdom in East Bali and is still widely observed in the villages. Beside being a tool of religious ritual and a communal gathering, the purpose of the megibung was also to ascertain how many troops were in the kingdom’s army at that time. This traditional event is now held in order to build togetherness and reinforce friendship and brotherhood within the community. At the gathering, all participants are considered equal—none is rich or poor and none is educated or uneducated. The megibung is carried out at meal times during the laborious group process of organizing and implementing temple ceremonies and during life cycle rituals such as weddings. The early morning (3–6 a.m.) mebat procedure is the entrance ticket for the subsequent male only megibung feast, which takes place at the banjar before every large temple festivity, around 6 a.m. Holy cooking responsibilities are taken very seriously. The mebat men conscientiously chop ingredients pre-dawn for all the ceremonial food, special community portions for family members and ritual banjar chefs, and the upcoming megibung participants.
The distinguishing feature of the megibung is that the men eat together from the same big plate (sela) and share the same dishes using their hands as utensils. They must consume all the food that is served. This normally consists of an array of traditional Balinese festival dishes (satay, vegetables, lawar, rice, etc.) placed in bamboo or banana leaf containers in the center of a group of five to eight (up to a maximum of ten) men seated on the ground on a communal bamboo mat. (One unit of gibungan typically consists of eight people sitting around the food.) If a hundred men attend the megibung, there will usually be twenty groups. Ancient protocols govern conduct during the megibung gathering. No one may try to start ahead of another and each participant takes his portion from in front of where he sits. The oldest participant is appointed the group coordinator. On the agreement of the participants, the coordinator invites the members to start and then determines when the gathering will be completed, usually when all the members have been satisfied. The coordinator also selects the next side dish to be added to the food tray. Generally, the first side dish served, equivalent to the first course, is selected from less tasty foods such as star fruit leaf, lawar and komoh, a thick soup made from chopped pork, fresh chicken or pig blood, and a little bit of water. Komoh only can be found in some areas in western and northern Bali when people celebrate Penampahan Galungan, one of Hindu Bali’s most auspicious days. When the side dishes run short or the participants get bored with them, it is time to serve more mouth-watering dishes, such as satay or meat.
The entire village comes together to facilitate Bali’s communal feasts. A grand ceremony may entail days or even weeks of cooking to prepare enough food for 700 or more people, necessitating the slaughter of several small pigs and the purchase of 110 pounds of spices! Each village or area has its own male ritual cooking specialist who directs and inspects the work. There is tremendous local variation and theological competition in the preparation of traditional ritual foods intended for the gods. When men from different regencies, villages or even adjacent banjar prepare ceremonial foods together, methodological differences and debates arise over such minutiae and practices as the correct order in which to add and mix the spices, vegetables, coconut and other lawar ingredients. When it comes to preparing ritual banquet food, the men are the ceremonial chefs and it is the men alone who can prepare the great festival dishes of roast sucking pig and sea turtle, the cooking of which requires the skilled, secret magical arts of famous specialists. Certain prosperous banjar have earned reputations for their superlative cooking, and their “famous cooks” are always in great demand island-wide to officiate at feasts. Locals eagerly anticipate the arrival of well-known ritual cooks to direct the preparation of epicurean masterpieces like saté lembat, babi guling and lawar. Keepers of the knowledge and philosophy of traditional religious cuisine, Bali’s men jealously guard these age-old secrets of sacred ritual cooking, only passing on the techniques and traditions to their own sons when they reach age sixteen.
Lawar (which means thinly sliced) is Bali’s most famous festival masterpiece. This style of cooking uses many different 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