lawar
LAWAR OF CELEBRATORY FOOD OFTEN WRAPPED IN BANANA LEAVES
Whenever there’s an important feast or religious ceremony in her banjar, Ketut, our pembantu and chief cultural adviser will drop over a parcel of celebratory food wrapped in banana leaves and waxed brown paper. More often than not it will include at least one variety of lawar.
Lawar literally means “thinly sliced” or “finely chopped”, and lawar Bali basically consists of chopped meat and vegetables mixed together with an array of spices and other fragrant ingredients. In terms of appearance it is rustic rather than spectacular. Although on close inspection the individual ingredients are recognisable, the initial overall impression is of uniformity with neither the meat nor the vegetables nor the other ingredients dominant. The spice mix includes shallots, fresh turmeric, ginger, kencur, galangal, white pepper and shrimp paste. Some lawar contains no meat, the meat replaced with young jackfruit, green mango or some other vegetable, but is usually either pork, duck, chicken, catfish, eel, or even, it is said – though I’ve never tried it – dragonfly.
Pork is the most common in which case it is also sometimes mixed with blood from the animal which gives the dish a distinctive dark red colour that contrasts with the green of chopped snake-beans, the other most typical ingredient. The inclusion of blood divides people in Bali. Many prefer it without for the sake of their health as well as personal taste. The other camp insist, not only on the superior flavour of lawar mixed with blood, but also on its heath giving qualities.
Even minus the blood, there is something elemental about lawar and something in the perfectly balanced blend of meat, vegetables and other ingredients that parallels the quest for harmony and cohesion evident in the process of making and sharing it. Having said that, making lawar is strictly men’s business.
Lawar can be eaten at any time – I’ve frequently enjoyed it in the evening with shots of arak in a drinking circle, for example (the fire of good arak matches it nicely actually). It is also typically served up as part of the standard plate at babi guling restaurants, but it is fundamentally a ceremonial food and no special ceremony or festive occasion is ever without it. No less so than that most important of Balinese Hindu ceremonies, Galungan, for example, which most recently fell on the first of this month.
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