The Perils of Penyu: Ritual and Dietary Turtle Meat. Part
One
Bali’s underwater wonderland provides thin sanctuary
for five of the world’s seven remaining species of marine
turtles: penyu lekang (olive ridley), penyu hijau (green turtle),
penyu sisik (hawksbill), penyu tempayan (loggerhead), penyu
belimbing (leatherback), and penyu pipih (flatback). One-hundred-million
year old remnants from the age of dinosaurs--Bali’s
ancient sea turtles have three of their four fragile flippers
poised over the precipice of permanent species extinction.
Despite a 1979 CITES ban on international trade in endangered
green sea turtles (and their products), Bali’s turtles
are still exploited for food, tortoise shell jewelry (worth
$75 U.S. per kilogram, tortoise shell is often cruelly removed
from still-living turtles), handicrafts, and mounted taxidermy
displays. Flouting worldwide conservation efforts, local shops
still sell turtle shell artefacts and whole polished turtle
shells near Bali’s turtle tourist venues. The sale,
possession, and consumption of turtle meat was further prohibited
by local legislation in 1990 and 1999 (Indonesian Government
Act No. 7 on the Preservation of Wild Flora and Fauna), but
the laws are randomly and inconsistently enforced. Bold illegal
traders still kill thirty thousand wild (indigenous and imported),
juvenile sea turtles every year in Bali (six thousand of them
are ritually sacrificed in religious ceremonies as symbols
of fertility, productivity, steadfastness, and immortality).
Majestic, one-hundred-year-old adults are also slaughtered
alive and their meat vended (covertly) at local markets and
in village warungs.
Bali-Hindu religious and cultural practices present unique
and daunting challenges to turtle preservation: sacred ceremonial
cuisine is mandatory for important religious holidays like
Galungan, and for ritual occasions like weddings, toothfilings,
cremations, and temple anniversaries. Many of these gustatory
masterpieces routinely call for turtle meat. Southern Bali
has its own special, spice-and coconut-driven, turtle blood
and turtle meat meal called ngebat or ebat, (meaning “chopped
up), presented on a woven, coconut or banana leaf mat. At
the heart of the five, core ritual dishes is lawar penyu--long,
thin, turtle meat slivers (cut from boiled turtle cartilage)
mixed with raw, uncooked blood, a laboriously chopped medley
of spices, and hand-grated coconut. Urab (ground coconut,
meat, and kekalas--heated, thickened coconut milk with turmeric),
geguden (pounded turtle meat, kekalas, and boiled starfruit
leaves), jejeruk (coarsely grated coconut with kekalas), and
serandu (leftover coconut milk pulp, blood, meat, and spices)
complete the assortment. The liver, intestines, stomach, lungs,
heart, and cartilage are boiled in a huge, steaming cauldron.
The mixed-together turtle viscera plus meat and skin (nothing
is thrown out or wasted in Bali) is then grilled to produce
serapah--a side dish cooked with herbs, spices, sweet and
hot chillies, and served sliced. Komoh is a soup made from
turtle blood and spices.
Near the coast, where sea turtles (penyu) are readily available,
their meat is the preferred choice for ebat, while pigs are
usually utilized inland. An offering is first made to the
turtle, begging its forgiveness for what is about to ensue
(ceremonial turtles are traditionally killed at home—particularly
on the day before Galungan). The helpless turtle is placed
in a crescent-shaped, concave cement hole excavated in the
back yard--specifically designed for this purpose. It is flipped
over onto its back and a knife is used to cut all the way
around the perimeter of the turtle in order to pull it out
of its shell in one entire piece. Slaughtered whole—while
still alive—the turtles scream, make noises, and cry
watery tears from tear ducts during this horrific, inhumane
process. The Balinese insist that if you kill the turtle first
by slitting its throat (as is done with pigs), the meat will
not taste as good.
Mexican traveller Miguel Covarrubias (renowned author of Island
of Bali), provided the first sobering, poignant, Western description
of traditional Balinese turtle cuisine in the 1930s: “On
the road coming from the seaport of Benua we often met men
from Belaluan staggering under the weight of a giant turtle
flapping its paddles helplessly in space, and then we knew
they were preparing for a feast. For days before the banquet,
four or five stupefied turtles crawled under the platforms
of the bale banjar awaiting the fateful moment when, in the
middle of the night, the kulkul would sound to call the men
to the gruesome task of sacrificing them. A sea-turtle possesses
a strange reluctance to die and for many hours after the shell
is removed and the flaps and head are severed from the body,
the viscera continue to pulsate hysterically, the bloody members
twitch weirdly on the ground, and the head snaps furiously.
The blood of the turtle is carefully collected and thinned
with lime juice to prevent coagulation. By dawn the many cooks
and assistants are chopping the skin and meat with heavy chopping
axes (blakas) on sections of tree-trunks (talanan), grating
coconuts, fanning fires, boiling or steaming great quantities
of rice, and mashing spices in clay dishes (tjobek) with wooden
pestles (pengulakan).”
Covarrubias noted five customary, ceremonial turtle meat dishes:
lawar (skin and flesh finely chopped and mixed with spices
and raw blood), getjok (chopped meat with grated coconut and
spices), green urab gadang (chopped meat with grated coconut
and spices cooked in tamarind leaves), kiman (chopped meat
and grated coconut cooked in coconut cream), and saté
lembat. Saté lembat or leklat is raw turtle meat “mebatted”
(chopped), and then pounded in a large mortar (like that used
to pound rice) to a thick, paste-like consistency. Laced with
grated coconut, santen (rich coconut cream), and spices, it
is wound around the end of a thick bamboo stick and roasted
over charcoals. Saté lembat is presented with an equal
number of ordinary saté, little pieces of meat the
size of dice strung on bamboo sticks “en brochette,”
grilled over the coals, eaten dry, or with a sauce.
Belaluan village cooks offered their special saté lembat
recipe: “Take a piece of hard, brown ripe coconut, roast
it over the coals, peel off the toasted skin (lodged between
the shell and the meat), and grind it in a mortar. To prepare
the sauce, brown red pepper, garlic, and red onions in a frying-pan
and then mix with black pepper, ginger, tumeric, nutmeg, cloves,
sra (pungent fermented fish paste), isen and tjekoh (aromatic
roots resembling ginger) , ketumbah, ginten, and salt. Mash
together with the toasted coconut skin and fry the mixture
until half done. Add very finely chopped red turtle meat (without
fat) to the sauce in a bowl, two and a half times as much
meat as sauce. Add one whole grated coconut and mix well with
enough santen to obtain a consistency that will adhere to
the sticks (not too dry or too wet). Knead for an hour and
a half as if making bread. Bamboo sticks ten inches long by
a half-inch thick should be made ready and rounded at one
end. Take a ball of the paste in the fingers and cover the
end of the stick with it, beginning at the top and working
down gradually, turning it all the time to give it the proper
shape, then roast over the coals until done. Pork, duck, or
chicken suffice for modest feasts, but turtle remains the
favorite of the Balinese of Denpasar. Turtles are expensive,
about twenty dollars for a good-sized one (Rp.250,000 for
a small, 15 kg. green turtle and over one million Rp. for
a large turtle in 2007). Although the expression, ‘He
has to eat banana leaves,’ is used to give emphasis
to someone’s extreme poverty, a delicious dish and a
great delicacy is kekalan, made of tender banana leaf shoots
cooked in turtle blood and lime juice.”
