Succulent, smoking satay sticks keep every corner of the wicked world turning: each country and continent invents its own unique interpretation of the seductive saté (the French brochette, Japanese yakitori, Korean bulgoki, Indian tandoori, Russian shashlik, South African sosaties, and Middle Eastern, Turkish shish kebab). Satay, derived from the Tamil word for flesh, sathai, is grilled, marinated chicken, beef, fish, goat, mutton, or other types of meat: Indonesia boasts a large catalogue of saté formats, meat combinations, and regional saté specialties, differentiated by indigenous local cooking styles and native ingredients. Living in the ever-present shadow of brooding, active volcanoes, the peoples of Indonesia have created their own defiant sticks of pleasure which they burn at the stake over hot smoky fires and flames rivalling the primal energies pent up and sent up in the Ring of Fire. There are countless sought-after meat satés, reflecting local food supply, availability, and pricing: saté siap or ayam (chicken), saté babi (pork), saté kambing (goat or lamb), saté sampi or sapi (beef), poor, abused, unloved saté anjing (dog), saté kelinci (rabbit, more commonly eaten in Java), saté kerang (mussels picked from the shorelines), saté siput in Bahasa Indonesia and kakul in Balinese (garden, sawah, or ocean snails or shellfish), saté udang (shrimp, out of the economic reach of most people), and saté languan (sea fish). Served in Balinese ritual ceremonies, saté languan is made with green coconut, spices, and brown sugar: it is a traditional food of Klungkung regency, but can be found all over Bali.
Magic, myth, and mystery surround even the most quotedien of satés: the dietary combinations of goat satay and beer—and dog satay and arak—are believed to enhance male virility (“strong”) and guarantee hours of marital bliss in the family compound. Some satés are subject to consumption restrictions due to customary or religious beliefs: saté babi (not eaten by Muslims), saté jamu (satés reserved for the feeding of guests), and saté penyu (turtle)--rarely eaten or available in Java, but commonly used for ceremonial purposes in Bali). The ubiquitous, superstar saté has even inspired such international madness as Rasa Satay Singapura (part of the annual Singapore Food Festival). Hawker Center Lau Pa Sat transforms itself into a street of satay vendors competing to create the longest satay line. In 2006, the Nikko Bali Resort in Nusa Dua attempted to produce the longest satay in the world—cheered on by a gamelan orchestra and Jegog dancers from Jembrana. A staff of seventy-five hotel employees created a new international record (Record Museum of Indonesia) by grilling an 82.5 meter-long satay using 150 kilograms of imported Australian beef in the hotel courtyard!
Satés are the secular and religious workhorses of the Balinese and Indonesian diet: pork, chicken, beef, lamb, duck, dog, snail, minced seafood, fish, or prawns are marinated in spice paste, chillies, and brown sugar, sliced very thinly, and threaded onto bamboo sticks to be grilled quickly at high temperature over glowing coconut husks. Bali’s beautiful, sizzling-hot satés are live performance art forms sturdily suspended on narrow, smoking skewers over hot portable braziers: Balinese satés are selectively, lightly burned on the outside, imparting a particularly delicious, palm-sugar-based, caramel flavor. To properly cook saté, the fire must be very low, and the heat should be as high as possible; this is achieved by vigorously fanning air into the fire with a sturdy, hand-held, bamboo fan. The Balinese generally eat freshly grilled saté as a snack at a warung or buy it from carts that specialize in chicken or lamb saté on the side of the road. Satay ayam is the most common market mainstay: squatting streetside vendors string tiny, basted chunks (four to six pieces) of tightly packed chicken onto their skewers and turn and twirl them by hand over very hot smoking, glowing, dried coconut husks on a small ceramic or metal grille. As they cook, the satés are continually either hand-fanned with a small bamboo mat or aerated with a small, plastic, rotating fan to energize the flames. An extra shot of marinade makes the flames crackle and leap to attention--and imparts a delicious smoky finish to the juicy treats. Customer-ready satés are doused with a final, fiery, sweet peanut sauce and wrapped in banana leaves as a take-out meal. Although grilled satés are often served with a creamy peanut sauce, the Balinese normally dip the tip of the saté into a mixture of chopped chillies and salt or in a mixture of sweet soy sauce blended with chopped chillies. Artistically rendered skewers of succulent saté ayam are also teamed with a banana-leaf-lined clay pot of steamed white rice, sayur urab, and sambal ulek, a sauce made by crushing spices in a mortar (an ulek-ulek is a pestle, crusher, or slightly bent piece of wood or stone used to pound or grind spices in a cobék or mortar)—a Balinese recipe for true culinary ecstasy.
The most popular types of satay in Bali are saté ayam (chicken), saté lilit (minced seafood), saté lembat (minced chicken or duck saté with grated coconut), saté manis (beef or pork, with spice paste, sugar, and sweet, thick soy sauce), and saté asam (pre-marinated meat with a sharp, sour, acidic, vinegar-like taste threaded through a skewer). Saté asam celeng incorporates pork loin or tenderloin, basic spice paste, bird’s eye chillies, palm sugar, and salt—to bring forth a sharp saté with sour, acidic highlights. (Saté asam sampi is acidic-tasting beef saté.) Saté asam is renowned for its soft consistency: briefly boiled for only a few minutes, it escapes the hellish flames and burning smoke of the traditional charcoal grill. The three saucy saté sisters--saté, saté lilit, and saté lembat—share loyalty, sticks, and spices—with significant family differences. Pasty lookalikes saté lilit and saté lembat are both wound around the end of a skewer, but they vary in precise shape, size, and composition. The generous genetic orgy of bloodline spices is the same, but saté lilit is consistently blessed with coconut milk, whereas saté lembat is always impregnated with grated coconut.
