Regal saté lilit (rambat in Balinese) is a time-consuming, indigenous Balinese specialty utilizing the choicest cuts of pounded pork, chicken, seafood, or duck. Prepared as an offering, it is usually only made for religious celebrations (Galungan-Kuningan, mass cremations, toothfilings, or weddings)--when lots of time, labor, and large amounts of meat, spices, and shredded coconut are available. Seafood saté lilit (lilit means to twist or wind around) starts out as a pasty, multiple-fish mixture of fresh chopped snapper, tuna, mackerel, swordfish, or mujair (a kind of white water fish), raw prawns, coconut milk, seafood spice paste, sea salt, chillies, kaffir lime leaves, brown palm sugar (to give the slightly charred, caramelized exterior glaze typical of Balinese satay), and complementary spices. The culinary highwire act is to mince, grind, and blend the fish and spice batter fine enough (to a chopped sausage consistency) to twine it easily around one end of a flattened saté stick, a coconut leaf spine, or the bulbous end of a lemon grass stalk. (Thick, stubby bamboo sticks resembling ice cream paddles are Balinese-style skewers, while thin pointed sticks are Indonesian-style and are more appropriate for saté ayam.) Delicate-tasting, drumstick-shaped saté lilit is supremely delicious if trimmed, juicy spears of fresh lemon grass are used as skewers instead of bamboo sticks, and if it is grilled over a fragrant, flavor-enhancing fire of coconut shell embers (the coconut keeps it moist) instead of charcoal. To fabricate duck saté lilit, Balinese villagers include ground duck meat and ground duck bones into the lilit batter in order to save money. It has a different taste and texture than the all-meat restaurant versions.
Saté lembat (pork, chicken, duck, and traditionally turtle) is made with the flavors and contours of paradise: grated coconut, crushed ground meat, pulverized spices, and coconut. It is always prepared for Balinese rituals and ceremonies, and the number of sticks varies for each occasion. A specialty saté exclusively hand-produced by men, it is reputed to be a phallic symbol representing the weapons of war. Saté lembat starts out as a thick, sticky, grainy, aromatic mixture of pounded, minced raw meat, grated coconut, coconut milk, and spices. A tukang saté (saté maker or worker) scoops up a small chunk of the kneaded dough--shaping and rolling it onto the flat end of the (thick-style) bamboo stick—until it forms a thumb-sized, pear shaped ball. The paste continues to be spiralled around until it reaches halfway down the stick, tapering down to the diameter of the shaft below. A piece of banana stem is cut, and several of the sticks are thrust into it by their sharply trimmed ends; the banana stem serves as a native holder as the saté lembat grills over the charcoal (or glowing coconut husks) to a golden brown sheen.
The saté’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King: superlative multi-stick, “iron chef” saté presentations—worthy of a palace cokorda--are available in chicken, pork, or fish ceremonial configurations. Ceremonies and saté sticks always march hand in hand: satés are one of the most important ritual foods on the island of the gods. The larger the ceremony, the more saté sticks need to be made. Priests consult the sacred lontar inscriptions to gauge the number of saté offerings required for specific ceremonies: these ancient prescriptions list how each offering should be made and how many offerings specific occasions require. Large-size satés are for common offerings, while small satés are for caru offerings. An ordinary ceremony would require thirty sticks (plus other food) to sufficiently feed ten people. Cultural observer Miguel Covarrubias photographed a group of bare-chested, saronged village men seated on the ground preparing large, ceremonial banquet quantities of “turtle meat en brochette” in the 1930s. The satés were affixed to a ten-foot-long, two-strip, bamboo pole border resembling steps on a fireman’s shaky ladder or a train track. The long straight row of one hundred or more saté sticks were being athletically hand-fanned with square bamboo mats—twirled, turned, and broiled to fruition over a bed of hot smoking coals. Very little has changed since then.
In ceremonial settings, the number of saté sticks offered in a bundle represents a family’s caste or position in society: the more sticks (as many as eleven for a high priest), the higher the position. Practiced in the art of saté stick construction and seduction, communal groups of men hand-make the supporting player saté sticks for rituals like the three-month baby ceremony. Sourced from long, round, felled bamboo poles, the saté sticks are painstakingly cut, hacked, and whittled into shape behind warungs, in narrow gangs, and in darkened family compounds on the evening before a ceremony. While most offerings are constructed by women, men gather together to labor over elaborate meat offerings on all major ritual occasions: these gayah (saté gede) offerings represent the animal kingdom, a counterpoise to the plant life kingdom represented by women’s offerings. (Balinese offerings characteristically symbolize and include) the “entire contents of the world” to maintain harmony and balance in the universe). This brown, triangular offering resembles a dried-out floral arrangement or a Christmas pine tree with hundreds of protruding, needle-like, bristling saté sticks; a pig’s head forms its carnivorous base. A bouquet of tall, thin, all-pork saté stick offerings is required for cremation ceremonies on the beach. Many different types of pork saté appear in the white-clothed, bamboo-colored arrangement: pork liver saté, pork skin saté, tiny, Q-tip-shaped pork saté lembat, and combined pork saté lembat and pork skin together on one skewer. Five rectangular bacon or pork strips also crown five tiny, toothpick-thin, holy hairpin-like sticks.
