It’s an ordinary morning. I am at the keyboard, and
Wayan is scrubbing the bathroom. Suddenly the scrubbing stops,
and a moment later she appears at the door. “Has Ibu
seen the animal in the bathroom?” she asks casually.
‘Binatang/animal’ is our code word for wildlife.
In this case it describes a very large black beetle-like creature
with yellow splotches on its back, red ones on its head and
a pair of feelers wider than it was long. “It can bite,
but it has no poison,” Wayan reports. What’s it
called? Shrug. “Can you eat it?” I ask. The Balinese
have a tradition of eating strange creatures for therapeutic
purposes or just for the fun of it. But Wayan rolls her eyes
at me this time. It seems that Splotch has no redeeming culinary
or medicinal qualities. I take its portrait for the rogue’s
gallery and we release it in the garden.
The Balinese have an arcane pharmacopoeia of their own which
probably pre-dates the Hindu culture here. There is a long
tradition of medicinal plants, but I am also learning that
some of the creatures of the garden also play a healing role.
Sometimes Wayan will share these gems with me and I make hurried
notes on little pieces of paper which immediately disappear.
Months later I find a scrap tucked into a book with ‘dragonfly
soup’ or ‘roast spiders’ scrawled on it.
Or sometimes my friends borrow the books and return these
memos with eyebrows raised very, very high.
The spider recipe came about one day when Wayan was dusting
and came across a large web in the corner of the ceiling.
Perhaps to disguise the fact that the duster had not visited
this location for some time, she began to chat. Sometimes
she has to repeat a new concept several times before I comprehend
it, and it was a few minutes before I understood that the
subject under discussion was bed-wetting. It seems the Balinese
have long known that a certain kind of house spider can cure
this inconvenient habit. I was a bit slow to make the connection
and she had to explain it very slowly. The child must eat
the spider, or preferably several of them, thus guaranteeing
dry sheets for several weeks.
My first thought was that this was because the poor child
probably became a chronic insomniac following this prescription,
but Wayan assured me the kids enjoyed the snack. You didn’t
just put the spiders straight into your mouth, of course.
The hapless arachnids were carefully roasted at the edge of
the fire until their legs fell off, at which time they were
considered done to a turn. And it was the brown house spider
in particular, mind, not just any old spider.
I asked about the big black garden spiders with the yellow
knees, whose vast golden webs seemed to span every clearing
in the rainy season. These, it seemed, were particularly succulent.
Once again they were roasted til the legs fell off, then the
tough skin was split to reach the payload. “Lots of
meat and eggs inside,” Wayan recalls dreamily.
Some treats were gender-specific. Python meat, for example,
was only eaten by males, and only the brave ones at that.
Balinese believe that creatures that live near the river impart
special energy, so they relish the snakes, porcupines, musang
and other animals they catch in the ravines. It’s getting
rarer to find wildlife now, and because the Balinese catch
and eat everything they see the situation is unlikely to improve.
The snake meat is usually boiled, then mixed with a traditional
bumbu of garlic, shallots and chillies. “They say that
python meat tastes like chicken, but I never dared to taste
it,” she confides. No other snakes are eaten here.
Frogs are a popular treat. Once plentiful at harvest time,
they were usually barbecued. Toads are avoided. The capture
of a prehistoric monitor lizard is reason for a party, with
five or six men feasting on it. Wayan makes the bumbu, but
declines to taste the main course.
And the choice remedy for a strong heart is almost never attempted
by women, either. Once again it took several tries before
I understood the story. “Baby rats, no hair, still red
colour,” Wayan explained carefully. “You must
swallow them whole, alive, with arak.” One hopes that
the arak anesthetizes the poor creatures on the way down.
This remedy was also popular in Java. I don’t know what
it does for the heart, but certainly must help keep the rat
population down.
I was able to match this with a tale from the Philippines,
where men consume duck eggs in which the embryo is almost
ready to hatch. The bravest bite the heads off and wash the
delicacy down with beer. Sometimes it seems we are not so
very far from the caves after all.
Entering the culinary world, Wayan shared with me the recipe
for Dragonfly Pepes. She makes a mean Ikan Pepes and the recipes
are similar. First catch your dragonflies – hundreds
of them. They are particularly abundant around Nyepi. As a
child she would be sent out to the fields with a long stick
rubbed with jackfruit. The dragonflies landed on the stick,
attracted to the sticky juice, and were unable to fly away.
Wayan recounts that on a good day you can fill a big plastic
bag with dragonflies in this fashion in just a couple of hours.
Then comes the tedious business of removing the wings, roasting
the dragonflies at the edge of the fire and then removing
the tough skin. The meat is mixed with chillies pounded with
garlic and shallots and just a little grated coconut. Then
it is shaped into fingers, wrapped in banana leaves and grilled
in the usual fashion.
