How the little piggies come home

On the drive up to the mountain town of Ubud in Bali, Indonesia, there was only one thought in our minds, and it was a foreign, funny sounding thing: Babi guling! The chant possessed us in our growing hunger. It was the fourth day of a holiday in Bali with friends, and the babi had been talked up to us by every cab driver, resort worker and guidebook we encountered. Babi guling is the Balinese version of roast suckling pig, a feast much like our own lechon, partaken during special occasions and happy celebrations.

Four girls drooling over a spit-roasted pig might seem inconceivable, especially since we had to fit into our bikinis. But we all came a long away from home and somehow crossroaded in New York, a city where food is fetishized and cuisine has become the culture. While Filipinos love their food, and all sorts of third-rate pig parts are the starring attraction in street fare, pork has actually achieved trendiness in the New York scene. Beyond being just “the other white meat,” pork as the centerpiece in many fine-dining menus shows a growing movement away from the old chicken-ordering notion that pork is fattening and unflattering.

While mainstream New York has yet to embrace the nasty bits, pigs’ feet can be found in Spanish Harlem, plated with rice and beans, chicharon bulaklak is still the killer app when visiting Pistahan on First Avenue, and in Chinatown, well you get the whole hog. Specialty swine, like the black Berkshire, are raised in boutique upstate New York farms to end up as juicy shreds lying tenderly atop a bowl of Momofuku ramen. BBQ joints have upscaled nicely as well, with Justin Timberlake’s Southern Hospitality recently added to the mix. So my appreciation for the pig has developed considerably, despite the fact that I was raised kosher by my pork-denying eating mom, and only started unabashedly exploring porcine cuisine several years ago when I dated someone who was, I suppose, hog-wild.

But going back to Bali — we made our way past souvenir stores and beachwear shops, ornate temples and rustic warungs (outdoor food stalls). Ubud, a neo-hippydrome an hour’s drive away from any beach, populated with expats, artists, and sacred monkeys, is the place for babi guling. And the place for babi guling in Ubud is Ibu Oka, a divey warung where local chefs come to chow, and more recently, hordes of traveling foodies after a visitation by Anthony Bourdain on his show No Reservations. Not wanting to fight the crowds, our “local” guide Karen Grupp (actually a friend from Manila who has been living the simple life in Ubud for the past two years) pre-ordered the dishes the day before and had them delivered to Murni’s Warung, a gorgeous four-storey establishment carved into the edge of a ravine, and Ubud’s first restaurant.

Surrounded by foliage as thick as thieves and the metallic thrum of crickets, uninterrupted, we prepared to dine in heaven. The babi guling was brought out, laid on our table. The pork was what you’d expect it to be after several hours of roasting over a fiery pit — succulent, flavorful, exotically spicy, and 100 percent soul satisfying. Topped with a piece of crisp crackling, a slice of blood sausage, and accompanied with yellow rice and lawar, a veggie dish of fern-tips, papaya, belimbing leaves and green beans. It was a composition of beauty and color, and it was gone in 60 seconds.

But to truly appreciate the dish, one has to know from whence it came. Freddie Elizalde, another Manila transplant and a seafaring, gastronomical anthropologist of sorts, explained to us the oft-times unpretty process of creating babi guling, which he has studied at Ibu Oka’s home.

I quote liberally from an unpublished paper of his (spoiler alert, as in this may actually spoil your appetite):

“The slaughter house looked like the site of a terrible massacre, and the four-legged murder victims laid on the cold cement floors, in a pool of their own blood. The animals were to be cleaned of their hair and entrails. A wood fire was boiling water in two large dirty pots, and the scalding water was poured on the pigs to loosen their hair, and blades were used to shave their steaming bodies.    

“After the initial gutting and shaving, a pig is stuck with a spit of wood about eight centimeters thick and two and half meters long. A monster baseball bat is used with great force to bash the shaft of wood through the entire pig, in its mouth and out its rear.       

“A man starts to very neatly tie the dead animal’s mouth with twine, binding its jaw to the wooden spit tightly. A middle-aged woman mixes water into a secret spice concoction called Bumbu Bali, which is basically shallots, garlic, chili, turmeric and greater and lesser galangal mashed together. The woman stuffs the beast’s belly with the spicy mix, and with a very painful looking six-inch needle, she stitches the gaping belly shut.

“The spitted animal is then moved to a pair of cement stands which hold the spit pig in place. The man washes the beast down with water a second time, then neatly ties the pig’s leg into little curls with rattan twine to keep them from hanging too low and burning on the fire. A coconut husk is then stuffed into the stab wound in the pig’s throat to plug the hole.      

“Beneath the stands, a wood and coconut husk fire burns hotly, its amber flames lashing out at the bare white skin of the animal. A fellow then takes up his duty at the rotating handle, and starts a long and monotonous five-hour task of turning the beast. He must heat and roast the animal evenly on all sides, up and down, around and around, again and again. Thank God the animal is dead, or it would be dizzy as hell.

“As the animal starts to cook, it is basted with coconut milk to moisten the skin as it tans slowly like a tourist in summer. When I return hours later, I find an exhausted fellow still turning the roast, but it has changed, its skin has tightened, wrinkled, and cracked into an extremely delicious crispy dark golden brown. The roast is then lightly cleaned with a blade and a cloth, and placed on a large metal tray. The wooden spit is pulled out the beast’s mouth, and the roast exhales smoke like a Rastafarian.”

And that is the story of how the little piggies come home.

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E-mail the author at audreycarpio@yahoo.com