Tag Archives: pig

Guling Celeng

Posted on by Frank
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Balinese Suckling Pig…  This is what we were getting our fingers greasy on, during a pre-Monsoon storm at a villa in Legian, when I asked Elisa to marry me.  Fiery hot pork and bad weather – no better way to get engaged, yes? 

   Although better known by its Indonesian name, Babi Guling, this suckling pig specialty of Bali is more correctly called Guling Celeng. Suckling pig isn’t so hard to get around the states, but it usually calls for a special order at the meat market.  I normally use rib roasts (sirloin end and not center cuts – to dry) and occasionally shoulder/picnic roasts. Shoulders have the benefit of skin for crisping and eating as part of the magic.  Rib roasts have ribs and those don’t suck at all. Of course, whole baby hogs have all that and are wildly tender. This recipe for one little pig will cover two roasts.  If you go with the roasts make pocket cuts deep into the meat, close to the bones, to pack the spice stuffing.

   One more note – if using a roast, rather than a suckling pig, drop the cooking temp down to about 375°F and add 45 minutes to an hour to cooking time. If you have a large charcoal grill cook it there.  If you have a rotisserie on that charcoal grill you are stylin’.  If your big ass rotisserie grill is fueled by dried coconut husks then you are in the Naruta of grillin’ sweetness. Or you can cook it on a gas grill or in the oven and still love what eventually lands in your mouth. 

Guling Celeng 

1 suckling pig (in the ballpark of 15 lbs)

2 tbs. salt

10 shallots peeled & sliced

6 cloves garlic, peeled, crushed and sliced

2 inches ginger, peeled & chopped

15 candlenuts (kemiri), crushed & chopped (sub 25 Macadamia nuts)

4 inches fresh turmeric**, peeled & chopped (sub 4 tsp. dry, ground turmeric)

2 inches laos (aka galangal), peeled, sliced and finely chopped**(sub ginger)

30 bird’s eye or Thai chiles, sliced

1 teaspoon dried shrimp paste, roasted (wrap in foil, sear in hot pan 2 min/side)

   (sub 1 tsp. Thai Fish Sauce)

2 tbs. coriander seeds, roasted in hot pan till fragrant & crushed

10 stalks lemongrass, bottom four inches only – tough outer leaves

   removed & finely sliced

1 tbs. black peppercorns, crushed

1 tbs ground or fresh grated nutmeg

1 tsp. ground cloves

5 Kaffir lime leaves**, very finely sliced

2 salam leaves (hard to find except via internet – no substitution so omit)

3 tbs. oil 

*hard to come by, sometimes available in pan-Asian markets. Can be ordered on the web, but just as easily subbed by its smaller cousins, Macadamia nuts

** not so difficult to find in Chinese/Asian markets. Can be bought fresh at various times, but often found cryopacked in the freezer section. 

  1. Season pig inside & out w/ salt.  Combine all ingredients, mix well and stuff inside of pig with this mixture. Reserve a little to rub over outside of pig to make it yellow and shiny.
  2. Close belly with string or with a long skewer. Let sit for at least 30 minutes up to an overnight stint in the fridge.
  3. Put pig on rotisserie, on the grill or in the oven at 425°F.  Cook for an hour or so, until it hits 160° in the deep part of its thigh. Remove from heat and rest it for 10 minutes before serving
  4. Remove skin w/ sharp knife, slice off meat.  Scoop out spice stuffing and place a spoonful on each plate topped by meat and skin. 
  5. Eat with white rice and cold beers.

I’ll Give You Ten for the Pig. How Much for the Little Girl?

Posted on by Frank
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I want to go swimming in an ocean.  Elisa and everybody else wants to go sea swimming too. But swimming off the beach at the Aston Bali doesn’t quite happen. Fronted by a rocky shore and shallow reefs, much of Tanjung Benoa isn’t so swimmable. From the resort it’s a couple hundred meters of wading through broken reef and hot water just to submerge your knees. Going further out held little promise beyond teasing sharks with bleeding feet. From our coral stumps out in the sea we could see a beach to north, the wind brought us the laughter of little swimmers and tiny people dangling from tiny parachutes tethered to tiny boats. Parasailing looks like fly-fishing for sharks to me and that sounded fun.  We’d have to get up to that beach to watch…

   We were starting to feel a little like resort shut-ins. But that’s kind of the beauty of Nusa Dua & Benoa – There ain’t a hell of a lot to do otherwise. It’s not an agricultural area, meaning there aren’t any panoramic rice terraces for the gawking. Apart from the fishing nexus over at Jimbaran Bay the area isn’t much of an any-cultural region at all. There is the stunning, ancient cliffside temple of Uluwatu and some pretty spectacular surfing in the ocean below it. On that note, the Nusa Dua area is a place for people who like to play in the water more adventurously. Water sport outlets abound – jet skis, wind surfing, surfing surfing, sport fishing and the aforementioned para-sharking – as do little buildings for boat tours. Shopping joints are tiny and infrequent, meaning I gotta hike for my cigarettes, and that’s about it for non-hotel tourism. The success of the resorts here depends on this limited outside allure anyway, perhaps they even strive to maintain it so guests can spend all their holiday bucks under one roof.  

   Of course that is a horseshit manner of vacationing on the other side of the earth. Resorts are for low-feature, close to home places like Florida. So around one o’clock we took off down the road, hoping to find lunch on less elegant plates.  What’s the name of the road?  Dunno, but it did go from left to right and we hadn’t gone right yet.  Had an appetizer en route, from a pushcart at the construction site of yet another resort.  The vendor spoke no English beyond cash words. But with a little pointing into his Plexiglas box of ingredients he hooked us up with two spicy bowls of clear noodle soup with starchy pork meatballs, sop bakso. Set us back about Four Thousand Rupiah! Holy Fuck! Well, due to a crazy exchange rate we’re only talking pennies in real money – less than two bits per bowl. T still tried debating the price however, making the soup dude confused and nervous. Why the hell would an American have issues with coughing up a quarter for lunch? My boy’s taken a shine to haggling, was all. And the bakso man was probably thinking he should’ve asked for five times as much in the beginning.  Then again, he’s Balinese. None of this island’s people seem interested in screwing anybody over.

   After going right for a quarter mile more we landed at Jukung, a small seafood joint. After chow and a bunch of beer Tim took up negotiations for Bali’s two renowned  specialties: suckling pig (babi guling) & stuffed smoked duck (bebek betutu) for the next day.  I’d given him some guidelines about haggling and now he was playing hardball with everyone. In the end the pig dinner was out as T’s absolute max fell way below their bottom price.  The Balinese will go a long way to make a sale but nobody will work for a loss.*  The waiter did offer to take us to Jimbaran Bay, free ride to and fro, to eat at his family’s joint at sunset the next day.  We promised to return and let him know.

*T’s rabid haggling ways came after comparing some sarongs they’d bought at the Aston to ones we’d snagged in Kuta.  Cheap gifts, we bought a couple for 2 bucks each. When it was apparent we could dicker down below a buck apiece we got some more.  Our pals got shucked at $15 a pop for the same wraps at the Aston and my boy has resolved never to get boned on a purchase again.

Jet Lag and Transit Scuzz

Posted on by Frank
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Oct. 2 @ 11:00 AM – Land in Frankfurt.  We are beat-up exhausted already. T & S head for Duty-Free shopping. E & I look for the nearest ashtray.  Praise be to Jesus for Germans and their views on public smoking. Everybody has a cancer stick dangling from their lips including children and pregnant grandmothers with oxygen tanks as their carry-on. We treat our tummies to some nice ham & butter sandwiches and Deutsch cafeteria greasewursts.

 12:35 PM – Take off for Singapore & 11½ hours or airborne confinement.  The beautiful thing here is that Singapore Air is a great way to go anywhere – especially if you’re among those of us who fly coach.  They take a few extra steps to make the flight as painless as possible. Free-flowing booze is the major one, actually the only step which matters, and yet I skipped it entirely this time.  Getting liquored up is for the first leg hemisphere-length flights.  My sleep/awake schedule played out perfectly, returned to hamstering broken cigarettes in my cheek, making for a rested, unlagged touchdown in Singapore at

 6:30 AM, Oct. 3 – Stumble out on creaking knees and swollen feet into the hot, soaking air of the outdoor smoking deck at Changi International Airport. The Singapore air was so much like a steam bath, exhaled smoke would get stuck dead in the atmosphere, suspended in pillowy blocks around your head. The newlyweds make for the Duty-Free shopping; there seems to be a trend starting there. Not exactly able to grasp the shopping bug which bit them – with one duty-free splurge behind them and three weeks of Bali ahead their bags oughta be impossible to lift to the plane home. It isn’t like the selections vary much between airports, though Frankfurt does lack a selection of Chinese and Malaysian Christian Hip Hop cd’s… Can’t say that smoking tops over-shopping among needless endeavors, but when we all wrapped our habits up we stuffed our carry-ons into a couple lockers, hire a cab & head to town.

   With few hours to spare there’s no way to give Singapore a good scan to grasp why so many American acquaintances see it as the end-all-be-all of South East Asia.  But T & I took a solid, instinctual guess:  Singapore is as close as you get to an American city AND it’s on the equator on the other side of the planet.  Picture Miami with a little Chinatown every few blocks and lots of American stores.  If you went to South Beach on a record hot summer day, walked up Lincoln St, ate bowls of Mee Hoon on Washington instead of Media Noche sandwiches, bought film and Banana Republic cashmere wife-beaters back on Lincoln, then down Ocean Drive to look at tan chicks in tiny skirts you will have experienced Singapore – with less over-privileged dipshits from Ibiza and Luxembourg but still with plenty of fat people from the Midwest.

   And the Penang Peninsula Street food?   Ohhhhhh, mommy! If the trip terminated in Singapore I’d be happy as a pig’s intestine in soup.  Super spicy soup loaded with chit’lins, that is!  Zhu Zha Tang – best guts I’ve eaten this side of Kenya… (If anyone reading has a recipe, please forward immediately)

   2:00 PM -> Airbus Three Hundred Something Something, the one from the first page of this log, and 2.16777777 hours to Bali’s Ngurah Rai Airport.  We’d been thinking that this island would be temperate, a belief derived from a little misinformation on Indonesian Octobers from our guidebook. Temperate must have a relative meaning to travel-writers out here because it is quite freaking hot. In a great way, mind you, and a bit humid though far less so than Singapore.  And Heavens to Betsy, if it ain’t gorgeous as all get out.  A speedy exit thru customs and a driver was waiting to take us to our hotel, the Risata Bali Resor (internet booking rate, no t included) in Tuban.  Pretty place.  Bathrooms could use a little work if they decide to increase their prices. But 60 skins a night makes pointing out flaws seem unnecessarily bitchy.

   Interestingly, our freshly wedded friends hadn’t made a motel reservation anywhere before leaving the States. Since the Risata had rooms we suggested they stay for the night and rest up. But S, close to an exhaustion-induced breakdown, wasn’t even considering staying anywhere but this swank joint she’d heard of in Nusa Dua.  It was about 15-20 minutes away on the nub of Bali’s southern peninsula. They split with their anxiety-smeared faces and left us to stretch out, smoke a few fags and shower out our travel staled fannies. 

Observation – After the first two Anker beers here it dawns on me that some of the best lagers on Earth come from its East Side.

   Tiger – from Singapore. Crisp and floral, grrrr – errrr. Roar. Arf.

   Singha – Thailand. High Ethyl, lightly yeasty. The Haffenreffer of the East, oughta come in 40’s.

   Steinlager – New Zealand. Zippy, hoppy and light. Suitable for drinking while playing rugby.

   Anker (Bali) and Bintang (someplace else in Indonesia) – interchangeable with each other.  Both pilsner styles, very clean and perfectly bitter.  Wish Pabst would switch to their recipes.

   Even Vietnam’s 33 & Hue are tasty treats.  I can understand good fuzz juice originating in New Zealand. Maori’s notwithstanding, they’ve got the same beer-swilling crackers as Australia.  But what’s with the stuff from the South China Sea?  Musta been the Dutch, having got to those parts early.  Who knows?  But I do know that good American lagers are rare, if not extinct, back home.  This has a lot to do with the Big-Boy brewers not really giving a fuck and the microbastards not actually making lager, choosing rather to “interpret” it. 

   6 PM (Or was it 7, or 8, or something. No, not 8.)

     Suppertime.  Out to the covered patio-hut bar for a pre-eating cocktail.  I had a passion fruit, coconut, vodka & blue curaçao deal. Elisa drank a Piña Colada.  Both very tasty, nudging me towards the candy wonders of becoming a girl drink drunk.  Fresh exotic fruits & coconuts, see. How could I not succumb?

     Then there was dinner: Nasi Goreng, the common Malayo-Indonesian fried rice dish, fried seafood with fries & a separating tartar sauce (f’n hurrah for those Typhus inoculations!)  There might have been a third dish. Yes, I’m sure there was. A couple of Anker beers each.  Good enough meal – six beverages and supper for two: under twenty bucks.

  Off to the Internet Café at the hotel lobby. Two bucks for half an hour of web time?  Some insanely cheap rate like that, though I can’t remember.  Could barely remember the lady I was writing to, my mother perhaps, as I typed out a Here we are, all’s well note.  We were bushed. Real down home, cross-eyed beat. Shoulda emailed everybody for that rate but the weight of the air was becoming an intolerable strain on our eyelids.