Cooking Fire

Molcajete and Tejolote:

An excellent tool, it’s impressive how the coarse stone will make quick work of tomatoes, onions, garlic, dried chilies, almost anything you put in it. Instead of slicing and liquefying like the blender, food is pulverized and crushed by the stone and the sides of the heavy mortar. The molcajete is also a dramatic serving dish for salsas and guacamole.

It’s an incredibly satisfying kitchen appliance as well. Tactile and interactive, it is the kitchen tool I have the most fun with since buying. I keep trying to find new salsa recipes to experiment with — feeding them into this sluggish looking stone, and marveling how fast the ingredients are reduced to liquid sauce.

Molcajete, a word taken straight from Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, is the commonly name in Mexico off the traditional lava stone grinding mortar and serving bowl — sometimes carved with a pig or goat face. Tejolote is the lesser-known name for the pestle used to grind. The coarse lava stone, riddled with porous openings and holes, is impervious to the modern impulse to wash, disinfect, and sterilize. Instead you do the best you can, rinsing, letting the food dry and cake in the porous holes, trusting in the antibacterial nature of chilies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 7th, 2005 at 10:05 pm and is filed under Ingredients and Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.