Suribachi

A ridged ceramic bowl and a wooden pestle: sesame, miso, and dressings that still taste of the grooves.

Also called surikogi, japanese mortar · From Japan

A ridged suribachi with a wooden surikogi, toasted sesame, and a small bowl of miso.

The journey

A suribachi is a mortar with a comb cut into the clay. The wooden surikogi bruises sesame and miso against those ridges so a dressing holds. Japanese kitchens still keep one for goma-ae and for any paste a blade would make too smooth.

A Western mortar can crush. The ridges are why Japanese sesame paste tastes different.

A woodblock of the kitchen hearth — the bowl Japan still uses to bruise sesame. — Anonymous Chinese nianhua of the Kitchen God (Zao Jun), public-domain woodblock · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Toast the sesame. Work in circles. Add liquid last. Stop when the paste is coarse enough to still be itself.

The Japanese volume's dressings assume this bowl. A molcajete is a cousin from another stone.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

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