Even with a blender, a grinding stone still has a place in this household

What say you on the issue below?

AS A child, I remember the grinding stone (batu giling or ammi kallu) being used frequently at our home in Kluang, Johor either by my mother, her sister or the maid to prepare finely ground ingredients in paste-like form for a variety of local dishes.

There was always a lot of activity going on in our kitchen because my mother, Rose Melton, loved to cook and would happily fill the table with whatever recipes she had experimented for the day.

Hard at work: The writer using her mother Rose Melton’s grinding stone to grind dried chillies at her home in Kluang, Johor.

She said it was easy to improve on recipes she may have gotten wrong on the first try because we, her children, were willing guinea pigs and ate whatever she had to plate up!

And she preferred using the grinding stone to get the desired taste of the food she had prepared.

Using the grinding stone, which was made of granite, to grind ingredients like ginger, garlic, lemongrass, turmeric, galangal, kerisik and chilli would make the food taste a lot tastier and my mother swears on this.

Although my mother had a nice Kenwood glass blender, she was very careful with it and used it only when she did not have time to sit at the grinding stone.

I know for a fact, she feared it would break and getting a replacement jug would mean making a trip to Singapore, where she went for shopping trips over certain weekends with my dad and her friends.

I remember, my mother often reminding the maid to be careful with the jug as buying a replacement, back then, would mean having to fork out RM100 out of her teacher’s salary.

Well, when I was about 14 years old and a novice in her kitchen, while doing the dishes, her precious jug slipped, fell in the sink and broke!

It wasn’t my fault, I blamed it on the dish washing liquid which was too soapy.

My mother was overseas at the time of the incident and I anguished over how I would break the news to her as she was extremely strict and I expected to get a never-ending tongue lashing.

Strangely, upon her return from her trip and learning of my adventures in the kitchen, she looked long and hard at me and said nothing.

But a few days after that, I was introduced to the grinding stone. Sigh!

For a skinny teenager, I was not dying to learn how to use the heavy cylindrical shaped pestle over the flat granite, an almost archaic tool, but as her eldest daughter and her future next in command in the kitchen I had little choice but to obey.

So, I grudgingly learnt how to roll and slide the heavy pestle up and down the even heavier stone slab and most of the time, the ingredients I ground were either not fine enough or too runny.

When my mother got fed up because the paste was not to her liking, she would take over and show me how it was done.

I still do not understand how my mother failed to see that my arms were not strong like hers to tackle the heavy pestle.

As an uninterested teenager in old kitchen tools, I even got confused where to place the ingredients.

Do you place them at the top of the heavy slab or at the bottom?

Well, after repeated lessons, I got the method right and am today, no longer afraid to take on the grinding stone.

In fact, I think the grinding stone is a kitchen tool that one needs to cherish and where possible, the younger generation should be taught to use it.

Today, I know that various communities around the world have their own grinding stones but that used in the Indian household is rectangular in shape.

The grinding stone, I have observed, plays an important role among the Hindu community and is even used in weddings.

Hindu weddings are made up of elaborate and meaningful ceremonies.

One of it requires the groom to slip in the minchi (toe-ring) on the second toe of the bride’s right foot as she places it on the flat granite grinding stone.

It is a significant ritual that indicates the bride is now the head of the household, equal to the steady strength of the grinding stone.

My mother was even superstitious about the grinding stone as she feared dropping the heavy pestle and breaking it could bring about bad luck!

So I am happy to report that my mother’s grinding stone is still in a good condition.

As we became adults, my mother believed that it was important for each of us to own a grinding stone and managed to get three more so that each of her children would own one.

She even owns an Indonesian grinding stone which a friend brought in from Indonesia.

These days, the old grinding stone is not used as often unless we are entertaining.

And my mother has discovered that Indian made food processors and blenders do an excellent job of making your ingredients as fine as they can be and at her age, it is understandable to opt for modern tools.

So, whenever there is a need to use the grinding stone, my mother and I get into a tussle over the best person for the job.

Well, in my opinion, she’s still better at it and I enjoy the workout but I give in to her because I think she misses her good old days at the old faithful.