Mortars, pestles and the comfort of a culinary ritual
There are family members we never get to meet, those whose absences are filled by the memories of the people who knew them. I never met my great-grandmother Osunfunke Thomas (nee Olatunji), but I’ve formed an image of her from the story of her passing, as told to me by my mother and her sisters. She was 76, and it happened quite suddenly, as she was crushing aromatics for dinner on a grinding stone.
This memory runs counter to even the few photographs I’ve seen of her. In them, she is slight, less sturdy than I had been led to believe. I may not have known her, or the precise details of her life, but I know of her indomitable spirit. And I know the grinding stone, called olo in Yoruba, that she was working with on that day in 1982 in Lagos, Nigeria. My grandparents saved it and used it in their home. And I think about it — and her — whenever I am working ingredients and extracting their essences in my mortar and pestle.
I have an array of devices that perform all of the functions of a good mortar and pestle. I grind 5-pound bags of heirloom corn for ogi, a fermented breakfast corn porridge, in a food processor. I run nuts and seeds through a blender to make kunun gyada and other drinks. When I’m making a pepper soup blend from whole spices, I glance first at my mortar and pestle, and then to the spice mill next to it. I grab the mill 99 times out of 100.
I don’t have to imagine my great-grandmother’s reaction to that. She lived long enough to know these inventions, and would never touch any of them.
“She would grind her spices fresh every day,” my mother reminds me.
This aversion to gadgets plays an outsize role in the image I have of her and the one shared with me. However laborious the process, Iya Oko, as we call her, Yoruba for “mother from the farm,” swore by the culinary methods that sustained her. Manually grinding spices, herbs, aromatics: That was her ritual.
She never claimed it was the only way, just the best to extract the oils and the aromas from her ingredients. In West African cuisine, and in many of the world’s cuisines, manually pounding and grinding reveals distinct qualities from a variety of ingredients. Pounded yam, banga soup and akara are just a few Nigerian dishes that can be made with shortcuts, but when they’re prepared with traditional mortars and pestles, they take on nuanced textures that machines simply cannot replicate.
Though a modern device can mimic an outcome, it can also erase age-old processes. Kneading dough,
shaping dumplings, or grinding and fermenting grains are all physical, even soothing. Iya Oko’s methods, I’d like to believe, were not born of a stubborn disdain for modern equipment; she simply had faith in the methods that had served her well.
And her methods and spirit inspired this recipe, a roast fish with marinade packed with crushed aromatics like lemon grass, ginger, shallots and scotch bonnet chile. Any mild whole fish will take on the flavors well. I use my asanka, a traditional Ghanaian earthenware mortar lined with thin grooves, and a two-sided wooden pestle to gently work the ingredients in. The reward is nuance and texture, and a release of the ingredients’ oils and essences to give a deeper flavor. You may not have an asanka or a grinding stone. Perhaps you’ll consider
pulling out the food processor, and you can: The mortar and pestle is optional, but strongly encouraged.
Whole Roast Fish With Lemon Grass and Ginger
By Yewande Komolafe
Yield: 4 servings. Total time: 35 minutes.
Ingredients
2K pounds whole fish, scaled and cleaned (about 3 whole branzino)
6 tablespoons neutral oil, such
as grapeseed or canola oil 1K tablespoons kosher salt
(Diamond Crystal)
1 stalk lemon grass (about 2N ounces), tough outer part discarded, chopped
1 (2-inch) piece ginger, scrubbed
and chopped
4 scallions, green parts sliced and white parts trimmed and left whole
1 scotch bonnet chile, with or
without seeds, chopped 1 shallot, peeled and chopped 2 lemons
K teaspoon ground turmeric
K cup full-fat coconut milk 10 cilantro sprigs, cut crosswise
Directions
Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Pat the body and inside of the fish dry, and space the fish evenly apart on an unlined sheet pan. Using a sharp knife, cut two diagonal slits, 2 inches apart, into the skin of each fish, making sure not to cut through to the bone. Repeat the slits on the other side. Drizzle both sides and the inside of the fish with 3 tablespoons oil, and season with the 1K tablespoons salt.
Working in batches if necessary, transfer the lemon grass to the bowl of an asanka or a mortar. Use the pestle to pound the lemon grass pieces until crushed and fragrant. Move the crushed pieces to one side of the mortar bowl or the asanka. Add the ginger pieces and repeat the pounding process until they’re crushed. Combine the ginger and the lemon grass. Add the scallion greens and scotch bonnet chile. Use the pestle to crush and combine these with the lemon grass mixture. Add
the shallot and zest of 1 lemon, crush and combine with the pestle. Stir in the turmeric and coconut milk. (Makes about 1N cup marinade.) Alternatively, you can do this step in a food processor. Add in the ingredients in the order listed, and pulse them all together. Stir in the turmeric and coconut milk.
Slice the zested lemon into 3 or 4 rounds. Spread the marinade generously over both sides of each fish and about 2 tablespoons into each cavity. Place a lemon slice, the white end of a scallion and some cilantro sprigs in each cavity. (At this point, the fish can be left to marinate for up to 30 minutes, or covered and refrigerated overnight.) Drizzle the tops of the fish with the remaining oil.
Roast the fish until firm and cooked through, rotating the sheet pan once halfway through the process, about 22 to 25 minutes. Slice the remaining lemon into wedges. Serve the fish over steamed rice or alongside a hearty salad, with the lemon wedges for squeezing.