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If you’re serious about ethnic cooking, there comes a point where a mortar & pestle will become a critical part of your kitchen arsenal. The more you cook certain styles of food (Thai, Peranakan/Nyonya, Mexican, etc.), the more you will find that modern shortcuts – coffee grinders for spices, food processors for grinding pastes – remove a level of control in working ingredients and can actually negatively impact flavor.

Tossing spices and liquids into the Cuisinart is an afterthought. Pounding a rempah to be used in a curry is a deliberate act. You have to take the time to think about each ingredient as you add it to the mortar – you watch the texture change and smell the aroma develop as oils are released. With practice you learn how subtle changes in the way you pound and grind affect the final product.

I’ve been working without a decent mortar for a while now (my old one is garbage) and my frustration got the better of me. I finally found a granite mortar & pestle that I liked (not too deep and wide enough to be able to work with a decent amount of ingredients). I’ll go into more details about working with it in future posts – this post is about seasoning a new mortar.

Think of a granite mortar like a cast iron pan – you have to season it before you can use it. It’s not difficult  but it does take a little bit of time. The upside is that you get to spend a little time familiarizing yourself with the tool in the process.

Step 1

The first step is obvious – wash it out with plenty of water (like cast iron – NEVER use soap).

Step 2

Throw in a few cloves of garlic (peeled) and pound them into a paste. This is a good time to get a feel for how you are supposed to work with a mortar. Don’t start pounding the crap out of everything – you’ll have garlic everywhere – your hair, on your cabinets, floor, ceiling. Everywhere. Start off gentle. Hold the pestle at an angle and work your way around the bottom. Pay attention to the ingredient – it will tell you when to pound harder or more gently.

You are working toward a fine paste – get it up onto the sides of the mortar. You want to cover the entire inner surface. Once you have the whole surface covered – leave it. This sounds weird, but just let it sit on the counter (12-24 hours). You can cover it with plastic wrap to keep things out of it (and the aroma down), but leave it be.

Step 3

After the garlic as set for a while, wash the mortar and pestle again. Remember – water only. The garlic in mine had taken on a greenish hue. Don’t worry about it – just rinse it out really well. Now it’s time for rice. Take a little wet rice (uncooked) and add it to the mortar. Remember that part in step 2 where I said to be gentle? Now is where we see if you were paying attention. Gently begin to pound and grind the rice. If you’re careful you’ll only lose a few grains of rice. More likely you’ll lose quite a bit.

The idea is to work the wet rice into a fine paste, again coating the entire interior surface.

Take your time. Uncooked rice is hard, so it’s going to take a while to get it broken down. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like you’re doing it right. You get to do this again (and maybe again). Your first batch of rice will turn grey. What you’re doing here is grinding loose grit out of the mortar and the rice paste is picking it up.

Wash the mortar again (water only) and do another batch of rice. Repeat this process until the rice paste stays white. Remember this step, as this is how you will clean the mortar if you get food sticking to it or if you use a strong or heavily colored ingredient (like achiote).

Step 4

Getting closer. Rinse and dry the mortar, then add some coarse salt. I used sal grosso.

In this step you’re grinding – you want to work the salt around the mortar, grinding it as fine as possible.

Step 5

Rinse and dry the mortar again. Your mortar is now ready to use. You can grind a few other spices in at this point, but in my mind they don’t really stick around as “seasoning”.

These are white and black peppercorns. Remember that part about gentle? This is good practice for that. You need to coax the peppercorns to crack before you can really start working with them.

I’m not sure who had more fun at the first Si Fang Cai (Secret Supper) – me or the guests. The menu was based (mostly) on Asian hawker food – or “street” food.

The weather cooperated, allowing for drinks and cooking outdoors, before moving inside for an intimate dinner peppered with great conversation.

Hawker Menu

Cocktail
Basil Watermelon Caiparinha *

1st Course
Bulgogi Wan-ja with Tamarind Ssamjang (Korea)
Butabara Kushiyaki – Shio & Tare (Japan)
Xinjiang Chuanr (China)

2nd Course
Dan Dan Mein (China)

3rd Course
Gado Gado (Indonesia)

4th Course
Gang Ga-ree (Thailand)

Dessert
Turon w/Macapuno Fozen Custard (Philippines)

Beverages
Cha Yen (Thailand)

Beer
Tsingtao (China)
Chang, Singha (Thailand)
Kingfisher (India)
Kierin (Japan)

* The basil-watermelon caipirinha is from No Recipes.

Just a random selection of photos from the last couple of months. Detailed posts may follow on some…

Taqueria Los Rayos

Get Coffee

Get Coffee

Beef Shanks

Pesto-stuffed Pork Chops with Caramelized Onions and Kale

Pho Bac

Sop Buntut – Waroeng Corner

Waroeng Corner

Oxtails

Warm weather is coming – no more practicing track stands in the basement!

For some reason lot of people still seem to have hang ups about the ethnic markets along Buford Highway. Regardless, BFM is still one of my favorites. The sheer volume of produce, meats and fish that move through this place ensure that you can usually find almost any ingredient you can think of, fresh and of good quality.

Produce Section – huge and crowded

Seasonal – and not in a can

Miles of meat

You do need to be aware that the butchers produce the cuts demanded by their customers, so while you will find T-bones and pork chops – they’re good – but usually not of the best trim. If you’re looking for flanken short ribs, sukiyaki beef, tongue, offal, ox-tail – this is the place to go.

Man’s best friend – Pork Bellies. Time to make pork belly confit again (per Brian Polcyn). I’ve already got the pink salt. BFM sells lard too…

Live tilapia and flounder

Fishmonger (this is about 1/4 of the main fish counter)

The seafood section is massive here, and the selection is, as with all of the departments here, huge. Whole fish can be cleaned and dressed any way you need. Where else in town can you buy live sea squirts?

Sushi grade tuna and octopus

40+ feet of shrimp, clams, octopus, snails, conch, sea squirts, mussels, blue crab, crayfish, eels – you get the idea.

Whole snapper

Whole tilapia

Miles of sauces

Semas (a Mexican sweet bread) – there’s a bakery here as well.

Buford Highway Farmer’s Market
5600 Buford Highway
Doraville, GA 30340

Cooked again Wednesday night (I can’t eat out every night). I’m tending towards spicy foods lately, and Indonesian seems to be an easy choice (maybe it’s the ongoing cold I’ve had – seems to be impossible to shake…).

This time it’s Babi Ketjap (or ketcap, depends I guess). Basically, pork in sweet soy. It’s really a simple dish, but it does require a couple of Indonesian ingredients: ketjap manis (a thick, sweet soy sauce – some people substitute soy mixed with molasses if ketjap manis is not available) and sambal oelek (crushed chilies with salt).

Part of the mise en place…

If you look online for recipes, you’ll find that most of them are in Dutch – remember, Indonesia was a Dutch colony for 350 years…

• 1 lb. of pork (I use pork loin)
• salt & pepper
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 tsp galangal (use ginger if galangal is not available)
• 1/2 – 1 tsp sambal oelek
• 2/3 cup water
• 5 tbsp ketjap manis
• oil
• green onions

1. Mix the pork with a bit of salt and pepper (not too much salt – the ketjap and sambal both contain salt).
2. Saute the onion in oil until it begins to soften slightly.
3. Add the pork, galangal and sambal. Brown the pork on all sides.
4. Add the water and ketjap manis, and bring to a simmer for about 20-30 minutes. Stir ocassionally.
5. The sauce will reduce and thicken.
6. Garnish with green onions and serve with jasmine rice.

I had some xiao bai tsai laying around (see my previous post here) so I quickly stir fried that with a little garlic and sufu (furu…whatever – see this post). Yes, I know this is Chinese, but so be it.

Stopped by the Atlanta Farmers Market at Plaza Fiesta. I had a list – shrimp (hint: all of the Asian markets have great prices on seafood – and they go through a lot of it, so your chances of finding fresh are good), xiao bai tsai (the Mandarin name, ”baby bok choi” in English, “Brassica Pekinensis” in Latin – you get the idea), and sambal oelek (an Indonesian chili paste – I’m into cooking Indonesian lately for some reason). 

As with all farmer’s markets, lists quickly become forgotten – but I managed to control myself fairly well and kept to the one thing you can’t avoid here - the Chinese barbecue.

If you like poultry, soy sauce chicken is one of those things that is pretty hard to top - slow cooked, moist, delicate, salty and sweet. It’s kind of like eating good, American barbecue, where you get it all over your face and hands, but you really don’t care. I said hard to top, but there is one thing – and if you know of a place in Atlanta that does this, PLEASE let me know - and that is roast goose. Eating Chinese roast goose was one of those transformative food experiences I had in a little street level dive on Wo On Lane in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong district. I digress. But until someone throws a bag over that guy in Hong Kong and brings him to Atlanta, we’ll settle for soy sauce chicken.

Did I mention the roast pork? All of the best parts of the pig in one bite: crispy skin, clear silky fat and juicy meat. (Physiology note: vitamins A, D, E and K are all fat soluble. They have to be dissolved in fat to tranport through the walls of your intestines. No fat = vitamin deficiency. I’m not saying eat nothing but fat – just that technically fat in your diet, in the right amount IS -gasp – HEALTHY).

One other note about Asian/international markets. I’ve heard a lot of people complain about the “cleanliness” of some markets because of the smell. While you should always use your best judgement (even at Whole Foods), know one thing – when you have hundreds of pounds of dried and fermented fish, squid, octopus, bean curd, cabbage, kelp, fungus, etc. in an enclosed space, well – you’re going to smell it. If you really enjoy ethnic foods, many of these things you’ve already eaten and didn’t know it. I would imagine a metric tonne of black truffles can be pretty ripe as well. If you visit often enough, you won’t even notice it.

Atlanta Farmers Market
4166 Buford Highway
Suite 1115
Atlanta, GA 30345