Small things can have a big impact! The herbs and spices you use in your cooking transform a simple dish in to an explosion of flavours.
This fine mino-ware suribachi bowl is a traditional type of Japanese pestle and mortar. The textured bowl comes complete with a wooden pestle or surikogi.
The small ceramic bowl has a semi-matte black glaze on the outside and the texured inner surface is unglazed clay. It has a lip on the edge to help with pouring liquids.
The attractive ridged pattern inside the bowl provides the important grinding surface. The textured design helps to 'catch' smaller ingredients like seeds, preventing them from slipping around and jumping out of the bowl.
This makes a very effective surface to crush and blend different ingredients against. It releases the food's oils and aromas and creates the perfect consistency for your cooking. This smaller size suribachi makes it convenient and easy to handle small amounts of ingredients.
The surikogi or pestle is made from reclaimed tounou hinoki (Japanese cypress) wood. Using a wooden pestle ensures that the grinding surface of the bowl does not get worn out by regular use.
A suribachi and surikogi are a great way to prepare seasoning, spices, seeds and herbs. In particular, they are often used for crushing sesame seeds into a paste, for grinding garlic, fresh basil leaves, nuts and peppercorns.
In Japan, chefs and cooks prefer this traditional method over knives or electric blenders as you can better experience the aroma of the ingredients and get an improved flavour and texture.
This small suribachi bowl is 11cm (about 4¼") in diameter by 5cm (2") high. The surikogi pestle is 9cm (3½") in length.
Made in Japan.
