In our village, in every house there was also an Austrian copper “mozder” (bronze mortar and pestle). And I could not understand why it was needed and why my grandmother treated this “rarity” so carefully. Now that we have actively begun to get involved in cooking food from, this item has become indispensable for us in the preparation of seasonings.
One day you will outgrow the usual store-bought spice bags and want to grind fresh spices yourself, for which the best tool is a mortar and pestle. Spices, garlic, nuts or seeds ground in a mortar release natural flavors and oils; You will immediately notice the difference in taste! 
You will increase the level of your culinary skills by several steps.
A mortar is a small bowl, and a pestle is a wide stick that fits in the shape of the recess of the bowl in order to excellently grind and grind everything that comes between the pestle and the bowl.
They can be made of wood, metal, stone or ceramic. Choose the material that suits you, based on culinary and personal preferences.
For cooking, for example, kutya (grinding poppy seeds, nuts in large volumes), we use clay makitra and makogon.
If a recipe calls for crushed spices rather than ground spices, that means they don't need to be powdered.
A mortar and pestle is great for making herbal butter, crushing garlic for garlic croutons, making hummus, almond paste, or making old-fashioned flour.
for cooking condiments
You can start with simple things, such as making a mixture of different peppers (black, red, allspice) or grind cinnamon.
If you add dry herbs to ordinary large non-iodized salt: suneli hops, basil, marjoram, dill and parsley, bay leaf, peppermint, coriander and red pepper, and grind it, you get an excellent mixture, an analogue of the Georgian Svan layer.
in the magazine "", there was an article about spices and the following recipe was given:
- 1.5 tsp dried oregano,
- 1 tsp ground cloves,
- 1 tsp powdered garlic,
- 1 tsp paprika,
- 0.5 tsp ground ginger,
- 0.5 tsp salt,
- 0.5 tsp ground black pepper
Seasonings instead of dry cleaning
Try using dry rice to get rid of stubborn odors and stains. Sometimes it can be difficult to remove stubborn stains and smells of strong spices. A great way to get rid of them is to finely grind dry white rice, which should absorb the smell and color of the last ground spices. Replace the rice and repeat the process until the ground rice is white after grinding.
According to sources
Baba Yaga is one of the brightest fairy tale characters in Russian folklore. Many cartoons and films portray her differently. This is an evil old woman who steals children and wants to eat them, but sometimes she shows pity for the hero, and in many films she is portrayed as funny and cheerful. Maybe that's why the kids still love her. She wants to eat someone, threatens, but she has not eaten anyone yet, she has not killed anyone. She can fly, but she can't catch up with anyone.
Baba Yaga's crafts are also all funny and not at all scary. Children are happy to convey the image of this hut resident on chicken legs in their drawings and applications. A broom is also molded from plasticine. A mandatory attribute of this fairy-tale heroine is a flying stupa.
Consider what crafts Baba Yaga can make from natural material, what needs to be collected in the park for this, what additional materials will be needed to connect the parts together.
Figurine of Baba Yaga
To make such a character, you need to have a fir cone, a small pine cone, sprigs of a Christmas tree, rowan berries for beads, a hemp rope for tying branches and making hair, twigs for a mortar.
The big bump is the torso. To easily install the head, you need to cut off a few upper scales from it. In the resulting hollow, a small pine cone is glued to the plasticine, turned with the blunt part forward, so that it is more convenient to stick small details.
The body and head of the grandmother are ready. One branch of the Christmas tree is cleared of needles, which are attached to the neck on plasticine. These will be the hands of a fairy-tale heroine. Hair is knitted from a rope as follows. Segments of the same length are cut, folded in half and tied from the side of the loops with a knot. Then they are glued to a small cone on top. The more segments, the more magnificent the old woman's hair.
Plasticine is used to make eyes, a mouth and a hooked nose. As a nose, you can use one curved pasta glued to the base.
Now let's take a closer look at how to make the main part of Baba Yaga's craft - a flying stupa.
How to make a stupa?
In fairy tales, the grandmother moves through the forest exclusively on a mortar, driving a broom. The stupa has the shape of a truncated cone. Therefore, in the manufacture of this transport, a plastic disposable cup is used. First, the plasticine softens and the outer part is completely coated so that the branches are firmly attached and do not slide on its surface.
They should not be thick, as the glass is deformed. To keep the sticks well, you need to tie them with a thread. It remains only to plant Baba Yaga's handicraft inside.
Broom
The transport of the fairy tale character, which she also uses for flying, is a broom. Make it easy. To do this, you need to have one thick branch and several small and thin ones collected from the bushes. They are cut into small equal segments, assembled in a bundle with a thick stick in the middle, tied with a rope.
This attribute always finds its place in the crafts of Baba Yaga. Usually the broom is either attached to the hand of an old woman or to a mortar. You can still put a headscarf on her head, because earlier in Russia all women wore these headdresses. In all films and fairy tales, she is also depicted in a scarf.
A hut on chicken legs
If you ask any child, the answer will be the same for everyone - in a hut on chicken legs. When making handicrafts of Baba Yaga with their own hands, many craftsmen try to build her forest dwelling nearby. This house is not easy, he himself is a fairy-tale character. He can run, jump, turn, kick someone, sit down and refuse to obey his mistress.
Even a simple house made of branches is difficult to make, but here it still has to stand on two legs. How to do it? Let's try to explain in detail now.
How to make Baba Yaga's house?
In order for the structure to hold firmly on two pillars, you need to pick up either thick saw cuts of branches, or take two wooden spools of thread. The second option is preferable, since they have a base that expands downwards, which will securely hold the house.
If you still use saw cut branches, then you need to strengthen them with plasticine on the basis of the craft, making claws splayed in different directions. They will give stability to the structure.
The house itself is made from a flat foundation. It can be plywood or a piece of very durable cardboard. Above the ceiling is the same. Between these two planes, even branches of any tree are glued. You can fasten them with wire or tie them together with a rope.
Also, for strength, the walls of the house sit on a layer of plasticine, which is attached around the entire perimeter of the house from the inside and on the floor of the house and on the ceiling.
The roof can be made of cardboard by gluing a pyramid. On top of it, put a layer of autumn yellow leaves on the glue. Such a composition can be put up for a competition as an autumn craft of Baba Yaga.
Cone and walnut option
Even a kindergarten child can easily make such a craft of Baba Yaga from natural material. You will need one spruce cone for the body, a walnut for the head, several branches for the broom and hands, plasticine, hair thread (they can be made from straw or willow leaves). An old woman's handkerchief can be cut out of paper, or you can put on a fabric one.
The parts are fastened together with the help of plasticine, from which small parts of the face are also made - the nose, eyes. Next to Baba Yaga, you can make her best friend goblin to the exhibition. It is also created from a spruce cone by gluing a paper cone or a plasticine fly agaric mushroom hat onto the head. He has a stick in his hand.
You can also make a head from chestnut, and hands from ash seeds. The stupa can be pasted over with small scales of cones or tree bark. It is interesting to carve a house from a pumpkin. There are many options for using natural material for such crafts. After looking at the samples, you can safely create your own work by adding your own details. After all, you always want to do everything in your own way, not like others. Create and fantasize!
Another textile doll Baba Yaga appeared in the world. The lady is stately, rich (even a vehicle is available) and a broad-legged fashionista.
You can see it in the photo, I already spoke about the skirt.
And today I will tell you how I make the surface of the stupa. The stupa itself is made of papier-mâché (several layers of newspaper first, then napkins on PVA glue based on thick watercolor paper, dressed on a tin).
The surface is slightly rough. All this should dry very well. There are many layers, I dry 2-3 layers. The process can take a week or more.
I cover with a mixture of black acrylic with building varnish. Dry.
I apply a larger relief with a glue gun.
I paint over with brown acrylic paint with varnish, partially leaving the black color not closed in the recesses.
I tint with lighter shades of brown. I add a little varnish to the paint all the time.
It turns out several layers of paint with varnish.
I shade with metallic acrylics (silver here).
When everything is dry, I spray with varnish spray.
Why do I add varnish to the paint? Once I encountered such a problem when using colors for acrylic paints. When applying the next layer of paint, the previous one began to float and mix with it. As a result, translucent layering did not work out. That is, you need to either varnish each layer, or select paints that will not mix. If you just begin to varnish the current paint with a brush, then the paint will still flow. And splashing varnish in layers is to endure the stench. Therefore, I found such a solution - to add varnish to the paint. I take building colors and knead them on a palette with building acrylic varnish. It turns out durable paint. And you can mix different shades as needed.
That's all wisdom.
And here is the culprit of the long drying and layer-by-layer painting.
In any rural used to be at home in everyday life
mortar was used. Rural man with carpentry skills
made a stupa with his own hands.
Today, few people will be able to thoroughly explain to you how the stupa works, and even more so to clearly show it with an example. To do this, you still need to find a stupa. And now, using the example of this article, we will try to explain to you what a stupa is, and how more than one hut could not live without it before. The stupa is the breadwinner in any rural hut. Never see porridge without a stupa before. The stupa was used by everyone from young to old.
The stupa, like other household items, had miraculous powers, was an intercessor
in the hut, it was used in rituals. A large clumsy woman was often compared to a stupa.
Crushing water in a mortar is really a stupid job.
About fools: Make him crush in a mortar so he will break the bottom;
A fool even in a mortar. Today, with the advent of social networks, the stupa is often remembered with a more modern expression. For example, crush verbal husks in a virtual stupa. This means useless correspondence on a social network.
For the manufacture of the stupa, a log of strong birch wood, sometimes oak, was used, mainly the lower part of the trunk without knots.
Inside the log was hollowed out with a cone
deepening 60-70 centimeters deep. And this is a prerequisite, stupa
should be originally from a single piece of wood, and not from parts.
A pestle was made for the mortar, from a piece of strong wood.
The lower part of the pestle was the same diameter as the bottom of the recess in the mortar.
Not a single rural hut could cook porridge without a mortar.
To peel the buckwheat grain from the husk, you need a mortar to
millet turned out to be millet, you need a mortar to peel oats from the husk, how without a mortar? Grain was poured into the mortar, and crushed with a pestle. This work was taught from childhood. It was not convenient for an adult to use a stupa, because
it was below the table height and had to be bent. And for teenagers
country girls just right.
In early spring, meat was running out, and they mostly ate porridge. Grinding grain in a mortar is a tedious, monotonous process that requires patience.
You need to start slowly gradually so as not to scatter the grain around the stupa.
When the husk begins to appear in the mortar, you can start hitting harder with the pestle.
In the process, they removed the pestle from the mortar and checked with their hands how many grains were in the husk, how many were peeled. It was impossible, for example, to grind the grain
for the whole week. It was everyday work, the preparation of their own food. 95 percent of the cleaned grain was poured out of the mortar into a bucket. The mortar was turned upside down, and the pestle was placed in a corner. They took a bucket of grain, and
went out into the yard.
Some fabric was spread on the ground, and grain was blown from the husk
in the wind. Clean cereals were collected in a bowl, washed with water. And in the house, cow's milk was already heated in the oven.
Groats were poured into a boiling pot with milk and poured. Then they simmered a little more in the oven.
And the porridge turned out sweet and tasty even without the addition of sugar. Because homemade milk contains all the necessary elements.
And I assure you that porridge, which at the time it is cooked in this way, is much tastier than just millet and milk bought in a store.
Painting crush grain in a mortar
In the famine years, in some Svyatogorovsk courtyards there were still stupa in the huts.
Potato peelings, rotten potatoes, beets were cut into pieces and dried.
Then everything was mixed and crushed in a mortar.
The resulting flour was diluted with water and baked delicious cakes! Those who survived the famine with tears remember that time.
Today, many housewives use small mortars and pestles in the household. But this is just a small memory of that large stupa in a rural hut that fed a whole family.
Part I
In order to understand what kind of mortar we need in the household, we first find out what its purpose is, what work it does in our eyes. skillful hands? The answer to this question depends on what kind of mortar we need.
The fact is that the task of turning something into dust involves two jobs - crush and grind. Which fundamentally differ in terms of the application of brute force. In the first case, the force is applied vertical - shock, in the second - horizontal - friction force.
The shape of the mortars is thus reduced mainly to two types. What exactly?
Grinding of any products is more convenient and easier to carry out in a circular motion, so the optimal mortar intended for grinding should have a flat (grinding stone) or hemispherical (mortar) inner surface and a cylindrical or close to a hemisphere rubbing surface of a massive pestle.
Narrow and tall mortars in the shape of a glass, as opposed to low and wide ones, are designed to withstand shock loads, that is, crush.
But these are not all the requirements for a mortar, because substances can be crushed and rubbed, both dry and containing different amounts of aggressive and not very liquids, resulting in either a powder or a paste. And it is from here that the difference in the material of the mortar follows.
It is obvious that the properties of the material must meet these tasks - not to fall apart from impact, not to deteriorate from moisture, not to absorb anything superfluous and not to season the products processed in the mortar with their own dust. Hence the important properties of mortar materials with a plus sign:
- hardness, that is, the ability to withstand pressure from the outside, abrasive resistance (resistance to abrasion) is also associated with this
- plasticity - the ability to deform without tearing and destruction
- density, that is, the internal structure of the material, with which impact resistance is directly related
- chemical resistance
There are no pluses without minuses, which are a continuation of the virtues:
- softness
- fragility
- porosity, i.e. ability to absorb moisture, food colors and odors
- chemical activity, i.e. ability to interact with crushed products
From this stove we will dance.
Part II
Let's start, so to speak, by seniority. Stone mortars were the first in our everyday life. Pieces of rock - granite and basalt - lay here and there around the cave, you just had to choose the right ones. Only flat stones did not yet know that they were future mortars, and rounded stones did not yet know that they were pestles. Like an apple on a saucer, a rounded pestle rolled, rubbing everything that came to hand - grains, seeds, roots, vegetables, nuts, fruits. Over time, on flat stones, the middle slightly deepened and the edges rose, and the pestle turned into a kind of rolling pin, or even bent in the shape of the letter “g”. Similar archaic mortars are still preserved, for example, in India (pata varvanta, sil bhatta), in Indonesia (cobek and ulek-ulek), in Mexico (metate and metlapil), for grinding vegetables and spices, grain, rice, corn, cocoa beans and the preparation of vegetable pastes such as guacamole, sambal or seasonings, masal and curry paste.
And although mortars have acquired a more civilized look over time - and have become such as molcajete and tejolote in Mexico or krok hin in Thailand, both basalt and granite have retained their significance to this day. The hardness, density and abrasive resistance of these materials are the highest of natural stones. The disadvantages of basalt include poor polishability, so the spices and pastes obtained in such mortars have a heterogeneous, rough structure.
But polished granite and mortars from other natural stones, once called semi-precious stones, do an excellent job with this: jasper and chalcedony - agate, onyx, carnelian. All these stones are perfectly polished, have excellent hardness and density, and as a result, it is quite easy to obtain fine powders of incense and spices and smooth pastes in them.
They also have one common drawback - all stone mortars run the risk of cracking when struck from the heart, so they can only be rubbed. Jade has the best properties of natural stones - its impact resistance is several times higher than that of some metals.
The undoubted advantages of all stone mortars include the fact that they do not absorb water, do not react with either sour fruit juice or dyes.
With one sad exception - marble does not withstand the specified conditions. Its hardness is much lower than other stones, it absorbs moisture quite well and reacts even with weak acids - citric and acetic. Do we need it? What to do if you already have a marble mortar? Do not throw away. If you gently grind only dry spices in it and cook non-aggressive pastes, such as oil-based roasted garlic or onions, it will serve as well as others.
Part III
Another ancient natural material for mortars is wood. It is clear that in such a forested country as ours, wooden mortars were widely used, but they were not ground, but crushed. Large wooden mortars are still used in Japan (usu and kine) to make rice flour and starch from glutinous rice.
For a mortar-glass, in which it is convenient to crush, even medium-hard woods are suitable - oak, Canadian maple, not to mention the hardest ones - boxwood and dogwood. The fact is that the properties of wood are such that the impact strength of the end cuts is ten times higher than the longitudinal ones. That is, in human language - if the mortar and pestle are carved or hollowed out like Pinocchio, in the longitudinal direction of the log fibers, the strength of the pestle and the bottom of the mortar will be higher than that of some metal ones. That is why we made oatmeal and any other oatmeal in our narrow and tall oak mortars with a thick bottom. They also crushed poppy seeds and crushed linseed and hemp seed oil.
Of the obvious advantages - the tree does not react with food acids and alkalis.
But from the minuses: it perfectly absorbs odors and food colorings, and most importantly - moisture, because of which even the hardest wooden mortar will crack sooner or later.
The most popular mortars, solid wood, are designed more for dry, semi-dry or oily products - herbs, seeds, nuts, etc., have sufficient hardness and strength and allow them not only to grind, but also to grind. The oil film that forms on the wood over time will prevent it from absorbing moisture and cracking. Cheap glued mortars are the least durable and most susceptible to moisture.
The ratio of the pros and cons of a wooden mortar, like no other material, depends on the nobility of the breed, and the best of them serve more as a gift option than really necessary in the household. That is, for example, an ebony mortar decorated with intricate carvings, donated by your beloved mother-in-law / mother-in-law, or an Indonesian version of a palm wood mortar brought as a gift by a colleague / boss is unlikely to leave anyone indifferent. Since olive mortars are often offered in a matching gift set with olive oil and olives, it makes sense that olive tapenade paste would be the best use for such a gift.
Part IV
But we cannot wait for favors from nature, and we came up with porcelain, which has no less hardness, strength, moisture and chemical resistance than natural stone. And shortly after the advent of porcelain, it was adopted by pharmacists, and since then, doctors and chemists have been using porcelain "services". Porcelain mortar and pestle (suribachi and surikogi) allow Japanese women, for example, to obtain the finest rice powder or homogeneous soy paste-miso, grind sesame seeds for goma-dzio, or leaves and seeds of Japanese pepper for seasoning - kinome.
The main drawback of porcelain - fragility - is overcome quite easily, due to the thickness of the wall, and of careful handling. Porcelain is by no means intended for pounding nutmeg or even just black and allspice in such a contraption. This is, to put it mildly, inconvenient and impractical. And for this there is a more adapted material.
Part V
After a while, humanity decided to improve and streamline nature again. Metals were a great gift for such experiments. With a fairly average surface hardness, inferior to stones, porcelain and even some types of wood, the metal, due to its internal structure, has a very high impact resistance, or is able to increase this very strength and hardness during processing. The surface of metal mortars is well polished, which makes it possible to obtain very fine powders and break, for example, nutmeg or dried ginger into almost dust.
Historically, copper was the first in this competition, and its derivatives are bronze (originally an alloy with tin) and brass (originally an alloy with zinc). Bronze and brass have a very useful property - high abrasion resistance. This property is very useful for manual grinders for coffee and spices. By the way, coffee ground not even in an old, but in just an old brass mill is somehow tastier than in a soulless modern coffee grinder. Bronze and brass millstone parts are also a good choice for modern artisanal pepper grinders.
But for mortar-glasses, from which we choose the right one, abrasion resistance is not the main advantage.
Pure copper has high ductility, which means it easily changes shape upon impact, while bronzes are the most brittle of copper alloys, so brass mortars with high impact resistance are preferable. The highest chic will be silver-colored mortars made of the latest alloys - cupronickel (originally a copper-nickel alloy) and nickel silver (originally copper with nickel and zinc).
But here's the problem - the surface of such mortars in the greenhouse conditions of the kitchen - high humidity, aggressive atmosphere and elevated temperature, as well as upon contact with acids, is covered with a greenish-brown coating - patina. What is good for art products and monuments is bad for you and me. The components of the plaque - malachite, verdigris and others, are complex and simple poisons. How to deal with it? Elementary, as they say, Watson - clean, clean and clean again. Not without reason, in all literary monuments of past centuries, such attention was paid to cleaning metal (read copper) utensils. Internal surfaces in contact with food should shine like a polished copper basin.
Following the Bronze Age came the time of iron, iron and steel.
"Cast iron" as a material for mortars is inferior to brass and bronze, because although it is stubborn, it is fragile - if desired, a cast-iron mortar can be easily split. In addition, cast iron, being porous, absorbs moisture and rusts, which is a big minus. But crushing water in a mortar-glass is not very convenient, so such a disadvantage is easily negated by using metal mortars and mills for their intended purpose - only for dry spices. And it is easily removed by careful care - wipe with a dry cloth or paper or dry after use and store away from the stove.
Iron and steel, although stronger than cast iron, also rust quickly and well, unless this iron is meteoric. But this is from the realm of fantasy. The reality is that technological progress, which cannot stand still, has not bypassed routine homework, and stainless steel has brought ancient mortars to the level of complex mechanical devices - electric mills and blenders.
Glass containers and steel parts that do not absorb foreign odors and moisture and are not susceptible to aggressive environments, and most importantly, the modern power of these kitchen monsters, make grinding a process not even worth mentioning - the cooking time is so much reduced, and all the minuses of previous generations of mortars are eliminated. However, it subjectively seems to me that along with the shortcomings, the warmth and soul that fill the old mortars, no matter what they were created from, leave, because the slow process and the consistent addition of components in the mortar allows you to properly release, and most importantly, mix in the process of grinding aromas and tastes products used.
Literature and materials:
1. “Clay tablets or stone tablets. How to keep the memory of yourself for centuries, Illustrated guide to cuneiform, publishing house "Sumer", 5000 BC
2. "On the influence of wood density on Pinocchio's mental abilities", Journal "Drevotochet" ed. L. Alice, 1827
3. “Jade rod or Memoirs of a former mandarin”, unpublished manuscript of 1149 (presumably) found in a fishing village on about. Taiwan.
4. "Gloss", magazine of the Meissen Porcelain Society, Germany, 1865.
5. "Stone flower - ten steps to success." A guide for beginners, 1898, Mednogorsk printing house
6. "The use of Mr. Nobel's new materials in stone-cutting art", magazine
"Factory Bulletin", 1905, Kolyvan