The Love Tool: Mortar and Pestle from Thailand
Nancie McDermott
The Chef: Nancie McDermott of Chapel Hill, North Carolina author of Real Thai: The Best of Thailand’s Regional Cooking.
The Love Tool: My most beloved and cherished — as in pry it out of my cold, curry-stained hands — kitchen tool is the granite mortar and pestle which I bought in Thailand in 1978, when I was mustering out of the Peace Corps. I shipped it home with a two-foot-tall carved teak elephant and way too many teak salad bowl sets, the latter of which no longer lives in my home.
Nancie McDermott's beloved 30-year-old Thai mortar and pestle
The mortar and pestle still looks exactly the same and works exactly the same way, and I use it for my weekly supply of ground pepper, curry pastes, pesto, sweet spices for baking, thai “nahm prik” dishes, green papaya salad, almond paste for Southern cakes, and more. I don’t take it on every vacation, just the culinary-centric ones.
