metate
Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- noun A stone block with a shallow concave surface, used with a mano for grinding corn or other grains.
Examples
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In rural Mexico, and among very traditional cooks, the metate is still used to grind corn for home made tortillas, which taste so much better than the commercial variety.
The Mexican Kitchen, Heart Of The Home: Part I - Cooking Equipment, Modern And Traditional
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I still wince whenever Roberto reminds me that for centuries, the process of making mole culminated not with the whiz of the blender among the most useful tools in the modern Mexican kitchen, but with painstaking grinding on a shallow, rudimentary stone mortar called a metate.
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Late that day, Hannah knelt beside the large, flat stone called a metate, grinding cornmeal.
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The metate is a sort of little table, hewn out of the basalt, with four little feet, and its surface is curved from the ends to the middle.
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The metate was a three-legged stone about two feet in length and one in breadth, slightly hollowed out in the center; grain was ground in this by rubbing with a smaller stone.
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For example, a woman may expend less energy in grinding meal in a hand mill or metate or in pounding it out with a pestle in a mortar than she would expend carrying the grain to the mill and paying for the service rendered there.
Energy and Society~ Chapter 3~ Inorganic Energy Sources~ Wind and Water
Note
The word 'metate' comes ultimately from the Classical Nahuatl 'metlatl' (grinding stone).
