Don't worry about the people in your past; There's a reason they didn't make it to your future.
Coffee maker vessel
Made of brass or copper traditional coffee makers will have filter plates inside the unit. The taste of coffee is always delicious and fresh. House blend coffee powder will be brewed inside the unit in boiling hot water. Fresh milk and sugar added to coffee is still popular in many parts of Southern India. Instead of brass or copper from past two decades steel filters are in use. Our ancestors used to drink hot or cold form brass or copper vessels due to the health benefit they believe to get from these metals. Moreover, coffee flavor remains fresh in these vessels.
Traditional idli maker is similar to pressure cooker with stands. Without idli stands one cannot make idllis. Prepared idli batter will be poured to the holes of idli plates and plates are arranged on the stand. This stand will be kept inside the pressure cooker without putting weight. Steam cooked idlis will be very tasty. Now a day readymade as well as microwavable idlis are available. However, the taste of traditional way cooked idli is much, much better!
There are times we use traditional milling to make powders of various grains. Then for fine powder many times we have to use traditional sievers. Sieving helps to break up clumps, to remove foreign matter and also to aerate the flour. Aerated flour is a beautiful thing to work with, mixes easily with liquids and other foods without forming into lumps. Depending on our needs sieve plates are available in various pore sizes. These sieve plates can be fit inside the sieve holder to separate the fine powder from coarse grain as well as to remove husks, small stones etc.
2) Grain grinding stones:Rangthang (stone grinder)which is still used in the far flung villages for grinding all kinds of grains like wheat, buckwheat, and maize the most. This is a solid hard rock which is curved out from the huge rock. Not every rock can work for curving out this grinder. Two equal curved stones are arranged one above another. Lower one is fixed to its stand permanently without any chance of movement when upper rotates on its top for grinding. The stand to which lower half is fixed will be usually a wooden tub with a flat base so that whatever grain is grinded will be get collected in the tube wholly. On the top of the upper half there will a wooden handle long enough to accommodate two to three hands for rotating and next to this handle there will be a small round flat area to receive the grains handful by handful through which there is a small hole to pass through the grains down in between two stones for grinding. Depending on the size and heaviness of the grinder, for rotation it requires minimum of one person and maximum of three persons. Nevertheless, in any way both the hands cannot hold the handle in tandem and rotate it.
3) Spices grinding stones: There are two types of spice grinding stones. One is flat stone with a roller to grind only the spices and the second is the Ragado or a stone grinder consisted of two heavy stones just like a mortar and pestle but really big. People still use this to grind Idli, dosa flours and also coconut and spice to make of sambaar. The advantage of using these stone grinders is the added earthy flavor to the dishes! Moreover with power cuts they are in back in action !!
Another item that has been in use since ancient times is the “muram or bamboo tray”. This is generally made of bamboo leaves. In South of India people have been using this for storing and cleaning various food items. Maurm made of bamboo leaves are still being used by many households even though the plastic maurams are availble in market. Since murams are used for storing as well as cleaning food items, they are also considered sacred. Goddess Dhanya Lakshmi is said to reside in murams also. Unfortunately, the number of people using murams is also coming down. Muram use is often to remove dust particles/small stones from wheat, rice, paddy, mustard, millet etc by throwing them into the air. The tin air will blow off the dust particles and grain will fall off from murram. Heavy stones will remain on muram to discard.
This is a very essential tool in indian kitchen. Murukku / Chakli press comes in stainless steel, wood, brass materials. These murukku or chakli molds comes with few other mold plates form which we can also make ribbon pakoda, sevai or traditional rice noodles. For the festival this multitasking murukku press comes in handy. It helps to make various items and saves time!
Carrot and dry coconut grater
Attractive and beautiful old carrot and dry copra grater is still in use in many modern kitchens. In case no electricity and one cannot use food processors to grate vegetables or cheese – these old fashioned graters will come handy. Many Indian dishes calls for dry coconut -copra in recipe particularly sweets. Many times the food processer does not give good flakes of copra. In this case one can use these graters.
In many houses still we see this cutting and scraping stool namely “Eeeligemane”. It is also known as Bonti or Aruvamanai, which is mainly used to cut vegetables and scrape coconut. The wooden base acts as a support to the vertically fixed sharp knife. The uppermost part of knife is used to scrape coconut. It sure requires good practice to perfect the skill of scraping coconut. The person has to sit down on the floor, and press the wooden base with their foot/knee to maintain balance. It requires good balance to cut the vegetables perfectly. The person has to hold the vegetable at it tip ends with both hands and slide it against knife with cutting stool comes coconut grater. Coconut grater will be always on the tip of the cutting stool. One can grate coconut and cut vegetables using same tool !
Butter was probably first created accidentally when whole milk carried in skin bags was carried by horseback and naturally “churned” while traveling over rough terrain.
The first documented mention of butter making was in the sacred songs of the dwellers of Asiatic India, dating back to 1,500-2,000 B.C.E.
There is historical mention of ancient tribes creating primitive churns by horizontally agitating cow, yak and horse milk. Butter back then was not only eaten, but used as an illumination oil, for medicinal purposes and also as skin coating to insulate the tribe members from the harsh winter cold.
According to Hindu mythology Lord Sri Krishna was very fond of freshly churned butter! In many Indian house holds both in North and Southern states one can see traditional churning of the butter by women of the houses !
