Long be­fore there were blenders and food proces­sors, the sil and lorha were used for grind­ing sea­son­ings such as gar­lic, pep­pers, pi­men­to, etc. It was typ­i­cal­ly used in the mak­ing of var­i­ous types of chut­ney, par­tic­u­lar­ly co­conut chut­ney. If you’ve nev­er had co­conut chut­ney with your dou­bles, with your cur­ry or with your nor­mal Tri­ni street food, you are sad­ly miss­ing out. No wor­ries though, here’s the recipe so you can make it your­self.

IN­GRE­DI­ENTS

1 dried co­conut

8 leaves of ban­da­nia/ chadon beni

4 large gar­lic cloves

1 hot pep­per

2 medi­um pi­men­tos

1 tea­spoon salt

Equip­ment

Fire­side or stove

One medi­um sized bowl / basin.

Sil (grind­stone, used with lorha)

Lorha (Hand-held stone grinder)

DI­REC­TIONS

1 Crack the co­conut and re­move the white co­conut flesh from the hard brown out­er shell us­ing a sharp knife.

2 Once re­moved, wash the pieces and place over a medi­um flame, roast­ing them about 5 min­utes per side (Roast un­til there are dark brown patch­es, but do not burn to a crisp.)

3 Once roast­ed, al­low to cool, and scrape all the black soot from the out­side of the pieces. Wash the co­conut and cut in­to 1 inch pieces and then place pieces on your sil.

4 Roast the gar­lic with the skin on, along­side the pi­men­tos and hot pep­per on an open medi­um flame, turn­ing reg­u­lar­ly.

5 Grind your co­conut, gar­lic roast­ed pep­per and pi­men­to us­ing your lorha on the sil. If you do not own this tra­di­tion­al in­di­an cook­ing utentsil, use a food proces­sor. Read more about the ori­gins and us­es of the Sil and Lorha on the cov­er page of Propa Eats.

6 Once your co­conut mix­ture turns in­to a paste, grind in your chadon beni.

7 Emp­ty in­to a bowl, add the salt and set aside.

8 En­joy with rice and dhal, cur­ry duck, dou­bles , you name it!