Spices and sea­son­ings crack­le and crunch un­der the weight of the lorha, re­leas­ing an in­tox­i­cat­ing scent—and you just know some­thing good is about to go down in the kitchen. If this sce­nario rang any bells for you, then you’re a lucky per­son, and you know the val­ue of the orig­i­nal way of grind­ing up sea­son­ing in your aa­je’s (pa­ter­nal grand­moth­er) and nani’s (ma­ter­nal grand­moth­er) kitchens. Yes, we live in the age of food proces­sors and grinders, but can any­thing tru­ly re­place the good ole sil and lorha? I know I am nev­er giv­ing up my tawa for a grid­dle, so if you are lucky enough to have the true and tra­di­tion­al sil and lorha, I doubt you would want to give that up ei­ther.

The sil and lorha comes all the way from In­dia. The In­di­an in­den­tured labour­ers, who came to Trinidad in 1945, brought their own tra­di­tion­al East In­di­an cui­sine, in ad­di­tion to the tra­di­tion­al uten­sils that they used to pre­pare meals. They brought the sil and lorha, bail­na (rolling pin) and kalchul (met­al la­dle), among many oth­er pop­u­lar kitchen tools that are still used in many Trinida­di­an house­holds to­day.

In In­dia, the sil and lorha is known as “sil-bat­ta” in Hin­di, and in Nepal, it is known as silau­to-lo­horo, over time the name was short­ened down to sil and lorha. A sil is a cylin­dri­cal slab of brick made from stone (gran­ite, sand­stone or lime­stone) used to grind sea­son­ings on the flat­ter base, known as the lorha. Very much like the mor­tar and pes­tle, these two tools re­ly on each oth­er to get the job done.