metate

plural metates

1. A flat stone with a slightly concave surface, used with another stone (a mano) for grinding maize or other grains.

   1 more example

   Each evening, when he returned home, he found that María he prepared some new treat, for she was a most ingenious woman, capable of transforming the poorest materials into something delicious, and he grew to love the tortillas she made so patiently, kneeling before the stone metate as she beat the boiled corn into the gray-white mixture she later baked on the flat rocks.

   1985, James A. Michener, chapter V, in Texas, page 326