Coconut
Today’s ingredient is coconut (cocos nucifera). In Sinhalese it’s called pol. This delectable nut is high in fat and very unhealthy; it is hard to live without, and hard to live with.
A common method of using the nut in the West used to be coconut cream aka creamed coconut, which is a form so thick of coconut milk that it has solidified. These days it’s harder to find, and we tend to look for coconut in cans or powdered form and to use it as milk.
Coconut milk is santen in Indonesian, and absolutely crucial to Indonesian cooking. When used in South East Asian cooking, coconut milk is generally described according to three general consistencies. Thick milk is so dense it flops rather than flows. Medium milk is thick but quite flowing and wet. Thin milk is runny and watery.
The very best coconut milk is fresh - you grate the coconut and run water through it until you get sufficient milk of the right consistency. You keep the water, and use the grated (and now much less flavoursome) nut as a garden fertiliser.
In Australian and UK cooking desiccated coconut used to be far more popular than than the milk. It’s still used in classic Aussie recipes such as lamingtons and coconut ice. If you want to get a bit closer to fresh coconut but still only have access to the dried version, try fluffing the shreds out with a little water and let them sit for an hour or so.
March 7th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I remember the first time I tried coconut milk: my uncouth American tongue expected it to be sweet! Instead, it was very subtle and rich.. perfect for a soup. It’s since become my favorite comfort food when I’m ill.
March 8th, 2007 at 3:01 am
I love it in dishes like laksa, where the richness is itself enriched with chilli and spices. I also like it in sweet dishes, though - as a sauce on rice and fruit dishes, or as part of the sweet soup that hides squares of jelly and jackfruit and palmseed.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:56 am
I don’t know about coconut being unhealthy Gillian. It turns out that coconut oil is good for you and coconut- based meals are a staple in too many parts of the world. Maybe the places where this is eaten don’t offer much of calorie-filled foods; so this is an essential part of their diet.
Check out my post on the benefits of coconut oil.
http://www.healthybpm.com/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil/
March 17th, 2007 at 8:14 am
All these things are relative. The unhealthy bit is also the healthy bit - it all depends on how much you eat and what else is in your diet.
One thing I wonder (and have never seen demonstrated to my satisfaction) is if a culture has something as a staple or regular part of the diet over a long period of time (eg coconut in South-East Asia) if it might not be accompanied by other foods or eaten in such a way as to maximise its benefits and minimise any side effects. I was thinking about this when I posted about sumac - sumac added to red meat dishes helps with iron from the meat and beef and lamb dishes were where I first met that spice.
What this could mean is that the danger in coconut and potato and chilli and any foodstuff which moves cultures is that its unhealthy side might manifest while the culture learns about it. I’d love to see someone study uptake of new foods and its dietary effects.
Having said that, there are some cultures that apparently *do* have problems with diabetes and heart disease due to the level of saturated fats in coconut. That doesn’t mean no-one should eat it. There are more regions in the world as a whole that appear to have no issues than there are with issues. It’s like any food: we have to learn how it affects us in conjunction with the rest of our diet, not a mythical perfect human being who eats culturally-neutral food.
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
[...] , and absolutely crucial to Indonesian cooking. When used in South East Asian cooking, coconut milk is generally described according to three general consistencies. Thick milk is so dense it flops … …Read More [...]