A friend dropped off 8 dry coconuts for me last week and I was happy as can be. You all already know that I am nuts for coconuts, so I couldn’t simply grate them and store them for occasions when I’d need them. Nah, things had to be made. I didn’t cook with all 8 of the coconuts, 4 of them were grated and packaged for freezing. Here’s what I did/made with the other 4.
I made a pan of creamy, delicately sweet, eddo-leaf callaloo with fresh coconut milk. Really, is there anything sweeter than callaloo cooked with coconut milk? Particularly eddo-leaf callaloo aka dasheen bush? The long cooking melts the greens, and it goes down smoothly when you eat it. While it’s lovely with shrimps, it is worthy of being a sole-ingredient dish.
Another thing I made was coconut sambol ala Sri Lanka’s Pol (coconut) Sambol. This recipe is simple and very easy to make. Fresh grated coconut, hot peppers, onions, lime juice and salt are all you need. For my take on the sambol, I added to my food processor the grated coconut and pepper to grind fine, then I seasoned the mixture with tamarind paste and some fresh lime juice along with salt to taste. Everything was pulsed to mix before thinly sliced purple onions were folded in to finish the dish. Chef’s kiss. This sambol is so tasty that you can eat it on its own. I took out some in a little bowl and ate it just like that. So good!
I did not have a clear idea as to a composed meal. I was simply making things with the coconuts because I got them and was inspired to cook/make different things.
The next thing I did was to make Trinbagonian Coconut Bake. There is nothing like a thick slice of coconut bake halved, buttered and downed with a hot cup of cocoa tea. De real thing. As in cocoa from the cocoa stick not cocoa from a tin or packet. Insert a couple slices of cheese along with the butter and your mouth and tummy would thank you. That, I think, is one of the Caribbean’s soul-food combos. It is comforting in every way.
By the time I had finished making the coconut bake, I realized that I had made things that I could have separately, in combination with other things and not necessarily with each other. For example, the callaloo with dhal and rice or with roti or even with some boiled eddoes or other ground provisions. The coconut sambol is a side dish that could accompany many things, including Cook-up rice and Metemgee.
The last thing I “made” that day was really the highlight of the day. I think it rivalled everything else. Perhaps it is because of the simplicity – it required no cooking; the nostalgia it evoked, and more importantly, for me, totally satisfying the sugar cake-fix I was craving.
You know when growing up, particularly (for me and my siblings), when you would go visiting relatives in the country, you’d get to snack on coconut with sugar? Remember? When last you had that? Honestly, I never liked to eat the coconut and sugar like that, but raised to be polite, I’d have a little. To me the coconut was too big and chunky and the sugar, raw, if you know what I mean. I never understood the excitement of eating coconut and sugar like that. Cook them together creating sugar cake, yeah, I get that.
Anyway, a couple of weeks ago a friend of mine who was visiting from overseas told me she wanted to have some coconut so I had shelled and chopped a coconut which she and her mom thoroughly enjoyed sans sugar. This week I wondered what it would be like if I grated a coconut and drizzled it with a syrup. I took inspiration from a video on YouTube where people from a village in Sri Lanka served some visitors slices of thick, firm, coconut jelly with a homemade syrup.
I cracked a dry coconut, pried the flesh from the shell and removed the brown skin. I was going for something aesthetically-pleasing, although it is not necessary to remove the brown skin (the skin actually makes the coconut more nutritious because that is where the fibre is too). After rinsing the coconut, I grated it on a box grater to get fine, thin shreds.
An ingredient I always have stocked is palm sugar and jaggery. Some I purchase locally from specialty grocery stores and others I buy whenever I travel. I use these sugars just like regular sugar but especially for chutneys and desserts. They give complex, sophisticated taste and flavour to things. Some of them also have a molasses-like flavour which I really like. They can elevate the taste of your coffee and tea. Among the sugars I have is coconut sugar. Coconut sugar is a type of palm sugar, it is made from the sap of the flower bud stem of the coconut palm. There are different types of palm sugar made from various palms and each country has its own method of making palm sugar. The one I used, as I said, is from the coconut palm. Coconut sugar contains minor amounts of nutrients and is less processed. The main reason I like palm sugars and jaggery is for the flavour. Calorie-wise, they are the same as regular sugar.
I measured and melted equal parts coconut sugar and tap water to create a syrup to drizzle over the coconut. The idea here was to have coconut and sugar (my way) based off of the way it used to be when we were kids.
Once the syrup was cooled completely, I drizzled some of it over a handful of the shredded coconut, tossed it to mix and took my first forkful. I had never tasted coconut and sugar that way before. It was sublime. The shredded coconut soaked up the syrup, absorbing the flavour. I can’t tell you that it tasted like sugar cake because it had its own unique stand out taste. It was sweet without being overly sweet. The coconut was soft and tender. The natural juices of the coconut mixed with the sweet syrup was the perfect pairing. After all, the syrup was made from coconut sugar.
Friends with whom I shared it were wide-eyed with happiness. What they especially liked was that they could choose to add as much or as little syrup as they like, adjusting to their preferred level of sweetness.
I did not add any flavourings to the syrup because I only wanted the natural flavour of the coconut sugar. However, I think that on another occasion, I am going to make a batch of the syrup with fresh ginger and cinnamon, traditional flavours of sugar cake. I may also do a version in which I add in fresh bay leaves. I am excited to see how those flavours will work with the coconut sugar.
Being inspired to cook takes the chore out of cooking. And inspiration can come from anywhere and can be anything. I took a trip around the Caribbean with my coconut dishes and from a country I have never been to!
Finally, as I cracked, shelled, grated, shredded, mixed and ate coconut, I wondered why I could not cook shine rice with blended coconut and not just the milk. After all, we do eat the actual coconut so what’s to say that we cannot add it directly to cook with the rice? I think I am going to give it a try. Stay tuned. I’ll let you know how it turns out and whether it’s a yay or nay.
Cynthia
cynthia@tasteslikehome.org
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