Adventures with Produce::Coconut

Today, Brother and I explored the wonderful world of Coconut. One came in the organic produce box. This is one of the fun things about getting my produce delivered. Someone else picks it out so I get these adventures with produce that I would not have chosen for myself.

The coconut arrived already husked so we missed out on the chance to poke a screwdriver into it's "eyes" to get the "milk" out. Brother did say that the machine husked coconut resembled a giant "nummies" or a pencil point.

After an unsuccessful attempt to cut the coconut in half we consulted the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. This book is a dog-eared favorite in my kitchen. There has been an answer to every question that I've asked in this book. (APJ could probably find the answers to some of her favorite questions in this book it's that comprehensive!)

Right there on page 15 it says, "NOTE - The easiest way to open a fresh coconut is to fling it onto a cement or rock surface (not the kitchen floor). This is the way the monkeys do it, and they are professionals." Is this PC cookbook writing? I wonder.

So out into the drizzly day we go. Brother is not sure about throwing food on the ground to smash it. I enthusiastically demonstrate and am satisfactorily rewarded with a crack. He says it looks like fun until the outside meat starts getting dirty. I ensure that we will wash the coconut before we eat it. It's not too much dirt. Then a final fling rewards us with a leaky coconut! He tastes a bit, it's not as sweet as he is expecting, and we let most of the coconut water drip out onto the ground. Later I read that I should have saved it to steep the meat in to make some coconut milk. No worries we'll try our hand at making some shredded coconut which I subsequently burned in the oven.

All that is left is some coconut meat steeping in water in my feeble attempt to really make coconut milk from scratch.