coconut afternoon
Friday, December 12th, 2008By Rach
Luang Prabang, Laos
Papa and Mama (the grandparents of the family, parents to our guesthouse owner) in the next guesthouse have a large garden up the Mekong. On Sunday one of the sons brought back from said garden a dozen sacks of fresh coconuts to store beside the house until they are needed. Of course, some were required instantly and were opened up….what a process!
With a long knife, the ends are chopped and then the outer skin is hacked off in sections.
The husk is torn away and a hole pierced in one end to allow the coconut water to pour out. Four careful slashes around the hard shell and it breaks in half.
There’s a nifty wee serrated-bladed gadget for removing flesh and grating it, all in one looks-easy-until-you-try-it-movement. Once this is done, the milk is squeezed out by hand – extra water is poured on, mixed through and then squeezed some more, having turned white. The flesh was then discarded. Why? I don’t know. They use everything here (including pig’s brains and stomachs and livers and trotters), so why throw away perfectly good white coconut flesh?? There’s bound to be a reason.
The milk was then boiled up with sugar, before a white root vegetable was added in chunks, and eventually sago as well.We had been told they would add bananas – if they had, instead of that unidentifiable potatoe-ish vege, it would have been a delicious dessert. Not that it was bad – I just prefer veges with my main course!
While the pudding cooked, our children scraped out coconut shells, all sorts of plans dancing before their eyes. The other kids looked on and then turned their shells into stilts, the tin can variety. Remember them?
Two days later:
rayres