Back to Basics - Coconut Milk

Sometimes, we need to keep pulling us back to making things ourselves. Nowadays, everything is so readily available in the shelf that you don't have to flex your energy to make them from scratch, but actually if you go to see, the taste of food is not as good as it used to be before, nor is it as healthy as it used to be before!

Image courtesy Google

Being a Keralite means literally attached to your coconut! We try to add coconut and its derivatives into everything we cook. I don't like to cook in any other oil, apart from coconut oil, even though sometimes people around keep telling how unhealthy it is and how olive oil is a much better option but then the Malayali in me refuses to believe it! Nothing beats the taste of food cooked in coconut oil - absolutely nothing! Hehe... Same goes with coconut milk... The lazy me does opt for the tinned coconut milk and the coconut powder many many times, for my quick cooking requirements but if I really have the time and I want the taste to come out naturally, I wouldn't mind flexing my hand muscles to push out coconut milk out of freshly grated coconut.

OK, now for all of you who think about the task of grating coconuts - which, by the way, I hate doing! - we get freshly grated coconut packed in boxes in almost every supermarket here or when my umma comes from home, she brings at least 20 coconuts grated, neatly packed for convenience! I know the second option is going to stop for me very soon but still... the taste of the small Kerala coconut and the milk it gives is just too good... so sharing with you how I extract coconut milk...



Ingredients:

1 cup grated coconut
1 cup water

Method:

Add both ingredients into a blender and blend for almost 5 minutes till well juiced. Pour through a sieve and press the blended coconut till the milk completely comes out.

This initial milk is normally thick and is called the "first milk" - "onnaam paal" in Malayalam. For the thin coconut milk, you can add one more cup of water to this pressed coconut mix and blend again for 5 minutes. Repeat the process again.

So easy, isn't it? Yeah, provided that the coconuts are grated... :)