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How To Make Coconut Milk From Coconut

Rabbits in Thailand

Coconut is one of the fundamental ingredients in Thai cookery. Coconut milk adds a luscious silkiness to curries and can also be used as a base ingredient in desserts; the flesh can be used in sweets and salads and the juice from a green coconut can be drunk straight from the pod for a really refreshing thirst-quencher. There is a difference between coconut cream and coconut milk.

At the Bai Pai Cookery School in Bangkok we learned how to extract coconut cream and coconut milk from an mature coconut, you know, the sort you get at coconut shies. This isn’t the same as the water you get from a green coconut (which is utterly delicious and wonderful to drink on a hot, humid day) but the liquid is extracted from the freshly grated flesh of an ordinary coconut.

After splitting the coconut in half (with a machete or something equally sharp and brutal) you need to use what’s known as a ‘rabbit’ to obtain the white flesh. The rabbit is a serrated grater often located on the end of a wooden bench (sometimes it’s even a cute rabbit shape!) which is used to shave the inside of the coconut to produce wisps of flesh.

how to make coconut milk from coconut

There’s definitely a technique to using the rabbit. You sit on the bench and use a reciprocal back and forward motion to shave away the coconut flesh. You need to make sure that the brown, hard shell of the coconut protects your hands as you really don’t want your fingers to come into contact with the sharp grater. Also, blood does have a tendency to turn the pure white coconut cream a startling shade of pink and you really don’t want that.

how to make coconut milk from coconut

How To Make Coconut Milk and Coconut Cream

Once you have a lovely pile of freshly grated coconut it gets put in a bowl and water is added. The shavings are mixed with the water, rubbing them together. Then they are sieved through muslin. A squeeze will release the coconut cream – this is the first press and it is rich, silky and smooth.

how to make coconut milk from coconut

Adding a further amount of water with another mix and squeeze releases a more dilute liquid – this is the second press which produces the coconut milk.

Coconuts are quite easy to find in the UK, rabbits less so. Knives are not recommended for grating coconut, you really need an implement that will extract – and shred – the flesh safely from the inside of a hemisphere without shredding your hands. It’s probably safer to buy coconut milk in tins. If you want milk, shake the tin. If you want cream you may well find that – on opening – it has solidified and a rich, luscious blob will simply plop out of the tin.

Coconut milk is a fundamental ingredient in Thailand’s famous curries. Kaeng khiao wan is a sweet green curry (you can find our recipe here), kaeng phet is a hot red curry. Both are easy to make (recipes another time). Another, less well known, dish that uses both coconut milk and coconut cream is tom kah gai – chicken and galangal in a coconut milk soup. Galangal is similar to ginger in that it is a rhizome – but they are quite different, notably in the textures and flavours. Ginger is lively, sweet and warming. Galangal is sharper with citrusy overtones. Whereas you can easily grate ginger and incorporate it into dishes, galangal is more woody. As a result it’s difficult to substitute one for the other. Where we live, ginger is easy to buy, but we have to search for galangal.

Tom kah gai is a subtle dish. Chicken pieces are cooked in a coconut milk soup that is infused with galangal, lemongrass and kafir lime leaves. Then coconut cream is added to provide a richness to the soup. Finally, as with many Thai dishes, sweet, sour, salt and heat flavourings in the form of sugar, lime juice, fish sauce and chilli are added – at the last moment,just before serving. This ensures that the flavourings are at their freshest; lime, particularly, can taste bitter if cooked for too long. The result is a wonderful, warming, creamy soup which has a touch of spice and zing.

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