Dumb Question about Coconut Cream and Milk

I actually played with making my own “coconut milk” from unsweetened dried coconut milk a few times- it was kind of a PITA but made a delicious thick creamy milk. And no funky junk additives or whatever. This silky recipe says discard the strained solids but i kept them and added into some granola and my oatmeal.
Not saying this is ideal or the same as in thailand or anything but it’s an easy alternative that makes a tasty result.

Fantastic. That is much better than canned. I do it sometimes with fresh grated coconut, but I find it to be too difficult and time consuming to do on a regular basis. Grating your own is even more of a bother – which is why its so good to be able to buy it locally.

to MakanmataRob as well,
How did you grate the coconut?
My husband used to grate coconut for me to make a filipino dessert called palitaw. We have a grater which is called a coconut horse whereby after the coconut is split in half, assuming the coconut husks have been removed so all you have is the round hard shell. Sit on the bench, place a bowl under the grater, then holding the one half semi spherical coconut with the meat facing towards the grinder teeth, you can scrape the coconut meat out by downward movements. Start at the outer edge and work your way into the center scraping off the white meat. dropping the grated coconut into your bowl. Not only is it fast, ( takes around 5-10 min) the coconut comes out very thin , perfect texture for the palitaw. Here is a recipe for palitaw and picture of a coconut horse.

http://burntlumpiablog.com/2009/01/how-to-open-a-coconut.html

i lost my coconut horse during remodeling and had started to shred the coconut with my food processor but the texture is not ideal for palitaw.
Amazon sells one. However, the bench is a bit small for most caucasians. You can also buy the grater head from Amazon for $6.00 and attach it to a harwoodplank, then attach that to your own home made bench .

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Take a look at the recipe- i certainly did not grate my own fresh coconut…! There’s a health food store i can get bulk bin organic dried unsweetened coconut for a good price so that’s what i used. Significantly cheaper than the canned stuff but like i said kinda a pain to make with the draining/straining and such (though certainly not as labor intensive as grating my own coconut!!)

I grated fresh coconut once. It was brutal. My food processor attachment wouldn’t do it, so I used a standard hand grater. My arms hurt just thinking about it. Plus, all this happens after you’ve cracked and extracted the coconut meat – a dark art in itself as far as I’m concerned. For now, I’m content with the canned and tetra pak stuff.

However, the resulting milk was great, for sure. In fact, I never understood a wide range of Thai desserts until I had Lod Chong made with fresh coconut milk at our local Songkran. It was one of those moments.

I appreciate your zeal. I’m curious, do you live in one of the places you mentioned? I don’t know about Malaysia, but the Thai people I know tell me many people in Thailand use the canned stuff now, along with other anecdotes like the use of ketchup in place of tamarind. gasp

@ccj, thanks for posting about that specialty grater. Looks like a fun project for the future.

We only grated coconut for dessert, especially that particular dessert called PALITAW.
It was well worth it. My husband, now deceased was a celiac, ( tropical sprue, gluten enteropathy), so, Palitaw and other rice dessert is well worth the extra efforts.
I hope u will try making palitaw.
Palitaw means TONGUE because ty epically, it is shaped like a tongue. Sweet rice flour with brown sugar ( I prefer coconut sugar), toasted sesame seeds and freshly grated coconut using that gizmo is out of this world. One cannot find it in the store at all.
For other use such as curry, I use the canned version.
If one has a good grater like mine,( sent from home) nail it to a bench, it takes no time at all. 5-10 min ( for a guy) esp when he gets the hang of it. There used to be a Filipino store close to my work who would grate the coconut for .50. That was in the 70’s . However, we preferred to grate it as I can save the juice and left over grate coconut kept in its juice will stay fresh for a couple days .

That is true. After we lost our coconut horse, tried using my Cuisinart food processor with different disc using a stem attachment. It never turned out the same.
Using the grater attached to the horse, the coconut came out very delicate, soft almost like( but better) the shredded coconut that are used for the Chinese version of sticky rice dessert that is round, and covered with coconut . Although the Chinese sticky rice ball with coconut is good, the shape of palitaw which is flat, oblong,( shape of a tongue) dusted with freshly coconut coconut using that gizmo, dusted with freshly toasted sesame seed and brown coconut sugar, takes it up another few notches. It is HEAVENLY !

Most of the graters are made currently in Thailand, at least the ones at Amazon. Mind came from the Philippines where I was born and raised. It lasted me from 1972- 2005 when we lost it during remodeling of our house as it was too clumsy to place in kitchen drawers and we stored them behind a bench in my DR. The carpenter working here must have thought it was junk and threw it away.

If interested , mine was the kind that is a little longer and head of the grater looked smaller. This is the exact replica of the ones we got. Bill nailed it to a hardwood board, then, he made a bench for himself as he is 6"2". He placed the board with he grater on the bench and sat on it to steady it. Alternatively, you can just nail it to the bench. After each use, y ou can just spray with spam or coat it with oil to keep from rusting.
http://tagaloglang.com/kudkuran/

I have several gadget for making rice dessert including something that is made of clay which I purchased when I returned home one year. It is for making rice pancake. They serve this in the famous Manila Hotel esp for tourist whereby the pancake is made with rice flour ( not sticky rice flour) , using a very small charcoal thing to cook it in, the pan for the pancake is lined with banana, the rice cake is cooked with charcoal from above and with charcoal from above ( charcoal placed it in a pie tin) . We used to do this outdoor in the fall as the weather is mild and the smell from the coconut pancake called BIBINGKA is good. Bibingka with melted sharp cheddar cheese on top and freshly grated coconut! OUTSTANDING!

My mom also has a coconut horse – I had no idea it was actually called that. We used to just call it “the horse” growing up. She used to grate fresh coconut all the time, but now you can get frozen grated coconut everywhere around us so we just buy that. I use it both as-is for recipes, or I soak it in hot water to extract the milk.

That is an alternative too but the taste is not quite the same as freshly grated coconut.
Did she make Palitaw and/ or Bibingka?
Here is a pic of the Bibingka miniature clay oven.
The traditional way of cooking Bibingka is unique . For anyone interested, it uses a miniature clay oven ( clay oven is how they cooked in the early days back home in the rural areas when electricity , much less electric stove was not available) to bake the Bibingka rice cake. …flour mixture is poured on a round clay dish lined with banana leaf. . The clay dish is placed between the Bibingka oven with ash covered charcoals below and another pot above with ash dusted charcoal that acts like a broiler . I use a tin pie plate for this purpose. The picture enclosed does not show the charcoal above.
When the rice mixture is slightly cooked, I spread a tad butter and sharp cheddar cheese which is supposed to melt slightly) before serving with freshly grated coconut as pictured.

https://goo.gl/images/3sh5LL

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Where I live in Brazil, you can usually buy freshly grated coconut at street markets. They sell it by the cupful and will grate it in a metal grater while you wait. Its not cheap, and it would probably cost about US$5 to buy enough to make enough coconut milk for a Malay style curry. Where I am in Rio de Janeiro, most of it is used for desserts and to put in tapioca pancakes – often the same vendor will also sell fresh ground tapioca. In other parts of Brazil, like in Bahia and the northeast, fresh coconut milk is much more common.

In Rio and the south, coconut milk from the northeast is sold pasteurized in glass bottles, and is pretty low quality, and one can also buy the canned stuff from Thailand at speciality stores as well. This is why to experience a real moqueca, made with fresh coconut milk (and freshly ground spices) one must go to the northeast, as the moqueca made in the rest of the country with bottled coconut milk is never nearly as good.

thanks for clarification
i did not know coconut is so expensive in parts of Brazil
It is very cheap in the Philippines where i grew up
I have been living in the US since 1964.
The young coconut I love for the coconut water as well as the thin meat that can be scooped up was virtually non existent in the east coast when I arrived here. Now, it is available but cost around $2.50 and up . The mature coconuts are cheaper at around $1.50 each.

There are many other cultures that use fresh grated coconut. For example, Indian and Malaysian cuisines use coconut in a lot of dishes, both savory and sweet. That’s usually what we use it for.

That sounds like such a delicious dessert…! And how great to have a filipino store where they would grate the coconut! There must be somewhere in nyc that does that but likely one of the outer boroughs neighborhoods i’m not familiar with (or close to) Hmm. I Gotta look into that for a weekend field trip!

that was many many moons ago.
The store was right at the border of DC and MD .
I wander if it exist today
I have not made that dessert since I lost my tool as well as Bill’s passing.
Back in the 70’s, gluten enteropathy was rare, gluten free food not readily available
Filipino and Chinese desserts saved us a lot of grief.
We learned to carry wheat free tamari soy sauce, even when we eat out at Chinese restaurants, but sadly, unless one nows the chef or maitre d, they do not always want to comply.
Good luck on your weekend hunt but, with internet, you may be able to get one of those graters.
Bill watched the guy grate the coconut and in no time at all, he mastered it when my father sent one for him from home.
The texture of the grated coconut for the Palitaw was very refined, longer than those of t he coconut dusted over the coconut chinese dim sum .

I briefly googled and found this store in NJ
FIL STOP
They have the buco grater exactly like mine for 5.09 ( SEARCH: PINOY WARE METAL COCONUT GRATER) . In tagalog the grater is called a KUDKURAN
They also had one with the bench but it is out of stock for about over $12.00 ( made in Taiwan) . The head is different from the the buco grater shorter. He himself prefers the grater only so you can nail it to a taller bench. Read the review. ( SEARCH : WANG DERM COCONUT SLICER WITH CHAIR)
Hope you are close to NJ or available from Amazon. Look at the ones similar to the one from FIL STOP as that lasted me over 30 y ears.
I called Phil AM Food Mart in NY and few other places, they do not have the grater.
They do have some dessert that I like and use to cook for my husband which are topped with coconut,
Perhaps you can try them before you decide to go into this adventure.
It does not matter how the coconut comes out with different grater if the intention is for making coconut milk solely, but my grater makes the coconut fine, a little length, silly perfect for dessert topping.

Thank you for all your research! Not sure i’ll be going to new jersey, that’s a ways away for me to get to… there is a new market in my neighborhood that is opening in a few weeks and i think will have fresh coconuts, so if they do i’ll order a grater from amazon and have great coconut milk and shreds around all the time! Since i’m in nyc i have to schlep groceries, so a nearby source for the coconut would be perfect

Most everything is expensive in Brazil – the cost of living in Brazilian cities is similar to or more than the cost of living in Europe or North America – but coconuts and other food products have experienced massive inflation recently. Young coconuts – good for juice but not for milk – could be purchased in Rio de Janeiro for about BRL$0.50 10 years ago, and is now BRL$5.00-6.00! (about US$1.75-2.00).

My husband grew up in Brazil where his father was assigned from 1942----
Those years in Brazil ( Rio and Sao Paulo ) were considered the best years his family had.
I had always enjoyed a special dessert ordered by my mother in law from a Brazilian during holidays
Do not know the name but here is a description.
Layers of very thin flaky puff pastry ( made from manioc flour) , and in between these flaky pastry, condensed milk that is cooked with coconut cream. It is heavenly but the recipe was never revealed. I had tried googling but without luck as I do not know what it is called. It was one of the dessert that my husband who had gluten enteropathy enjoyed being made of manioc meal.

I’m happy that I think I can help end your quest – and having recently found and started to participate here I can’t help but note what a pity it is that there is no South American board on which to ask this question and that the entire continent which contains many great food cities is lumped in with places like Oklahoma City and Indianapolis (why is that?).

As I had mentioned, freshly ground coconut is often sold at markets alongside ground tapioca – which is the Tupi word for mandioca or manioc. The “pastry” you describe is a Northeastern specialty, often made by these same vendors at street markets and are usually referred to simply as “Tapioca” but sometimes by the more proper Tupi words “Biju” or “Beiju” de Tapioca. The finely ground manioc is passed through a fine screen until it is practically dust, and the bottom of a ban is coated with a layer of the fine flour. That bottom layer can be coated with grated coconut and evaporated milk for a sweet snack, or with cheese, ham, coconut, etc. for a savory one. Once the pancake is set, it can be folded over and eaten like a big taco (most common way, especially since it is the easiest way to eat it on the street) but can also be rolled like a jelly roll. In 1942 there was not yet the mass migration from the Northeast to places in the Southeast like Rio and Sao Paulo, and it is quite possible that the layer-cake style you mention was a Portuguese or Italian variation. If you go to youtube, you can see several videos of Biju de Tapioca being made, and here is one specifically of condensed milk and coconut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh81mVN8DVU

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I can’t speak for the organizers but I strongly suspect they have been waiting to hear from HOs in the South American nations who wish to start a board. (Indianapolis has remained silent! C’mon, Indy. I know you people make a wicked blueberry cobbler.)

Having read some of Jorge Amanda’s wonderful books (in translation) I have always wished to know more about Brazilian cooking. And my niece is heading to Brazil for an extended dance training tour. So I hope you will continue to post.

Also, the people who have been contributing to DOTM etc. have discussed how to manage seasonal topics that must necessarily be out of sync between the hemispheres. But I don’t believe posters from South America commented. So please feel free!