Coconut Milk and Coconut Cream

Fill a grinder jar up to the halfway mark with the coconut. Add ½ cup warm water and grind. Sieve the mixture through a fine meshed large sieve. Squeeze the pulp well with a spoon, or with your hands, to take out all the milk. This is the thick, first extract.

Save the remaining pulp. Once all the milk is extracted, repeat the process with the remaining pulp and water, to extract all the milk. You may discard the fibre or use in sabzis and dal.

This milk stays in the refrigerator for not more than a day.

For Coconut Cream

Refrigerate the coconut milk (as given in recipe above) overnight. Thick cream rises to the top. Scoop out the cream from the top the next morning. This is your coconut cream.

Makes 1 cup coconut milk and ⅓ – ½ cup coconut cream

Note

Use coconut milk judiciously and occasionally as it lacks fibre and is high in fat.

Variations

Sesame seeds/cashew nuts/sprouted wheat/almonds can be added to the coconut milk by turning them into a butter and adding a small quantity of this butter and about 4 – 6 times the quantity of water to the coconut milk and blending well.

Alternatively the seeds can be put in the grinder along with the grated coconut and warm water directly. However, by this method, some of the nuts or seeds may be lost along with the coconut fibre that is discarded.